Sir, - What a wonderful piece of writing was your Editorial, "Let us step with hope into our new century" (January 3rd). As we step with hope, let us add a little action to make the "universal brotherhood of mankind" that bit more of a reality.
For many of us it is a good time to be alive in Ireland, with our new-found prosperity and the real possibility of a lasting peace in Northern Ireland. But for the marginalised and those trapped in extreme poverty the story is different. Extreme poverty and homelessness deny fundamental human rights.
It is outrageous that we have our own street children in this Ireland of 2000 - children who have nowhere to sleep, no shelter against the elements on a cold, lonely night. It is outrageous that a 16-year-old boy with a pinched face and desperate expression told me that he couldn't get a hostel place because they give them to "younger ones".
It is even more outrageous that we accept this, with just the odd twinge of guilt and the odd pound as we avert our eyes and hurry by some huddled young person.
Amnesty challenges the Government to put an end to lack of shelter for homeless children for once and for all by providing properly managed emergency accommodation. That would be a fitting start to the year.
As for those made homeless by wars, conflict, persecution and torture - our refugees - Amnesty challenges the Government to welcome them and show its public commitment to their protection, rather than seeing them as a disturbance to our comfortable status quo.
We call on the government to make human rights a real cornerstone of its foreign policy and not merely a nice piece of rhetoric to be trotted out in a speech with no substance, as trade interests or "our partners in Europe" set the agenda. As the UN General Secretary, Kofi Annan, put it, the challenge to governments is "to forge unity behind the principle that massive and systematic violations of human rights - wherever they may take place - should not be allowed to stand. . .so that we are willing to act in some areas of conflict, while limiting ourselves to humanitarian palliatives in many other crises whose daily toll of death and suffering ought to shame us into action." The obscene bombardment of the civilian population of Chechnya in order to copper-fasten the political ambition of the acting president of Russia, Mr Putin, is an example. This year specifically we also call on the Irish government to ratify the International Criminal Court, which will ensure that those responsible for appalling crimes against humanity have nowhere to hide. We call on it to strengthen the EU Code of Conduct on Arms Transfers to stop the trade of arms into countries where they are used against civilians while Western governments and the US (who supply 45 per cent of the world's arms), mouth words such as "freedom and justice".
Finally, 1,000,146 Irish people committed themselves to the ideals of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights last year. That is not supposed to be an empty action. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights applies not only to governments but to all organs of society. Each of us has a personal responsibility to help implement this extraordinary vision of mankind's highest aspirations. We can start in Ireland by our acceptance of diversity, by our determination that none of our country's people should be forced to live in poverty as our consciences get duller and duller through having it easy ourselves. - Yours, etc.,
Mary Lawlor, Director, Amnesty International (Irish Section), Fleet Street, Dublin 2.