President addresses former world leaders about global challenges

The changing nature of work, poverty, food insecurity and climate change are among the global challenges that require imagination and new human, ethical and political responses, President Michael D Higgins told a group of former world leaders at Áras an Uachtaráin on Tuesday.

Mr Higgins was addressing the InterAction Council, a high-level expert group established in 1983, which is holding its first plenary meeting in Ireland.

The aim of the international organisation, currently co-chaired by former taoiseach Bertie Ahern and former Nigerian president Olusegun Obasanjo, is to harness the experience and international contacts of leaders who have held the highest office in their own countries.

Among those also in attendance were former Canadian prime minister Jean Chrétien, former New Zealand prime minister James Bolger, former president of Colombia Andrés Pastrana, former president of Ukraine Viktor Yushchenko, former Russian prime minister Viktor Zubkov and secretary general of the council, Thomas Axworthy.

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Future of work

Addressing his guests, Mr Higgins said he was glad to learn that work and its future were among the themes examined in the council’s opening session on Tuesday.

A wide-ranging debate on the connections between market competition, social cohesion, ecology and work in conditions of change, globally, regionally and locally was “as necessary as it is pressing”.

“Our times are ones that invite us to revisit the definitions of work with which we have lived for decades, so as to celebrate work in all of its aspects and forms: producing and caring, work of the hand, work of the heart and work of the imagination, work within the market, and work outside it,” Mr Higgins said.

Redefining work went “far beyond saving the demand centre of our economies”.

The challenge posed by climate change was not just of a scientific or economic kind; it was above all else an ethical challenge, calling for a revolution in consciousness and modes of thinking, the President said.

Addressing the group, Mr Ahern told the President, a former colleague in government, that he admired him “greatly” and had always appreciated his “absolute commitment” to fighting for human rights and the improvement of civilisation.