ADDRESS BY THE PRESIDENT OF IRELAND, MARY McALEESE TO THE INSTITUTE OF DIPLOMACY AND FOREIGN
ADDRESS BY THE PRESIDENT OF IRELAND, MARY McALEESE TO THE INSTITUTE OF DIPLOMACY AND FOREIGN RELATIONS, KUALA LUMPUR
Foreign Minister of Malaysia, Dato’ Seri Syed Hamid Albar
Director of the Institute of Diplomacy and Foreign Relations, Dato’ Dr Mohamed Yusof bin Ahmad.
Distinguished Guests, Ladies and Gentlemen
On the occasion of the first Irish State Visit to this country, I am delighted to have an opportunity to reflect on the challenges facing countries like Ireland and Malaysia against the backdrop of a complex and uncertain global situation. In the face of growing worries about unilateralism and an all-too-prevalent scepticism about the prospects for international understanding, nations like ours have a greater need than ever before to address today’s key global issues with intelligence and determination. Moreover, I believe we retain a capacity to make a positive difference by means of judicious actions within the international system.
I am very grateful to the Institute of Diplomacy and Foreign Relations, and to its Director Dato’ Mohamad Yusof, for taking on the task of arranging this afternoon’s session and for enabling me to meet with such a distinguished gathering of academics, diplomats, commentators, students of international relations, friends of Ireland and members of Kuala Lumpur’s Irish community. I wish to extend a warm word of thanks to the Foreign Minister, Dato’ Seri Syed Hamid Albar, for his kind introductory remarks and for graciously consenting to act as moderator for this afternoon’s proceedings.
Throughout history, geographical position has tended to be the determining factor in shaping a country’s external relationships. This inevitably curtailed historical ties between our two countries. Ireland never had any overseas colonial possessions and indeed, on account of our history, we Irish have a degree of shared experience with, and an instinctive sympathy for, the concerns of developing countries. Nevertheless, down through the years many Irish people found their way to Malaysia as a by-product of European involvement in this part of the world and made positive contributions here.
Malaysia’s position astride one of the world’s great maritime trade routes ensured that this country has imported a rich mosaic of influences from various parts of this region and beyond. It deserves credit for having risen to the challenge of diversity and having fashioned a successful and peaceful multi-racial, multi-religious and multi-linguistic nation.
In Ireland’s case, our island location adjacent to Britain and continental Europe helped shape our destiny. The existence of a worldwide Irish family, a legacy of generations of emigration, is a great asset, providing us with many friends around the world, particularly in the United States. Since 1973, membership of the European Union has enabled our people to tap dormant potential and transform ourselves into a prosperous, fully-fledged first world country, while retaining vivid memories of a less-fortunate past. We are today, a highly successful first world economy but with a reasonably recent third world memory to keep us humble.
Parallel transformations of the Irish and Malaysian economies have occurred in recent decades. Enhanced flows of trade and investment in high technology industries have been an engine of growth and prosperity for us. The expansion of our ties in trade and investment, coupled with a deepening inter-regional dialogue between the EU and ASEAN and within ASEM, in which we both participate, have ushered in a new and intensive phase in Irish-Malaysian relations.
A New Era in World Affairs
There is now an inescapable impression that we have entered a new era of world history shaped in large measure by powerful economic forces unleashed by the process of globalisation. The ideological divisions of the Cold War have been replaced by a more complex scenario in which new threats, such as those posed by terrorism, endanger human well being and call for a concerted response from the international community. While the international environment remains in flux, some key priorities can be discerned. I wish to dwell on three of the main challenges that need to be addressed - those of peace; greater understanding; and justice and equality.
Looking at the world around us, it would be all too easy to succumb to the counsel of despair. In a world scarred by conflict and gross inequalities, lofty principles of international cooperation can sound terribly hollow. The seeming inadequacy of the international community in the face of conflict is often viewed as absolute proof of the powerlessness of countries like ours and the redundancy of those aspirations embedded in the UN Charter.
In conflict situations, the interests of quiet majorities are commonly trampled on by those willing to resort to violence. It seems to me that it is part of the mission of countries like ours to help resist the supposed realpolitik of ‘might is right’ and seek with all the vigour, wisdom and intelligence at our command to advance the indispensable tenets of international cooperation and the rule of law.
When we look at the contemporary scene, we see a set of bewildering contrasts. We have an information revolution that is steadily extending its reach and connecting the world and its people like never before. Anyone with access to a computer can now plug in to a vast expanse of knowledge and information from every corner of the world, and on every conceivable subject. Yet, in the midst of all this knowledge, there is much intolerance and an abject lack of understanding between nations, races and cultures, sometimes even between the closest of neighbours. There is now a digital divide to add to the other divisions that pigeonhole humanity and undermine our true potential.
When we look around us, we see evidence of a level of technological advancement with which it is difficult to keep pace. In every field of human knowledge, dramatic strides are being made, but in the midst of this scientific sophistication, the elemental problems of hunger, deprivation and disease proliferate in the more disadvantaged parts of the world. While advances in biotechnology promise to conquer a range of diseases for those who can pay, elsewhere in the world such older menaces as TB and malaria persist alongside the cruel scourge of HIV/AIDS. This is now most horribly prevalent in those countries that can least afford to deal with its effects and it is too often met with a wall of indifference or sheer neglect.
The challenge of peace
The fragile absence of major conflicts with potential global reach disguises the reality of a world in which destructive conflicts surface with sad regularity and linger on with dogged persistence. The continued existence of nuclear weapons, and the ever-present danger of their spread, poses a special ongoing challenge.
As one of the architects of the Non-Proliferation Treaty in the early 1960’s, Ireland has a record of principled opposition to nuclear weapons. The non-proliferation regime is by no means perfect, but it has acted as a break on the unbridled extension of nuclear capacity. As part of the New Agenda Coalition, we have sought, alongside like-minded countries, and with very welcome support from Malaysia at the UN, to exert pressure on States with nuclear weapons to commit themselves to their ultimate elimination. This commitment was eventually made during the review of the NPT in the year 2000. No one would suggest that this commitment will translate speedily and automatically into the achievement of a nuclear-free world. However, our experience in this area, and in relation to the Mine Ban Convention, does demonstrate that smaller countries can have a positive impact. We can help shape the debate on key issues by means of patient, cogent diplomatic endeavour.
There are those who are quick to deride the United Nations and to highlight its failings, but we in Ireland insist on its enduring centrality in world affairs. We see the UN Security Council as having the primary responsibility for the maintenance of international peace and security. As a result, we derive particular satisfaction from the role we have been able to play, at a tense time in international relations, during our current term as members of the Security Council. We were elected to the Council in the year 2000 with the votes of a significant majority of UN members, including Malaysia, who understood that Ireland would vindicate the integrity of the UN and stand up for proper principles of international order and justice.
Peacekeeping has always been at the heart of Ireland’s contribution to the United Nations. Since 1955, Ireland has supplied 48,000 personnel to UN peacekeeping and today participates in 11 of the UN’s 15 active missions. Over the years, in 13 separate peacekeeping missions in places as far afield as the Congo, Cambodia and Yugoslavia, Irish soldiers and police have served alongside Malaysian contingents in a shared effort to preserve peace in fragile, often dangerous, conflict situations.
The UN has had its catalogue of achievements and failures. However, when we dwell on failures in Rwanda, Bosnia and Somalia, we should also count the success stories. The latest of these is the delivery of peace and hope to East Timor by a UN force with significant Irish and Malaysian involvement. We should remember also the many unheralded operations where the UN does vital preventive work. The response of the international community to the reconstruction of Afghanistan is another omen of hope in an often bleak international environment.
The UN, of course, is not a free-floating superhuman institution but the sum of its parts. Each country has an obligation to help enhance the UN’s capacities. Smaller nations like ours have an abiding interest in avoiding recourse to force in international relations. We need to specialise in conflict prevention and crisis management so as to uphold all that is best in the human condition and help contain its more negative elements.
Probably the most disturbing area of current conflict is in the Middle East and the tragic plight of the Palestinian people. It is sometimes maintained that it is only the Islamic World that shares the pain of the Palestinians, but this is not the case. All over Europe, there is very considerable support for the right of the Palestinian people to have their own independent State. In Ireland, we feel a natural affinity with those who yearn for national freedom.
The tragedy is that the contours of a solution are quite clear. Both the Palestinians and the Israelis have an obvious right to live within their own sovereign States which, it is to be hoped, will eventually learn to live in peace as neighbours. In common with our EU partners, Ireland seeks to play an active role in the search for a solution. The European Union continues to provide the lion’s share of much-needed economic assistance to the Palestinian people.
Membership of the European Union has given Ireland a greater capacity for international activity in support of those principles and values which we hold dear. The EU is developing its Common Security and Defence policy with a strong emphasis on peacekeeping and humanitarian intervention. Moreover, the Union and its Member States provide 55% of total international development assistance, part of the caring value system at the heart of a Union crafted miraculously by old enemies who were determined that never again would there be the cruel waste of war.
In Ireland, we have our own experience of coping with conflict stemming the divided allegiances that exist in Northern Ireland. One of the main lessons from the Irish peace process is the primacy of efforts to end violence. The declaration of paramilitary cease-fires in 1994 was an enabling condition for the train of events that led to the Good Friday Agreement of 1998. That agreement has created an interlocking set of political institutions. Among these, the North-South Ministerial Council facilitates improved relations within the island of Ireland while the Northern Ireland Executive and Assembly enable the two communities to have a share in the governance of Northern Ireland without abandoning their fundamental political aspirations. The existence of the Agreement, and its acceptance by the people of Ireland, North and South, gives no guarantee of harmony and genuine reconciliation. This is something that will have to be worked for, perhaps taking many years. Damaging inter-community tensions persist, but there is now an agreed political framework for a better future. There is an ongoing challenge to political leaders to demonstrate the value of democratic solutions and its superiority to the discredited alternatives. Today there is thankfully, considerable evidence that peace is taking root, that partnership is working in Northern Ireland. In the story of my own fraught birthplace perhaps lies a message of hope for other places of conflict in our world.
The Challenge of Understanding
Nations have always had a tendency to misread each other, resorting to crude stereotypes. Historically, the attitudes of former Imperial powers to their colonial possessions is a case in point. It has never been easy for countries to appreciate the values and virtues of distant cultures and there are plenty of examples even in Ireland of cultures living side by side in woeful ignorance and fear of one another. In the wake of the tragic events of September last year, the challenge of international understanding is now graver than ever. There is a widespread belief that an alarming chasm of distrust has arisen.
There are those who relish this prospect, but they must not be permitted to dilute our common humanity. As our Irish poet, William Butler Yeats wrote, they have
Fed the heart on fantasies,
The heart’s grown brutal from the fare;
More substance in our enmities
Than in our love.
Atavistic fantasies about unbridgeable divides should not go unchecked. Irresponsible individuals and groups must not succeed in exploiting genuine religious sentiment, which is one of humanity’s proudest common possessions, as a mask, a cynical pretext for cruel intentions.
Violence of the kind we saw on the 11th of September last year poses the greatest possible threat to the spread of better understanding between peoples. The fear bred by terrorist activity is inimical to a more dispassionate understanding of the many things that unite us, and of the relatively insignificant ways in which we differ. Acts of violence against innocent civilians generate emotional responses which undermine reasoned argument. We ought to stop thinking of countries in terms of their religious identities and judge their performance by a universal yardstick.
Each nation has its own characteristics, born of unique circumstances and experience. For example, Ireland’s profile defies simplistic classifications. We are a developed economy, but, as I often have cause to emphasise, we have ‘a third world memory’. We are members of the European Union, but are militarily neutral. Ours is an advanced society, but where traditional values are strong. Our population is mainly Catholic, but we pride ourselves on our tolerance and openness to other religions and cultures. In central Dublin, for example, we treasure one of the finest collections of Islamic manuscripts anywhere in the world.
In meeting the challenge of international understanding, we can begin in our own societies by making it a priority to foster tolerance. Our education systems can contribute by inculcating a spirit of curiosity about others. Our homes can become crucibles of open-mindedness instead of recruitment centres for bigotry. We have opportunities within the regional organisations to which we belong, to promote a climate of tolerance in which differences are seen as something to be cherished and managed respectfully and not as a threat. The European Union and ASEAN have both succeeded in transcending erstwhile rivalries and spanning seemingly unbridgeable divides of history, language and religion.
The recent 4th Asia Europe Meeting included a dialogue on cultures and civilizations. ASEM is well suited for such dialogue given the diversity of its participants and their shared commitment to building enhanced understanding between Asia and Europe. The idea of ASEM as a model for inter‑regional dialogue aimed at avoiding racial, religious and other misconceptions is an appealing one, especially in the wake of the events of September last.
I know that Malaysia has been an active, articulate exponent of Islamic values in the modern world. Malaysia’s coming Chairmanship of the OIC and of the Non-Aligned Movement offers positive scope at a sensitive time in international affairs. Ireland will have a similar opportunity as President of the European Union in 2004, a time when the Union is poised for further enlargement with the planned entry of countries from Central and Eastern Europe and the Mediterranean. This will seal the healing of divisions and misunderstandings that plagued Europe throughout the period of the Cold War. It will be a time of homecoming and the beginning of a great new adventure in European history.
The Challenge of Justice and Equality
No country can flourish without a fair system of justice and a mission to promote greater social equality. So too is there an imperative to create a fairer and more just international system so that the vulnerable can be more adequately protected.
Ireland’s foreign policy is tuned to the international pursuit of human rights and fundamental freedoms, which we regard as an inalienable right of each and every person on this planet. For us, human rights are not a Eurocentric concept imposing alien values on others. We have a genuine belief in the universality of these rights which are part of the legacy of the world’s great religions with their strict emphasis on the sanctity of human life and the central place of the individual in a divine order. It is a key part of the challenge facing the international community to vindicate and protect them.
Respect for human rights must be integrated into all aspects of international relations. The entry into force of the Rome Statute establishing the International Court offers the prospect that those who perpetrate crimes against humanity will be brought to justice. The Court also provides succour for victims of violence that their plight will no longer be ignored by the international community. It is our hope that the Rome Statute will go on to secure universal support, for the international community is strongest when it stands united behind the strength of the rule of law.
There is a huge challenge involved in tackling the inequalities that condemn more than 1.2 billion people to a perennially grim struggle for survival. Our world will never be at peace with itself for as long as so many human beings are deprived of the opportunities for fulfilment now available so widely in developed societies like ours.
The international community’s development targets are feasible and attainable. By the year 2015, we ought to be able to halve the numbers living in extreme poverty; to provide universal education at primary level; to substantially reduce infant and child mortality and to ensure access to primary health care. These aims are not beyond the capacity of a world with such resources as ours. What is required is a concerted effort by all concerned. In Ireland, we are determined to play a full part in this essential effort at releasing this massive flow of human potential, stopping the waste, stopping the needless pain of endemic poverty. Our world will never ever realise its full potential until that job is accomplished.
We dare not permit the promise of a better world to fail by default on our part. The better, fairer world we seek will not be easily secured. It will always be vulnerable to greed, corruption, evil and bitterness, to the things which diminish us humanly and which fester into threats to international order. My hope is that at this time of heightened awareness we can promote a new realisable idealism within the international system and that the egalitarian passions that drove forward the process of national self-determination during the 20th century will translate into a drive for a functional rather than a dysfunctional global family supported by a robust web of comfortable communications, shared values and supporting institutions through which dialogue and relentless persuasion become the tools of the peace-makers.
I want to conclude by again quoting some lines from the poet W.B. Yeats. Writing in the early 1920’s, he recorded his gloomy impressions of a crisis-ridden world in which civilisation seemed on the verge of collapse. He observed that:
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
Looking at the evidence of the world around him, he concluded that
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
There have been many times in recent decades when these words have seemed appallingly accurate: - during the slaughter in Rwanda or the ethnic cleansing in Bosnia. Yeats’s descriptions could easily be applied to the perpetrators of the outrage of the 11th of September last year when hopes for a better world were dimmed, but not extinguished. It behoves nations like ours to do all in our power to ensure that, despite all the difficulties we encounter, things do not fall apart in the international arena; that the centre ground represented by the United Nations with its noble, achievable Millennium goals, holds firm and extends its remit; that the innocent are effectively protected; and that those anarchic tendencies that undoubtedly exist in our world, are held firmly in check. This is a necessary, unavoidable agenda for the 21st century. It needs champions. Ireland and Malaysia are both called to be such champions.
Thank you.