Kilrush man made president of Irish Peace Institute

Retired Kilrush UN peacekeeper, Colonel Michael Shannon was appointed president of the University of Limerick-based Irish Peace Institute last Thursday in succession to Tom O’Donnell. The appointment was made by the international board of the institute.

The Irish Peace Institute (IPI) was established in 1984 by Dr Brendan O’Regan.
The institute was created to promote peace and reconciliation in Ireland and to draw on the experience of conflict resolution in order to learn lessons that could inform other conflicts.
Working towards conflict resolution was central to Colonel Shannon’s working life.
“Between the army and working for the EU abroad, I worked in 20 countries. I was in the Congo for all the fighting in 1961 as a very young man. I wasn’t mad for fighting but when it was put up to us, we had to deal with it,” Colonel Shannon told The Clare Champion.
His military career later took the Pella Road man to Cyprus and to Lebanon as part of a 700-strong winter battalion. In fact, this was the first winter battalion sent to the Lebanon.
“A man who is well-known in Clare, General William Callaghan, he had been officer in command of the Clare battalion of the FCA, he was the first commander of the 7,000 man UNIFIL force in South Lebanon.
“I was chief of operations there for a year and a half. I saw things we read about and saw things that I wouldn’t like to see again. Killings, bombardments and tank fire.
“We had great soldiers out there. Great men,” Colonel Shannon reflected.
His career then took him to Central America during a time of political upheaval in the early 1990s.
“We had about 300 military officer observers working in five countries there including Nicaragua, El Salvador and Honduras,” he recalled.
“The headquarters was in Honduras and I was the deputy UN man there with a Spanish general,” Colonel Shannon said.
In later roles when working for the EU, the Kilrush CBS-educated army man was in South Africa for the elections after Nelson Mandela was released from prison.
“My role in that included organising the logistics for about 750 observers from Europe,” he said.
Colonel Shannon specifically remembers witnessing huge queues for the ballot boxes in Soweto.
“It was a sight to behold, seeing queues three and four miles long, with people wanting to get in just to vote,” he observed.
Colonel Shannon was in the Middle East, Russia and Bosnia-Herzegovina for additional ground-breaking elections in those regions.
“It was a long way from Kilrush, I can tell you,” he laughed.
The Irish Peace Institute is a charitable non-governmental organisation committed to the just and peaceful transformation of violent conflict by helping to identify and address the root causes of violence through education, research and outreach.
The IPI has a long track record of contributing to peace building on the island of Ireland and has managed to contribute in a number of meaningful ways.
“The IPI pioneered cross-border networks between the people of Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland.
“It established the first chair of Peace and Co-operation Studies and Peace Research Centre in Ireland and developed innovative projects in conflict resolution and conflict management.