This research will divide into four subject areas.  Firstly, an overview of Ireland’s membership application, which was submitted in 1946 but failed to gain the requisite votes in the Security Council, with the Soviet Union utilizing its veto.  Ireland was finally admitted as a member in 1955. Secondly, an examination of Ireland’s position during the drafting of the International Covenants on Civil and Political Rights and Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, the primary human rights treaties.  Thirdly, an investigation of the observation/contribution to the work of the Commission of Human Rights and finally,  the Irish governments attempt to engage United Nations involvement in Northern Ireland in 1969.

Ireland applied for membership of the UN in 1946 but Cold War politics, beginning to cement, precluded a successful application, which was rejected along with Portugal’s.  Research will examine Irish attitude’s to this failure.  Final admission did not take place until 1955 with Frank Aiken as Minister for External Affairs.

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‘Comment is unnecessary; the position is self-explanatory. All I wish to do is to express thanks to the representatives of the nations who supported our application’. De Valera’s response to the rejection reported in Irish Times, 31st August 1946 under the headline ‘Éire may re-apply for UNO membership.'

Research will examine Ireland’s involvement in the Third Committee of the General Assembly, responsible for discussing Human Rights questions and who examined the draft International Covenants during their preparation by the Commission of Human Rights from 1949 to their completion in 1966.

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"Each State Party to the present Covenant undertakes to respect and to ensure to all individuals within its territory and subject to its jurisdiction the rights recognized in the present Covenant, without distinction of any kind, such as race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status." Article 2(1) of the ICCPR

 

The Commission of Human Rights was a subsidiary body of the Economic and Social Council in the UN organizational structure.  With the recent UN reform programme, it has been replaced by the Human Rights Council, an organ of the UN.  The Commission’s initial programme of work was standard-setting in the field of human rights, beginning with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948, which formed the basis for the primary human rights treaties, the ICCPR and the ICESCR.   The Commission’s work progressed to encompass both standing-setting and human rights monitoring.  Research will examine Irish observations of these developments.

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"Considering that the plan of work of the Commission on Human Rights provides for an International Bill of Human Rights, to include a Declaration, a Covenant on Human Rights and measures of implementation, Requests the Economic and Social Council to ask the Commission on Human Rights to continue to give priority in its work to the preparation of a draft Covenant on Human Rights and draft measures of implementation." Adopted by the General Assembly on the 10th December 1948, after adopting the Universal Declaration of Human Rights Resolution 217(III) Part F

 

Ireland initially brought the situation in Northern Ireland to the United Nations but the ability of Britain to successfully invoke Article 2(7) of the Charter of the United Nations, prohibiting intervention by the UN in the domestic affairs of States, precluded amassing the requisite votes for an inscription on the Security Council or the General Assembly agenda or the intervention by UN peacekeeping troops. 

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