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UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon visits Ireland
Stories, 7 July 2009
DUBLIN, Ireland, July 7 (UNHCR) – The UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon today visited Ireland and earlier made an address at Dublin Castle lauding Ireland’s role in UN peacekeeping and its support for the Peacebuilding Commission.
Over 500 Irish soldiers and police are currently taking part in seven of the 16 UN peace missions around the world involving some 115,000 UN peace-keepers.
Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon spoke of the difficulty of generating support for much needed missions and cited the difficulty of acquiring helicopters for the UN’s current mission in Chad as an example.
He also welcomed Ireland’s commitment to reaching 0.7 per cent GNP contributions to development.
UNHCR Ireland
He said he is exploring with the Security Council a new horizon for UN peacekeeping, one that will introduce a more efficient and effective peacekeeping operations.
He foresaw that UN peacekeeping will work more with regional structures such as the European Union and the African Union in the areas of crisis management and rapid response, citing EULEX and UNMIK as an example.
Secretary General Ban Ki-moon also wishes to revamp the area of peacekeeping, including incorporating recommendations of the Brahimi report on peacekeeping, conducted over a decade ago.
Stressing the fact that these are times of trial, the UN Secretary General said the world was being hit by multiple simultaneous crises.
He also welcomed Ireland’s commitment to reaching 0.7 per cent GNP contributions to development.