PRESIDENT CATHERINE CONNOLLY said the war in the Middle East constitutes “deliberate assaults on international law” and affirmed Ireland’s constitutional commitment to peace.

Today marks International Women’s Day. Connolly said on this day “the catastrophic consequences of violating the UN Charter cannot be ignored”.

In the Middle East, over 1,300 people have been reported dead in both US and Israeli initial strikes on Iran, and Iran’s countering missile attacks across the Gulf, the latter mainly targeting US military bases in its neighbouring countries. 

Connolly’s searing statement late this morning comes as members of Government have refused to say that the attack on the Middle Eastern country is illegal.

Taoiseach Micheál Martin has faced increasing pressure from Opposition to boycott the annual St Patrick’s Day visit to the White House over the war.

Connolly today said: “The violations of international law we are witnessing are shocking and numbing, but we cannot afford inaction. What we have witnessed in recent days in the Middle East, and beyond, are not political disputes.

“They are deliberate assaults on international law, the international laws that have underpinned global peace for eighty years.

“We must name them as such, without euphemism and without equivocation.”

She said Ireland is uniquely positioned to do so with an unbroken record of international peacekeeping since 1958 and decades of commitment to disarmament and non-proliferation. 

“And our history of colonisation, famine, and the hard-won, peaceful resolution of conflict in the North oblige us to speak plainly,” Connolly said

“The horror of war can never be normalised or accepted”

Related Reads

Fuel prices are soaring - how else will Ireland be affected by the deepening Middle East crisis?

Tom Clonan: Trump’s war on Iran is a death blow to the rules-based order

She referenced Article 29 of the Irish constitution which commits to peace and cooperation with international law.

Yesterday, former president Mary Robinson accused the Trump administration in the US of “flooding the atmosphere with lies” while at an event for International Women’s Day in Belfast.

She condemned the “epidemic of violence against women and girls” in Northern Ireland, Ireland and across the globe, and spending on wars at the same time as cuts in spending on international aid.

“Now we have this war by Israel and the United States on Iran which has opened up such devastation in the Middle East,” she said.

“We are seeing the undermining of the rule of law which is very worrying for our world because it’s a rule by power and we must counter that.”