1. Mr. President, I wish to offer you my warmest congratulations on your unanimous and well-deserved election to the office of President of the General Assembly at the current session, which was a just acknowledgement of your merits and a sincere tribute to your noble country.
2. There has been no event of greater historical significance in this century than the founding of the United Nations — a lofty endeavour to give shape, structure and purpose to the international community which, after the ill-fated experiment of the former League of Nations, had once again been plunged into the confusion created by the absolute sovereignty of States that confronted one another in the anarchic setting of their own might and power.
3. On the occasion of this nineteenth session of the General Assembly, the Government of Ecuador reaffirms its unshakable adherence and loyalty to the United Nations.
4. Those of us who, as representatives of our Governments, participated in the founding of the United Nations at the memorable San Francisco Conference in 1945 note with legitimate pride the work accomplished by the world Organization despite the original shortcomings of its Charter. This work has mainly consisted in zealously guarding peace.
5. Peace is, above all, a state of mind which forms the basis of normal relations among men and among States under the rule of law. All the rules of the United Nations Charter combine, directly or indirectly, to maintain, strengthen and preserve it. On the other hand, as Article 2, paragraph 2, of the Charter provides, all the rights and benefits resulting from membership in the United Nations hinge upon good faith in fulfilling the obligations assumed in accordance with the Charter.
6. It follows from the above that, in a world in turmoil, a world divided into nations and groups of nations which practise contrasting ways of life and profess opposing political philosophies, the sine qua non for their living together within the United Nations is, and must be, the spirit of peaceful co-existence.
7. The spirit of peaceful co-existence presupposes mutual respect among States, based on the principle of their sovereign equality — the fundamental idea that all States have the same rights and the same obligations, each State deriving its rights not from its power to enforce them but from the very fact ox its existence as a subject of international law.
8. The spirit of peaceful co-existence cannot be reduced to a passive or neutral attitude in which States merely tolerate each other; it must take the active form of mutual co-operation among them — a creative expression of human solidarity — in seeking a collective solution to the vast and serious problems which confront the nations; it must embody the idea that States cannot be left to struggle on single-handed; for human welfare is indivisible, even as peace is indivisible over all the vast reaches of the earth.
9. Let us have the boldness to outlaw the classical conception of a balance of political power or a balance of armed might as the foundation of peace. It is a time-worn legacy from a remote past, which should have been abolished with the establishment of the United Nations. Nor can peace be founded on universal fear of a nuclear holocaust which would mean the certain annihilation of the human species.
10. Peace must rest on the enduring foundation, laid down by our international Organization, of the supremacy of law, applicable to great, medium-sized and small States as the unbreakable rule for their conduct and the chart of their course. No State can ever again arbitrarily invent its own law within the international order, or claim privileges on the grounds of superior armed might, for the law stems from the general conviction of States enshrined in written or customary rules, to whose authority each and every State must bow as an earnest of its will to ensure joint respect for international law.
11. In this connexion the Government of Ecuador attaches great significance to the important work done by the Special Committee on Technical Assistance to Promote the Teaching, Study, Dissemination and Wider Appreciation of International Law, which recently met in Mexico. This Committee was instructed by the General Assembly to study four major principles of international law laid down in Article 2 of the Charter, with a view to their codification and progressive development. They are: the principle that all Members of the United Nations shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any State„4 or in any other manner inconsistent with the purposes of the United Nations; the principle that they shall settle their international disputes by peaceful means in such a manner that international peace and security, and justice, are not endangered; the duty not to intervene in matters which are essentially within the domestic jurisdiction of any State, in accordance with the Charter; and the principle of sovereign equality of States. These principles, as the General Assembly has affirmed, are of fundamental concern to friendly relations and co-operation among States.
12. The Government of Ecuador agrees with the great majority of representatives on that Special Committee that it is desirable to prepare a draft declaration formulating these principles in full, without prejudice to their subsequent incorporation in a convention.
13. As regards the first of the aforesaid principles, the Government of Ecuador shares the enlightened view expressed by Czechoslovakia in favour of prohibiting the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of States, and also of prohibiting the threat or use of force as a means of resolving territorial disputes or boundary problems between States. But such a prohibition would offend against a higher principle of justice unless, as an inevitable corollary to it, we proclaimed at the same time the non-recognition and thus the nullity of any territorial acquisition that may be or has been made by force or by any other means of coercion. The need for this corollary is obvious, for we can hardly recognize as valid something we prohibit or condemn in a general rule which ought to be universally applicable to all situations, past and future; it would be utterly incompatible with a high principle of justice to prohibit the threat or use of force in the future without, at the same time, categorically condemning those cases in which force was used in the past to the outrage of the civilized conscience of men and nations.
14. Furthermore, within the American community, the non-recognition and consequent nullity of territorial acquisitions and special advantages obtained either by force or by any other means of coercion constitute the first of the fundamental rights of States under article 17 of the Charter of the Organization of American States; article 5 of that Charter lays down as a corollary the lofty principle that military victory does not give rights, and in article 18 the American States bind themselves in their international relations not to have recourse to the use of force, except in the case of self-defence in accordance with existing treaties or in fulfilment thereof.
15. As regards the definition of the concept of "force", despite the serious technical difficulties involved, recognition should be given to the classical interpretation that identifies it with armed force, which includes both regular and irregular armies and direct and indirect forms of use, encompassing both cases of aggression from outside, as usually conceived, and cases of internal aggression in the form of a revolution within the territory of a State, aimed at overthrowing its Government, but organized or fomented by the Government of another State or States.
16. At the same time, there would seem to be no warrant for including in the concept of "force" political, economic, or any other kind of pressure exerted in violation of the principles of international law. Such types of pressure fall rather within the generic concept of intervention, involving as they do the intention to impose a foreign will on a State. Article 15 of the Charter of the Organization of American States, which lays down the law on non-intervention, states very explicitly that this principle "prohibits not only armed force but also any other form of interference or attempted threat against the personality of the State or against its political, economic and cultural elements".
17. Where economic pressure is concerned, the hateful dependence of developing States upon States which have attained full development through their great industrial potential must be condemned in the soundest terms. Trade, conducted on the basis of unstable and inadequate prices for the primary products of the first group of countries and of fixed high prices for the manufactured products of the second group, clashes with every ideal of justice and every principle of equity. If the tragic picture of man's exploitation by man affronts our conscience and wounds our moral sense, our reaction is the same when we see the first group of countries being exploited by the second group through the tyrannical imposition of unfair prices—which keep the first group struggling with poverty while the second is rolling in wealth—and through the continuance of restrictive and discriminatory practices.
18. Happily, the day has come when the developing countries are demanding their rights in a body, as was movingly illustrated by the solidly united front they presented at the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development. I express the fervent hope that the first great battle they gave at Geneva will be but the prelude to future battles which they will fight in a spirit of solidarity, in the knowledge that their cause is just, and that they will attain the victory in which they place their faith and their hopes. Until that victory is won, the presumed sovereign equality of States, so solemnly enshrined in the Charter, will have a sarcastic ring in the face of their tremendous economic inequality.
19. The Republic of Ecuador, faithfully adhering to the sacred principle of the independence of nations, which presided at its own birth as a sovereign State early in the nineteenth century, has always paid homage to the glorious principle of the self-determination of peoples and consequently, from the very inception of the United Nations, has firmly and steadfastly combated colonialism, in order that the subjugated communities which historically answer the description of "peoples" and which possess their own territory might achieve full domestic and external sovereignty and it has cast its vote for their admission as new States, to the United Nations.
20. Ecuador has taken a clear and unequivocal stand in relation to the peoples inhabiting Non-Self-Governing Territories, holding that the States which administer them do not have sovereignty over them, and that such sovereignty is vested in those peoples themselves, to be transformed into a real and effective right as soon as they attain self-government and the vital capacity to decide their own destiny. Consequently, the colonial Powers have been and are in a poor position to claim sovereign authority over those Territories, and on that basis to assert their right to freedom from intervention, denying the United Nations all competence on the grounds that those matters lie solely within their domestic jurisdiction. Similarly, the colonial Powers have been and are in a poor position to argue that the Non-Self-Governing Territories are provinces or integral parts of their territory and their body politic, for to make good such a claim they would have had to consult the peoples who inhabit those Territories and to secure their free and express consent.
21. On the other hand, the principle of self-determination cannot be invoked to destroy the political unity or territorial integrity of a State, in respect of parts of its geographic heritage. Such regions, when forcibly occupied by a foreign State, do not answer the description of Non-Self-Governing Territories, and their populations — which are not "peoples" in the historical and spiritual sense of the term — are not entitled to claim the right of self-determination. To proceed in any other way would be to legitimize the conquest originally made by the foreign occupier.
22. Over the past two decades many new States, for the most part African States, have been admitted to the United Nations. Their peoples worked and struggled to attain the attributes of sovereignty and independence after the long night of colonial domination which had held them bound in darkness, neglect and oblivion. Today those States exercise with great dignity and deep conviction their rights as Members of the United Nations, and they have been of effective help in strengthening our world Organization. Moreover their admission to membership has brought us closer to the supreme ideal of universality for the United Nations. That ideal inspired the founding of the Organization and must be attained, despite the serious political differences which divide the great Powers, if all the peoples of the world are to enjoy the rights and benefits conferred by the United Nations and to discharge the corresponding obligations. The destiny of the United Nations will then, at the same time, be also the destiny of mankind.
23. The splitting of the atom and the release of its enormous energy ushered in a new era in world history, which I should like to call the "Promethean" era because, even as Prometheus in the Greek myth stole fire from the gods and thereby caused his own tragedy, man in discovering atomic energy has discovered the secret of his own destruction.
24. Thus a conflict has been set up between man, who has invented a devilish engine of destruction, and his conscience, which bids him control himself and refrain from putting the engine to its tragic use. The scientific and technological advances which led to the discovery of atomic power must now be matched by moral development if the destructive use of that power is to be prevented; everything hinges on this.
25. From this standpoint we can but applaud every effort that may be made by the United Nations to ensure that the vast nuclear potential which has been built up for destructive purposes is placed at the service of peace and of civilization, for the greater dignity and well-being of the peoples of the world and the progressive satisfaction of their needs; to require the prohibition of the manufacture and use of nuclear weapons; and to ban all nuclear tests, which in themselves are a baleful threat to the health and to the very existence of the human race.
26. We are celebrating today the sixteenth anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and I wish on this happy occasion to express the fervent hope that the General Assembly will succeed in making the necessary progress in its work on measures to implement the draft International Covenants on Human Rights so that, in the not too distant future, these rights may be given international protection in the name of the personality and dignity of man, who is the true protagonist in the drama of the universe and the ultimate beneficiary of every rule of law.
27. The Republic of Ecuador is both a Member of the United Nations and a member of the Organization of American States, the first of the regional organizations provided for in Chapter VIII of the Charter signed at San Francisco and a model for all the rest. Its establishment was the culmination of a long historical process which took 122 years. from the memorable Congress of Panama called together by the prophetic genius of Simon Bolivar in 1026 to its founding in 1948. In virtue of this double membership my country, like the other American States, enjoys all the rights and means of recourse provided for both by the world Organization and by the American regional Organization.
28. The American States signed and ratified the Charter of their Organization and enshrined in its preamble their inflexible resolve to persevere in the noble undertaking that humanity has conferred upon the United Nations, whose purposes and principles they solemnly reaffirmed together with those which are their very own, having acquired, over more than a century of creative experience, citizenship by naturalization on the American continent.
29. The Organization of American States has done admirable work in its various spheres of activity and especially in the sphere of collective security, through the strict application of the famous Inter-American Treaty of Reciprocal Assistance, which was signed at Rio de Janeiro in 1947 and whose authority, flexibility and effectiveness have made it possible to avert many a danger that threatened peace in America, to arrange for collective measures against threats or acts of aggression, and to prevent the outbreak of armed conflicts in the Western hemisphere.
30. This Treaty, which has served as a shining example for similar treaties in other regions, provides, among other measures which the competent organ may adopt, in particular to repel aggression, for the use of armed force with the basic reservation that no American State shall be required to use armed force without its own sovereign consent. These measures are fully in conformity with the general principle laid down in Article 52 of the United Nations Charter and with the practice of the Security Council, which has never had occasion to question their legitimacy in any of the cases reported to it as required by Article 54 of the same Charter.
31. A listing of the work carried out by the Organization of American States would suffice to show that the family of American States vigorously support and cherish the most admirable ideals and convictions of mankind, and that they fight to make their rule of law prevail over barbarism and violence, and to make their worthy and civilized way of life prevail over the fear, helplessness and misery which are the lot of the great majority of the human race.
32. The Republic of Ecuador adds its truly American voice to the universal chorus of the United Nations in proclaiming once again the greatest truth of all, which is that peace, a lasting peace among men as among nations, must be based on moral values, on a heritage of freedom and on the spirit of justice.