How Ireland will vote at the UN on Iraq will say a lot about our rhetoric on human rights, writes Seán Love
For the first time in recent history, a major power, the United State, is articulating a doctrine of preventive and possibly unilateral recourse to military means to deal with alleged weapons threats, and to overthrow an existing government.
The role of the United Nations in dealing with the crisis over Iraq has been questioned in a manner that could have serious implications for the role of the international organisation in other areas, including human rights. The UN Security Council is under heavy pressure to either act according to the view of the US or be by-passed by it.
While security and geopolitical arguments have featured prominently in support of the use of force, human rights considerations - including quoting Amnesty International reports of human rights violations in Iraq - have also been advanced by the American and British governments to justify forceful action against Iraq.
However, the mention of human rights in the debate has been selective and manipulative, with little consideration given to the human rights repercussions of military action. This selective attention to human rights is nothing but a cold and calculated manipulation of the work of human rights activists.
These same American and British governments who now quote Amnesty International turned a blind eye to Amnesty's reports of widespread human rights violations in Iraq before the Gulf War. They remained silent when thousands of unarmed Kurdish civilians were killed in Halabja in 1988.
Not only have the people of Iraq continued to suffer at the hands of their government - through torture, extrajudicial execution, "disappearances", arbitrary detention and unfair trial - they have also borne the brunt of the UN sanctions against Saddam's regime since 1990.
Sanctions have jeopardised the right to food, health and education and, in many cases, life of hundreds of thousands of individuals, many of them children.
Civilians, as Mary Robinson reminded us, look to the UN to help them.
As the Government here and the rest of the Security Council members deliberate on the use and timing of military force, they must consider not only the security and political consequences of the action, but also the inevitable human rights and humanitarian toll of war: civilians who will be killed by bombing or internal fighting, children who will die because sanctions make access to basic necessities and humanitarian assistance even harder.
Last November, the Minister for Foreign Affairs, Brian Cowen, assured the Oireachtas: "We have been active with fellow members of the Council at a number of levels in urging flexibility." Ireland's Ambassador to the UN Security Council, Richard Ryan, confirmed: "Ireland's approach to all issues before the UN Security Council is informed by our commitment to the protection and promotion of human rights."
Amnesty International welcomes these principles being declared so clearly, and recognises that now is a key opportunity for Ireland to make a crucial intervention.
Concern for the lives and security of the ordinary Iraqi people is sorely missing from the international debate, not to mention the knock-on effects on the human rights of the people of neighbouring countries.
As the keeper of international peace and security, the Security Council has responsibility under the UN Charter to seek a solution through peaceful means first, a fact the Government acknowledges in its formal declarations.
Yet while the Government several times underlined the importance of human rights protection during the Dáil debate on Iraq last Wednesday, the most recent Irish contribution to the UN debate on Iraq made no direct reference to human rights.
WORRYINGLY too, the Government's speech to the UN on October 17th denied the international community was culpable for the harsh bite of sanctions, declaring: "The blame for this suffering rests primarily with the government of Iraq."
Claims that the Iraqi government is deliberately manipulating the sanctions regime for propaganda do not absolve the UN Security Council from its share of the responsibility for failing to heed the calls to lift all sanctions' provisions that result in grave violations of the rights of the Iraqi population.
As the UN Panel on Humanitarian Issues said about sanctions in 1999: "The gravity of the human rights situation of the Iraqi people is indisputable and cannot be overstated. Irrespective of alleged attempts by the Iraqi authorities to exaggerate the significance of certain facts for political propaganda purposes, the data from different sources as well as qualitative assessments of bona fide observers and sheer common sense analysis of economic variables converge and corroborate this evaluation . . ."
In fact the main UN humanitarian co-ordinators in Iraq, Denis Halliday and Hans Von Sponeck, both resigned their positions in protest at the appalling impact of sanctions on civilians.
Ireland has two more months on the Security Council. It is one of the 10 elected member-states who, with the five permanent members, will shortly vote on war. A majority of nine is required. Ireland might not hold such an unusually powerful, potentially decisive position for another generation.
Ireland must use its influence while it can to remind the Security Council's most powerful member that force is the last resort, only to be applied in full compliance with international law. Have we really reached that point of imminent danger that leaves no other choice?
If the Security Council agrees with this doctrine of preventive strikes, will we see the emergence of international relations based upon power and might, and where will that leave human rights protection for the vulnerable and oppressed?
Ireland must not allow the heavyweight powers - be they the US, Russia, China or anyone else - to award themselves carte blanche to override half a century of consensus on international human rights standards and the need for multilateral solutions on global peace and security.
The hard question for Ireland will soon be asked, and unfortunately the answer is looking increasingly inevitable. How Ireland responds when that question is put to the Security Council will say a lot about our rhetoric on conflict resolution and human rights. The United Nations was created to preserve peace and promote human rights, not to encourage war.
• Seán Love is director of Amnesty International's Irish Section