Sir, - The transfer of Slobodan Milosevic to the War Crimes Tribunal at The Hague is a momentous landmark in the global community's efforts to put in place an enforceable system of international justice.
Coincidentally, the assignment in the same week of Maureen Harding Clark to the tribunal represents a most welcome signal that Ireland is now taking its responsibilities seriously under the terms of the UN Convention on Genocide - exactly 25 years after ratifying it.
Having faced up to its co-responsibility for the punishment of those found guilty of genocide, Ireland must also acknowledge its responsibilities in the prevention of genocide.
The convention is quite explicit in its opening Article 1: "The contracting parties confirm that genocide, whether committed in time of peace or in time of war, is a crime under international law which they undertake to prevent and to punish." Three important points follow from this: Ireland as a "contracting party" is mandated to prevent as well as to punish genocide; genocide is an international crime, even where it is confined within the territory of the offending state; therefore preventive action is mandated even without any violation of international boundaries.
The recent Nice Treaty debate contributed yet again to the confusion surrounding Ireland's obligations in this regard by maintaining the false equation between "neutrality" and "demilitarisation". A cursory reading of both the Genocide Convention and the UN Charter makes clear the obligations on all member - states to ensure the conditions necessary for international peace - including, where necessary, its enforcement. Should there be any doubt about our obligations regarding peace enforcement, Chapter 7 of the charter deals exclusively with this issue, setting out the terms whereby enforcement action may be carried out "to maintain or restore international peace and security". It is also obvious from this that the popular equation of "neutrality" with "peacekeeping" is a highly distorted interpretation of the charter.
Ireland's membership of either Partnership for Peace or the Rapid Reaction Force continues to draw the ire of the "anti-militarists". Chapter 8 of the UN Charter is devoted in its entirety to the conditions whereby "regional arrangements" may act as a proxy for the UN in support of a mandate "to maintain or restore international peace and security" - including enforcement action.
Probably the two greatest failures of the international community in recent years - the destruction of Bosnia and of Rwanda - both directly arose from a failure to make use of the appropriate instruments of the UN Charter and to fulfil the obligations imposed by the Genocide Convention. And in both cases the failure was two-fold: no intervention to protect the victim populations, nor any military assistance to indigenous forces resisting the genocides.
It is difficult to see how "demilitarisation" can be reconciled with any position of support for the UN Charter or for the Genocide Convention. - Yours, etc.,
Peter Walsh, Valerie Hughes, Kosova Ireland Solidarity, Upper Camden Street, Dublin 2.