Ireland could be a role model for other developed countries if it delivers on overseas aid targets, the head of Amnesty International tells Kitty Holland.
The secretary general of Amnesty International, Ms Irene Khan, has described Ireland's failure to meet its overseas development aid target as "disappointing".
Ms Khan, who was in Dublin over the weekend to address a conference to mark World Human Rights Day, also criticised Ireland's record on violence against women.
The conference was hosted by the Minister of State for Overseas Development Aid and Human Rights, Mr Conor Lenihan. She told The Irish Times she hoped Ireland would meet its UN commitment to allocate 0.7 per cent of GNP to overseas development aid (ODA) by 2007.
In last month's Estimates the Government made clear, however, it would now reach a target of just 0.5 per cent of GNP for ODA. "I hope Ireland does meet its original target. A lot of human rights, particularly economic and social rights, are dependent on the availability of resources. I also hope the Irish Government meets its targets because when a country like Ireland meets commitments like that it provides a role model for other developed countries, like the United States, to take the same steps."
She said Ireland had been progressive in a number of areas. She referred to the Government's recent condemnation of the extension, for one year, of the house arrest of the Burmese human rights activist, Aung San Suu Kyi, as well as its efforts to work with international businesses on human rights and the role it can play in the EU as a counterweight to the US. "The United States has become more and more obsessed with security and has adopted a stance where human rights play second fiddle to security.
"And of course it can be seen across the world that human rights abuses do not provide greater security. If anything they repress freedom and encourage insurgency. Countries that have good human rights records are safer places, and it is important the EU drives that message to the US. Ireland has aimportant role to play there."
At the conference, Ms Khan spoke particularly about women's human rights and the "worst aspects of abuses of them".
On Wednesday Amnesty International is publishing a major international report on violence against women as a weapon of war. Lives Blown Apart, she said, would highlight the way in which women and girls are raped and mutilated, not as an inevitable, by-product of war, but in a systematic, ordered, strategic way.
On a recent visit to the Darfur region of Sudan, she was told by Amnesty workers they estimated 100,000 women and girls had been raped by the militia.