EUROPE'S response to events in central Africa must go beyond the "CNN soundbite phase of the crisis", the President, Mrs Robinson, said yesterday. Opening the joint Oxfam/Concern conference in Dublin, Mrs Robinson said the EU had a huge responsibility towards developing countries.
The provision of human security for returning Rwandans was not just about economic security and the protection of them from violence but about securing fundamental human rights and stable political structures, she said.
Mr Julius Nyerere, the former president of Tanzania, also addressed the conference, entitled "A Global Foreign Policy For Europe: Implications For Developing Countries".
Mrs Robinson said the presidency of the EU at the time of the catastrophes in the Great Lakes region of Africa was an opportunity for Ireland to provide leadership in Europe in its response. The EU had a role to play in seeking to ensure a solution came from within Africa.
Europe's participation in global security had changed in a way that was directly relevant to the conference's theme.
"At the time of the Cold War it used to mean the balance of power, focusing on the concepts of borders, sometimes overshadowing the needs of people living in those border countries," Mrs Robinson said.
"We need a more far reaching concept of security, one that reflects the needs of people rather than abstract ideas. It increasingly means addressing, with new energy and determination, shared global problems that affect people everywhere."
She added: "The way in which we look at this crisis must go beyond the CNN soundbite phase of the crises. For example, the return of a very large number of refugees to Rwanda is not the end of the problem. For those who are there it is by no means the end."
Mark Brennock, Foreign Affairs Correspondent of The Irish Times, spoke about the humanitarian response to the political and military crisis in the former Yugoslavia.
Over four years the EU had been unable to agree on resolute action to help end the war and stop a genocide. Instead, its member states, notably Britain, France and Germany, had pursued their own national policies based on their perceived national self interest. What was needed above all was a demonstration from Europe of iron will and common purpose.
Instead, the aggressors learned they could behave with impunity, and the threats, warnings and finger wagging of the international community and Europe in particular would not be followed by resolute action.
"The result was over 200,000 dead, a major transatlantic rift, divisions between European allies, criticism from the Muslim world and attempts to forge a common foreign policy in tatters," Mr Brennock said.
"Perhaps most damagingly, it sent a message to the Benjamin Netanyahus, the Zaireans and Rwandans, and anyone else the EU is trying to influence.
"In the political and moral sense, Bosnia ranks as the great European failure. Of course, we need only look at Rwanda to see that it was not the most awful war. But comparative body counts are not the point. We allowed a group of extreme Serb nationalists to dismember an EU recognised state less than an hour by plane from Vienna.
"A multi ethnic and civilised place where minarets and steeples lived side by side was taken apart. Sure, it had its ethnic antipathies barely beneath the surface. But it worked.
"Now the EU is the single greatest donor to Bosnian reconstruction. It is a pity that it did not help prevent Bosnia's destruction in the first place."