Opening Address at the Symposium on Disarmament and Non-Proliferation

Abstract

This symposium is an education initiative organised by the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, in association with the School of History, University College Cork, and the embassy of Japan in Ireland. It is very important to promote greater awareness of Ireland’s disarmament and non-proliferation policies, and a greater understanding of why we pursue them. This initiative offers us an opportunity to look not just at the historical perspectives of Ireland’s disarmament and non-proliferation efforts, but to look forward to our future objectives. Ireland has always attached a very high priority to promoting the international disarmament agenda. We were admitted to the United Nations in 1955 and, like many emerging small nations, Ireland has put a premium on a strong international rule of law based around the United Nations system. From the outset we committed ourselves to the goal of achieving a world free of nuclear weapons and other weapons of mass destruction, and to promoting disarmament and arms control more generally. These remain key foreign policy priorities for Ireland. Our early efforts on nuclear disarmament were motivated by the humanitarian imperative for removing these weapons entirely from global arsenals. We are extremely privileged to have the opportunity to hear Ms Setsuko Thurlow’s personal testimony of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima on the fateful morning of 6 August 1945. Her powerful testimony provides us with a unique perspective on the humanitarian impact of a nuclear weapon detonation and on what this actually means in terms of human suffering. The origins of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty are closely associated with Ireland’s efforts within the United Nations in the late 1950s, and successive Irish governments have been very conscious of that legacy. In October 1958 the