Excellencies
Distinguished Heads of States and Governments,
Esteemed Heads of Delegations, Secretary-general, Mr. President,
I would like to thank the President of the General Assembly, on behalf of the people of Ireland,
for convening this meeting, provoking as it does, some fundamental questions
as to our very being as a United Nations.
Is it not a profound condemnation of
what we have made of the legacies of our cultures, reason, ethics, and
belief systems that we, in these first decades of the 21st century,
live in a world that is home to so much war?
Wars the preparation for which absorbed the
finest minds in science and technology.
Wars in which civilians are more at risk
than ever before, subject to atrocities, famine and starvation,
and, to an unprecedented degree, displacement.
Surely it is an affront to humanity that
in these first decades of the 21st century, with all its promise,
at a time when we have the capacity to abolish all forms of human poverty,
we share a planet with hundreds of millions who are, even as we speak here today,
deprived of their most fundamental rights; deprived of a dignified existence.
Why have we resiled, I ask, to a politics of fear,
rather than to the promise of the politics of possibilities?
Is it not nothing less than a moral outrage, too,
that our boundless capacity for creativity and innovation, and the fruits of new science and technology,
are turned not to the promotion and preservation of peace but
to the pursuit and prosecution prosecution of war?
The President of the General Assembly and the Secretary General have invited
all of us gathered here over these two days to reflect upon the achievement of
five specific objectives, each of which has been the subject of many debates,
not only within this Assembly but within the Security Council, and also
in civic forums throughout the world.
These objectives in their scale and their ambition,
are a confirmation that while building and sustaining peace, as we've
just heard, is an enormous task, yet it is one that we must achieve, together,
as a community of Nations, if we are to live up to the basic ideals of the United Nations,
and as I've heard of the young, to give the ring of authenticity
to our words as public figures again.
Mr. President,
Ireland, the country I represent, knows from our own peace process,
which continues to this day, that peace does not come without engaging with the
experience of the Other; that it remains a process to be nurtured.
The Northern Ireland peace agreement signed on Good Friday 20 years ago,
demonstrates some of those conditions which you Mr. President have identified
as essential for successful peace building: Direct engagement by the
governments involved in the negotiations; Sustained financing for peace building activities;
Strong support from the European Union; and generous and patient
backing from other members of the United Nations, most particularly from those
with a connection to Ireland, such as the United States.
Neither could our peace have been achieved without the steady and
courageous activism of those civic organisations campaigning for a more
just and peaceful society - many of which were led by the women of Ireland,
North and South. Yet while we celebrate the end of violence in Ireland,
the lives saved and the futures transformed, we are reminded daily of the challenges of
sustaining peace. So Mr. President, I did not look in the abstract at any of
the objectives you are set for our meeting for these two days.
Dear colleagues, the Secretary General's report outlines
an ambitious plan of action - one for inclusion, particularly, of gender and youth,
for the agencies of the United Nations. But make no mistake: the Secretary General is very clear
that sustaining peace is the responsibility of us all, the Member States.
Let us again recall the words of the founding chapter of this organisation:
"We, the peoples of the United Nations, determined to save succeeding generations from the scourge
of war which twice in our lifetime has brought untold sorrow to mankind."
Through these words we assumed - all of us members - our most profound political and moral
responsibility, not only to the citizens of our own nations,
but to the peoples of other nations.
We must have the courage now to ask how we have come to lose this
discourse of peace. What are the inevitabilities of connection between
economy, ecology or society, that serve as obstacles to our bringing a new paradigm
of sustained peace and development into being.
The Secretary General and the agencies of the United Nations
will not be successful in pursuing our common objective
of sustaining peace if we, the member states, do not recommit ourselves
to those founding principles to which we dedicated ourselves so many years ago,
and we must allow the new thinking and the new paradigms of critical thought we need,
to be allowed to emerge.
Mr. President, As this assembly recognised two years ago,
the outbreak and recurrence of conflict can only be
prevented by addressing its root causes.
This requires political imagination and financial commitment
which must be met with answerable determination
on the part of member states. Investing in conflict prevention, of course,
is not only a matter of moral duty, but it is one of financial prudence,
and I'm aware that many member states have been hesitant to commit resources to conflict prevention.
Yet, as the Secretary-General has so often reminded us since he assumed office,
sufficient and effective investment in building peace will not
only save lives but will open all the possibilities and opportunities for
development and human flourishing that peace brings, which are so necessary if
we are to accomplish the goals of that most remarkable recognition of our
shared global responsibilities, the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.
Ireland is pleased that the Secretary General has laid down this challenge.
We know that when the United Nations and the member states work coherently across
the pillars of Peace and Security, Human Rights and Development,
real sustained and measurable progress is possible.
Mr. President, Humanitarian actions must not any longer be allowed
to serve as sufficient responses to crises that are political in their origins
Humanitarian action is not a substitute for political dialogue and mediation
nor is the remarkable work of UN peacekeepers
whose service, including that of many Irishmen and women over the past 60 years,
I salute here today.
UN peace support operations save countless lives, but they can only ever be but one element
of a comprehensive response. If we are to truly commit ourselves to the
objective of sustaining peace, we must discard any easy, lazy or media cynicism.
For example, the young of the world are appalled by
the suggestion that what is normative can be for the General Assembly here but
that the strut of the powerful and the wielders of power can prevail in the Security Council.
That is what is losing the young.
Let us, instead, heed these lost
hopes of all our collective pasts. Those hopes, pleas for wisdom that were the
whispers from the gallery of the United Nations when so many of the newly free
states brought their hopes - the hopes of their people - and the wisdom
of their peoples, and the wisdom of their struggles, to the United Nations.
Let us, once again, in this Hall, recall the energy of that moral moment,
the bravery, the critical scholarship, the hope, which animated our forebears in their better moments,
and devote ourselves to the cause of a universal peace.
one encompasses all of the people of our shared and vulnerable planet.
Míle buíochas.