Strengthened UN crucial for resolving global conflicts, Ireland tells Assembly

Ireland’s Foreign Minister has advocated strengthening United Nations efforts in the field of conflict prevention and resolution, as well as sharing lessons learned, as key factors to achieving peace in today’s strife-ridden world.

“Today, despite all our efforts, violence conflict remains all too common,” Dermot Ahern told the annual high-level debate of the General Assembly.

Urging nations to make use of the full array of instruments available to resolve conflict, he stressed that “in making peace, we must be as creative and determined as those who wage war.”

Mr. Ahern said it is vital to ensure that the UN Peacebuilding Commission – set up last year to help countries emerging from conflict consolidate their gains and not slide back into war – and the accompanying Peacebuilding Fund are organized and resourced to fulfil their important mandates.

He also urged continued support for UN peacekeeping operations, which are currently at an all-time high in terms of their size, scope and complexity, and for strengthening the Organization’s capacities for conflict prevention and resolution.

The sharing of experiences, particularly lessons learned, from enduring and complex conflicts such as that in Northern Ireland, could also prove useful, he noted.

While he did not believe the success of Northern Ireland, where an historic power-sharing accord has led to the resolution of a decades-long conflict, offers a “universally transferable formula,” its experience provides insights and lessons worth sharing.

“First, in the end, those who are part of the problem must be part of the solution – not because we approve of their actions or beliefs, but because without them it is all too easy for an agreement among others to be destroyed,” he stated.

Among the other lessons is the need for inclusive dialogue on the basis of clear and guaranteed principles, to take risks for peace and to address all issues comprehensively.

“Working with a strengthened UN and sharing lessons with one another, I passionately hope we can advance the day when political leaders from other regions of the world blighted by conflict can announce in this forum that peace has come to them too,” Mr. Ahern stated.