Statement of Ireland at the UNGA72
UNSC Reform: “The UN’s political bodies must also better reflect today’s world. Nowhere is this more evident than with regard to the composition of the Security Council. The Security Council does not reflect the world that has evolved since the UN was established in 1945. Quite plainly, we would be hard pressed to find any entity – in the public or private sectors – that remains so untouched by the changes and realities in the world around it. [...] The need to increase the size of the Council is clear to see. [...] While the use or threat of the veto remains in place, the work of the Council is impeded and the UN can be paralysed in its response to the gravest crises facing the international community.”
The WPS Agenda, Participation: “I am pleased to note that Ireland is committed to doubling the number of women in our Defence Forces, with the aim also of increasing female participation in peacekeeping. As the Secretary General said at the Security Council this week, and as we know from the Women Peace and Security agenda, increased female participation leads to better decision making, improved situational awareness, a better focus on protection of civilians, and enhanced reporting of and accountability for sexual exploitation and abuse.”
General WPS/CSW: “Our policies and actions must reflect this, the inherent equality of humanity at the core of our multilateral system. In practice this means listening to and heeding the voices of women, the voices of young people, the voices of the marginalised. The Women Peace and Security agenda has had a hugely positive impact globally with the realisation that we can create more durable and sustainable peace by working to ensure that women play their rightful role in conflict prevention and peacebuilding efforts. Ireland will play our part, including as chair of the Commission on the Status of Women during the next two years.”
Conflict Prevention: “We all know that conflict prevention has the potential to save lives and to protect hard-won development gains - and that it comes at a lower financial cost than peacekeeping operations and post-conflict peacebuilding. We strongly support the Secretary-General's efforts to re-orient the international community's thinking toward crisis and conflict prevention. Flowing from our painstaking conflict resolution efforts on the island of Ireland, we seek to share our national experience in our work on conflict prevention, mediation and state-building. The huge growth in UN peacekeeping operations in the past decade tells us that, sadly, the scope for conflict prevention is broad. Of course, conflict prevention involves policy planning and engagement on the ground, all of which requires funding. We have very recently seen some reductions in peacekeeping operations and their associated costs. We might reasonably ask if a small part of these savings could be used to provide stable funding for the UN's conflict prevention work.”
Policy Coherence: “The Sustainable Development Goals remind us, we live in an interconnected world, each challenge affecting the other. African countries are particularly affected by global challenges, such as climate change, conflict and food insecurity, which can only be addressed in their African contexts in a spirit of effective global partnership. Such partnership requires understanding local perspectives anchored in local experience, in particular on how to tackle root causes.”
Syria/Yemen: “The conflicts in Syria and Yemen have caused untold suffering. Ireland has responded generously to these crises with almost €100 million in humanitarian aid but what the people of Syria and Yemen need most now is peace, to enable them to rebuild their lives. I urge all sides to the two conflicts to work for an end to violence, to engage in the search for peaceful political solutions under UN auspices and for accountability for crimes committed.”
Financing: “The scale and severity of humanitarian crises is one of the greatest challenges facing the international community. Ireland is committed to providing humanitarian assistance and contributing to international efforts to ease the plight of civilians caught in conflicts in South Sudan, Syria, Yemen and Iraq to name but a few. As these large-scale crises dominate the headlines, Ireland is conscious of the many 'forgotten' and underfunded crises and the need to maintain a focus on ensuring that human suffering, wherever in the world it occurs, is not ignored.”
Israel/Palestine: “Ireland is committed to constructive and principled diplomatic action on the Middle East Peace Process. [...] Palestinians need an end to occupation, and Israelis need security. Continued construction of settlements undelÿmines the prospects for both. [...] Ireland is prepared to give all the support we can to achieving a Two State Solution.”