President criticises ‘ever-decreasing respect for international law’

By Cillian Sherlock, PA

An “ever-decreasing respect for international law” must be addressed by the United Nations, the President has said.

Michael D Higgins said it was as if the world has become so desensitised to a daily loss of life, that it had “descended into a ivity” around international law.

He said: “Indeed, the prospects as to whether international law can survive, and any of the institutions associated with it, means that the forthcoming United Nations meeting in New York is by any standard a crisis meeting.

“The domination in the discourse, both internationally and regionally, by the politics of fear and by the definition of power as capacity to access weapons of destruction is another indication of the crisis we face.”

The UN is to hold a high-level week of engagements on global conflicts and other crises at the end of September.

Without explicitly referencing the war in Gaza, Mr Higgins echoed the words of Palestinian-American poet Hala Alyan where she said: “We must not believe for a second that relentless dehumanisation is only the problem of the dehumanised.

“They pay the unimaginable cost, but it is a multidirectional phenomenon. What oppressive systems don’t realise is that to engage in dehumanisation – in thought, in speech, in action, in policy – is a slow and isolating exercise in the siphoning of your own humanity.”

Mr Higgins made the comments for World Humanitarian Day on Monday.

The President said releasing a statement to mark the occasion was “extremely challenging”, adding: “In almost every aspect of our shared lives, there is less and less space for a discussion as to how we might reduce what are ever-increasing humanitarian disasters.”

Mr Higgins added: “However difficult, we must all remain positive and seek to encourage hope.”

He said the search for peace, climate action and Brazilian president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva’s global campaign to end hunger and poverty were sources of hope.

Mr Higgins also said the world cannot continue to ignore the debt burden “hanging around the necks of the poorest in the world”.

He added: “Overcoming these crises, and building a world based on humanitarian values, is a task which must now be addressed with the utmost urgency by all countries and by all of our international institutions.”