A central element of Ireland's foreign policy has been the promotion of an effective multilateral system and the strengthening of the rules-based international order, with the United Nations at its centre.
The Government believes that it is essential that the member states of the United Nations take action to enhance the effectiveness and the legitimacy of the United Nations, and is committed to ensuring that the UN is endowed with the means necessary to confront today's global threats and challenges. Promoting this reform was a priority of the European Union during Ireland's Presidency in the first half of 2004.
The Taoiseach told the UN General Assembly in 2003 that the UN, to be effective, requires the support of all its members, who must respect its decisions and, if necessary, act to ensure that they are respected. To be fully legitimate, it must be seen to work in the interests of the entire international community.
The Government believes that the Security Council should be reformed to make it more reflective of today's world; its legitimacy, and therefore its effectiveness, would be thereby enhanced. We have been active, including in concert with EU partners, in working to ensure that the General Assembly is also reformed so that important issues are not, as Secretary General Annan put it in 2003, crowded out by repetitive and sterile debates. Progress has been made since then in streamlining the assembly's agenda and its procedures, to bring about a more efficient and less repetitive approach to its work.
Along with its partners in the EU, Ireland has also actively supported Secretary General Annan's efforts to bring about change in the management of the United Nations, including by making the organisation and its secretariat more responsive and effective in fulfilling its purposes and in meeting the needs of the international community.
The High-Level Panel on Threats, Challenges and Change was established in November 2003 by Secretary General Annan to examine how best collective action can meet current and future threats to peace and security. Specifically, the panel was tasked with analysing current and future challenges to international peace and security and assessing how best collective action can meet these challenges. It was asked to recommend changes necessary to ensure effective collective action, including but not limited to a review of the principal organs of the United Nations.
The panel's report was issued on 2 December. In publicly welcoming it, I said that it made a compelling case for the multilateral system as the best way for all states, working together, to confront threats and challenges to security and development in today's world.
From Ireland's perspective, the report contains two critically important elements. First, it makes the case — convincingly — for a new, more comprehensive approach to security, making it clear that effective collective security demands that we address poverty, disease and underdevelopment as well as terrorism and weapons of mass destruction. This reflects the central premise of the EU's contribution to the work of the panel — co-ordinated during the Irish Presidency — that there can be no hierarchy of threats.
Second, the report makes a number of specific recommendations for the prevention of threats, including terrorism, poverty, internal conflict and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, as well as on the institutional reform of the UN. Many of these are sound and constructive, and worthy of support. A particular emphasis of the panel which I strongly endorse is the need for sustained multilateral support for peace-building in countries emerging from conflict and at risk of sliding back into conflict.
I welcome the report's affirmation of the responsibility to act to prevent gross violations of human rights in states in which the authorities prove unable or unwilling to fulfil these responsibilities themselves. I also welcome the impetus the report has given to reform of UN institutions, including the Security Council and the General Assembly, as well as the proposal for the establishment of a peace building commission.
As regards Security Council reform, which is likely to be a major area of discussion ahead of the September summit, I wish to see a practical and effective outcome that would broaden the representation on the council, including from the developing world. I also wish to emphasise that the maintenance of international peace and security is a shared responsibility. We will therefore make it clear to the UN Secretary General, and to our international partners, that smaller countries, especially those like Ireland that provide strong support to the UN politically, financially and militarily, must continue to have the opportunity to serve on the Security Council at appropriate intervals.
The task now is to work with Secretary General Annan to prepare effectively for next September's summit which, along with reviewing the implementation of the Millennium Summit Declaration and examining progress in achieving the Millennium Development Goals, will also seek agreement on reforms, including institutional reforms, to improve the functioning and effectiveness of the UN system. The next critical stage of preparation is the report that Secretary General Annan will himself issue at the end of March which will contain some core proposals to act as a basis for a balanced outcome in September.
I am conscious of the deep support that exists in Irish civil society, and among the Irish public generally, for the role of the United Nations in the maintenance of international peace and security. This is reflected in, among other things, strong support for the participation of the Defence Forces and the Garda Síochána in international peace-keeping and for Ireland's work at the UN in support of development, human rights and disarmament.
Given the widespread interest in the current debate on the role and future of the UN, I expect considerable public interest in the progress of discussion in the run-up to the September summit. In view of the importance attached in Ireland to the United Nations, I am fully prepared to engage with the Oireachtas and with the public on the various issues that will arise in the course of this discussion.
