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‘Ah, Ireland, the caring nation’: foreign aid and Irish state identity in the long 1970s1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 February 2015

Kevin O'Sullivan
Kevin O'Sullivan*
Affiliation:
School of Humanities, National University of Ireland Galway
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Extract

On a plane leaving Baidoa refugee camp in Somalia in late 1992, an Arab doctor offered John O'Shea, head of the relief agency Goal, a glimpse of how the Irish were viewed in that civil war-ravaged state. ‘Ah, Ireland’, he remarked on learning of O'Shea's country of origin, ‘the caring nation’. He had reason to be complimentary. In addition to the aid agencies and aid workers involved in the ongoing relief effort, Somalia had recently hosted two highprofile visitors from the Irish state. In August 1992 the minister for Foreign Affairs, David Andrews, spent three days in the country to view at first-hand its escalating civil war. He was followed less than two months later by President Mary Robinson, whose arrival at Baidoa on 2 October marked the beginning of a tour – the first by a Western head of state – of the feeding stations and refugee camps that provided succour to those displaced by the conflict.

Type
Research Article
Information
Irish Historical Studies , Volume 38 , Issue 151 , May 2013 , pp. 476 - 491
Copyright
Copyright © Irish Historical Studies Publications Ltd 2013

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