UN 'ignored arms sanctions', committee told
The UN was not monitoring several arms embargoes against conflict zones when Ireland joined the Security Council in 2001, it was claimed today.
A senior UN official at the Foreign Affairs Department told an Oireachtas Committee today that it was ’shocking’ that the sanctions were not properly supervised.
The Department’s UN director John Deady said: “When we went on the Security Council in 2001 it was certainly shocking to me as a member of the delegation to find out that while there were several embargo regimes in place, complete with committees and chairmen to oversee them, in fact most of them were not overseen and most of these committees were inoperative effectively and the embargoes were not monitored.”
Foreign Affairs Committee chairman Michael Woods earlier claimed that small arms were the biggest killers in the Third World.
He added: “They are an immediate threat to many populations and are of far greater magnitude than weapons of mass destruction in practice.
“Many UN states have large industries that supply these weapons to conflict zones. “Other member states regard the right to carry arms as a core value.
He asked: “Does the political will exist to really do something to reduce the flow of these weapons to conflicts?”
Mr Deady said Ireland was proactive during its two-year Security Council term in effectively monitoring arms sanctions against Angola.
Committee members held a general discussion on the sweeping reforms to the UN proposed by Secretary General Kofi Annan.
Mr Deady pointed out that Mr Annan’s reforms proposed that legally-binding international controls regulate the stock-piling and supply of illicit small arms.
Speaking on general issues, Senator Pascal Mooney said the UN currently suffered from credibility and organisational problems.
He added that the US saw the UN as irrelevant and as a stumbling block in its “crusade to bring global democracy to the world.”
