YouSaid · the spoken record

Anderson

lines on the record
216
first
2009-10-05
most recent
2013-04-17
sittings or episodes
27
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un-security-council

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  1. “The mandate of each peacekeeping operation should elaborate, as fully as possible, who is to be protected and what level of protection is to be provided. The means to achieve that should be fully set out in the operational plans and other directive material. Peacekeeping missions seldom have sufficient resources to accomplish the protection task as they would wish. In almost all scenarios, but particularly where there is a need to protect civilians over a large area, air assets are critical. Their value is psychological and pre-emptive, as well as reactive. Where civilians are under threat, the belief that a force has the reach and combat power to react swiftly and decisively will be a considerable deterrent.”

    2009-11-11 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.6216Resumption1 (2009) · source

  2. “If we needed a further wake-up call, the joint study recently issued by the Department of Peacekeeping Operations and the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs provides it. The study's central finding is that the chain of events to support the protection of civilians - from the earliest planning to Security Council mandates to the implementation of mandates in the field - is broken. Two of the key issues are clarity of mandate and adequacy of resources. Mandates must be clear and specific. Inevitably, field commanders will face resource constraints and competing demands on the resources available, and will need to use their judgment on how best to deploy them to achieve maximum civilian protection. But guidance is required.”

    2009-11-11 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.6216Resumption1 (2009) · source

  3. “Ireland provided the leadership for EUFOR and we continue to have a strong presence in the United Nations Mission in the Central African Republic and Chad. As our personnel on the ground in those operations are acutely aware, it is only through the most thoroughly professional and impartial approach that the peacekeeping force can win the confidence of non-governmental organizations, and thus their assent to having peacekeepers help to protect them. Thirdly, with regard to strengthening United Nations peacekeeping, this issue has been addressed in almost every intervention today. As speaker after speaker has recognized, our task now is to bridge the gap between aspiration and reality.”

    2009-11-11 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.6216Resumption1 (2009) · source

  4. “The increased targeting of humanitarian workers is an affront to the United Nations most basic principles. More must be done, both to highlight and prioritize the issue and to strategize so as to arrest and reverse the trend. There is clearly no simple way to eliminate the threat. The approach will have to be multi-pronged, and any proposed steps must respect the need for humanitarian actors to maintain their neutrality and independence. Where United Nations peacekeepers are on the ground, their role in protecting humanitarian workers can be critical. The Secretary-General's report refers to the role played by the European Union Force (EUFOR) in Chad in preventing criminality against the humanitarian community.”

    2009-11-11 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.6216Resumption1 (2009) · source

  5. “The increase in attacks on humanitarian workers - with the recent targeted attack on United Nations aid workers in Kabul being a further grim example - is putting that lifeline at risk. The statistics are shocking. The incidence of kidnapping of humanitarian workers has increased by 350 per cent in the past three years. Last year marked the greatest number of humanitarian workers affected by violence in 12 years. We in Ireland have experienced at first hand the vulnerability of our international humanitarian workers. We were relieved by the recent release of Sharon Commins, a young Irish aid worker who was held captive with a Ugandan colleague in Darfur for some months. Efforts continue to secure the release of Father Michael Sinnott, on which we are working with the Philippine authorities.”

    2009-11-11 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.6216Resumption1 (2009) · source

  6. “Issues of protection of civilians can typically arise in a complex political context. We must be mindful of the complexity of the context but, at the same time, not be prepared to sacrifice or erode the principles of protection and accountability. That entails responsibilities both for those who frame resolutions and those who vote on them. The temptation to distort or to dilute the principles of protection must be avoided. Nor can we succumb to selectivity. Our concerns about specific situations gain legitimacy and respect insofar as we are prepared to insist that the same standards be applied universally. Secondly, with regard to safeguarding humanitarian access, such access is the lifeline linking humanitarian actors to civilians in conflict.”

    2009-11-11 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.6216Resumption1 (2009) · source

  7. “We are not short of high quality analysis. We need now to move from analysis to action. Today, I would wish to concentrate on four points, the first on enhancing accountability. The principles of enhancing compliance and accountability are ones that we believe need to be applied rigorously and consistently. We note what the Secretary-General's report has to say in that regard, both in general and in relation to the specific situations he mentions: Sri Lanka, Gaza and Afghanistan. We agree with his recommendations, including his stress on the need for consistent condemnation of violations of the law by all parties to conflict without exception. All of us are challenged by that. In the week following the General Assembly's debate on the Goldstone report (A/HRC/12/48), the challenge has been brought into particularly sharp relief.”

    2009-11-11 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.6216Resumption1 (2009) · source

  8. “But the Secretary-General, in his report of last May, tells it as it is: "[F]or all the reports, resolutions and actions of the last decade, the situation that confronts civilians in current conflicts is depressingly similar to that which prevailed in 1999." (5/2009/277, para. 23) The frustration of those at the coalface is clear. In the Security Council's last debate on the issue, Under- Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs Holmes reminded us that lip service to the principles of international law is no substitute for real action. The New Horizon document acknowledges the significant credibility challenge for United Nations peacekeeping that is created by the mismatch between expectations and capacity. Those same sentiments and frustrations were echoed in the opening interventions this morning.”

    2009-11-11 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.6216Resumption1 (2009) · source

  9. “I should like to express our thanks to Austria for organizing this timely debate. Ireland associates itself with the intervention made earlier by the representative of Sweden on behalf of the European Union. It is customary on these anniversary occasions to note the progress made, as well as to map the distance to be travelled. We would not wish to devalue the efforts or achievements made over the past 10 years. There have indeed been advances. For example, one area in which my country has been particularly active is in the adoption of the Convention on Cluster Munitions.”

    2009-11-11 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.6216Resumption1 (2009) · source

  10. “In Ireland Nuala O'Loan, a distinguished woman of wide and very relevant experience, has been appointed to the role of special envoy on women, peace and security. Perhaps that model could be of relevance elsewhere. None of us here is in any doubt about the scale of the challenge and the urgency of action. Next year's tenth anniversary of the adoption of resolution 1325 (2000) is an opportunity to be seized - not for another talkfest but to assess, strategize and commit. In the collective effort to prepare for and mark that anniversary, we look to the Security Council to continue to show leadership and determination.”

    2009-10-05 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.6196Resumption1 (2009) · source

  11. “A further effort to stimulate cross-regional discussion on implementing resolution 1325 (2000) was the hosting in Dublin earlier this year of the ministerial meeting of the Human Security Network. The Permanent Representative of Costa Rica described that initiative in his statement this morning, and I will not repeat what he has said. A final point is the importance of coordination. Within the United Nations system there should be a one-stop shop to offer guidance and advice to Member States in drawing up national plans. We suggest that the Inter-Agency Task Force on Women, Peace and Security be asked to identify such a focal point. At the national level, too, there is a role for focal points to provide drive and leadership.”

    2009-10-05 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.6196Resumption1 (2009) · source

  12. “As part of that process, we have embarked on a cross-learning initiative guided by the experiences of women and men in countries emerging from conflict. We are currently working in partnership with Liberia and Timor-Leste in a tripartite cross-learning exercise. Through that collaboration, our aim is to ensure the achievement of real and immediate change for women who have experienced conflict and who can and should be stakeholders in State-building and peacebuilding. A first cross-learning meeting was held in June 2009, a second is to be held in Timor-Leste this December and a third is proposed for Liberia in early 2010. A report on the process will be shared with the United Nations in advance of the tenth anniversary of resolution 1325 (2000).”

    2009-10-05 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.6196Resumption1 (2009) · source

  13. “The Secretary of State's experience captures a reality: so many commentators, analysts and opinion-formers do not truly rate the kind of discussion we are having today. The nod of political correctness is there, but not the conviction or prioritization that the issues deserve. Overall, the Secretary-General's report (S/2009/465) makes for sober reading. There are some bright spots, in particular on the training front, and all successes deserve recognition and commendation. But the statistics - to take just one example, only 2.4 per cent of signatories to peace agreements since 1992 have been women - tell their own story. In searching for practical ways forward, the Secretary-General's report rightly emphasizes the importance of national plans. Ireland is currently developing its own national action plan.”

    2009-10-05 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.6196Resumption1 (2009) · source

  14. “Men who have been in the front line of conflict feel they have earned the exclusive right to broker the peace. Women who are struggling to get hearth and home together after the fighting have other priorities. Implementing resolution 1325 (2000) therefore means climbing mountains. To get to first base camp, we need real, transformative and attitudinal change. I was struck by a comment made by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton at a breakfast meeting during the high-level segment of the General Assembly. Secretary Clinton said that she is repeatedly questioned by the United States media about why she is spending so much time on "secondary, soft" issues such as women in conflict. She has had to explain, she said, for the millionth time that those issues are not secondary but primary and that they are core foreign policy issues.”

    2009-10-05 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.6196Resumption1 (2009) · source

  15. “We included the following point: "A distribution of roles whereby men negotiate peace in Geneva while women devise aid programmes for victims is fundamentally unacceptable." That issue of roles and responsibilities remains central to our consideration today. It is imperative that the duality of women's situation - as both victims and actors - be fully recognized. Men have always inhabited those two spaces simultaneously - as victims and victors, waging the wars and authoring the peace. Women have largely been imprisoned in the victim role, as the collateral damage of war and, if present at all, a kind of add-on at the peace table. Resolution 1325 (2000), which has been on the books for nine years, is trying to overthrow the patterns of centuries. The story recurs again and again, with the fundamentals almost always the same.”

    2009-10-05 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.6196Resumption1 (2009) · source

  16. “Our warm thanks go to Viet Nam for organizing this debate. We associate ourselves with Sweden in its statement on behalf of the European Union (EU) this morning. I might begin with a personal recollection. Almost 17 years ago, in December 1992, I went to the former Yugoslavia as a member of the EU mission to investigate the rape of women during the Balkan conflict. The experience left a deep imprint on all who participated. It was the end of any illusion that barbarity is confined to faraway places. There, in the heart of Europe on the threshold of the twenty-first century, rape was once again an instrument of war. In an article written with a colleague after that mission, we discussed a number of aspects of what had happened.”

    2009-10-05 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.6196Resumption1 (2009) · source