Permit me, Mr. President, to associate my delegation with the congratulations that have already been addressed to you upon your election to the presidency at this session of the General Assembly. May your presidency mark a significant turning point in the history of the United Nations and an irreversible development in relations among States.
2. As has been pointed out, the present session is opening in auspicious circumstances. If this Assembly is not yet a forest of olive branches, we can at least note with satisfaction that certain cold-war weapons, with their attendant invective, threats, tension and acute crises, seem to have been left in the cloakroom; this is all to the good. Since the last session, which witnessed one of the most serious crises of this postwar period, two important events have taken place. One of these was the Conference at Addis Ababa, which saw the birth of the Organization of African Unity, and the other was the signing, in Moscow, of the Treaty imposing a partial ban on nuclear tests.
3. It was obvious, and it is being borne out in practice, that these two events were bound to have their effect upon the present session. For more than three years now, the independent States of Africa have been stating from this rostrum the main objectives which are ever present in their minds. One of these objectives, which in our opinion affects to a large extent the attainment of the others, is African unity. Scarcely a year ago, this seemed to many a distant, unattainable ideal, a utopia or a pious wish. On the very eve of the Addis Ababa Conference, the majority of observers were sceptical. I do not mean that they were all hostile to the achievement of our unity; but when they gauged the difficulties of the task and recalled the futility, the failures and the pitfalls of similar undertakings and the time needed to achieve any recognizable results, they told themselves that Africa —a continent divided, if not set against itself, by colonialism— would be no exception to the rule. The world, inattentive or sceptical, has let itself be taken by surprise. At one of the august places in African history, where millennia bear witness for us, on 26 May 1963, thirty-two States, freely and in full sovereignty, decided to co-ordinate their efforts in all important matters, to harmonize their policies, to develop their economies jointly, and, through active solidarity to achieve together their peaceful, dynamic and beneficial integration into the modern world. By this decision African unity turned from a myth into a reality. It had its own charter and organs of co-operation, and had chosen conciliation and arbitration in preference to conflicts, whether hot or cold.
4. Of course we do not claim that we have thus eliminated, at one stroke, all the differences, even divergencies, between us. We are only human like everyone else. When we went to Addis Ababa we never pretended that we were going there to work a miracle. There are still certain problems that may set us at odds with one another, certain legitimate interests that may yet clash. But what we can now be sure of is that, in all our States, an awareness has come into being that we all belong, not only to the world of men, but to the African under-developed world —in fact, to the under-developed world at large— and therefore that the problems confronting us are fundamentally the same problems even though, here and there, they take different forms and sometimes call for specialized solutions. Today our community of ideals and our community of destiny, as yesterday our common situation as colonized and dependent peoples, bid us join hands, gird our loins, struggle and work together so that African man, rehabilitated and himself again, may become more of a man every day and do his part —I venture to say, make his enriching contribution— towards building the new world, which would otherwise be incomplete. It is enough to see the universal enthusiasm which, in the countries concerned, has greeted the results of the Addis Ababa Conference to realize that those results meet the deep desires of our peoples.
5. The Dakar Conference proved that, whatever the difficulties of our undertaking, we shall be able to face any sacrifice, to make the necessary concessions, and to work in the spirit of Addis Ababa until our aims are achieved.
6. In the meantime, while we were organizing ourselves into a peaceful grouping for evolution and mutual assistance and thus creating one of the conditions for peace, the great Powers, on whom peace depends more than on us, were deciding to take a short step forward in the search for ways of achieving it.
7. The Moscow agreements have been hailed as a positive contribution and an event of great significance. The fact that my country was among the very first in Africa in deciding to associate itself with the Moscow Treaty proves that we fully grasp its significance and scope. However, we must not delude ourselves; as I said before, it is only a step, a short step. If the Moscow Treaty is not to prove, tomorrow, the most tragic illusion cherished by mankind in our time, it must be followed up by other agreements that go to the very heart of the problem and that lead to drastic measures. What the world has hailed in the Moscow agreements is a hope which must not be disappointed. Their importance, which is far from slight, lies in keeping the talks going and in catching up the participants in the machinery of peace. It lies also in the fact that, from now on, these agreements will reduce the dangerous pollution of the atmosphere and its eventual lethal consequences for the human race. But the real danger has not been eliminated and mankind is still threatened, for each of the great Powers has long had in its possession the means of bringing down final catastrophe upon the earth. To keep the stockpiles of atomic bombs of all kinds, to continue their manufacture and to go on testing them underground would make a mockery of the Moscow agreements if matters were allowed to rest there; for possession creates temptation and keeps anxiety, distrust and suspicion in being. So we are a long way from our true objective. The problem is not merely a matter of denuclearizing this or that area and leaving the terrifying means of destruction stockpiled somewhere else. Who, then, would be safe, and where should we go for shelter if one day the cataclysm came down? The objective is total and controlled disarmament, the destruction of all existing bombs and their delivery vehicles. In subscribing to the Moscow agreements my country's aim was to encourage progress towards this outcome, and to spare no effort in attaining it. There was no foolish optimism, no vain euphoria, only a reasoned hope; for peace is the first, the greatest, the common good of mankind. It is the business of all of us, great and small. It must be prepared for and won. It is indivisible. It does peace no service to parade it, every day or now and then, before the muzzles of the guns. Listening to you, gentlemen, with all the attention that your words and responsibilities deserve, and hearing the professions of faith that so often ring out from this rostrum, one might wonder why success is so hard to achieve, when everyone proclaims his desire for peace. For who still harbours thoughts of committing aggression? Who holds back from discussion, negotiation and arbitration? Who thinks to hold the world under the threat of terror, the blackmail of destruction? Who? From now on it will not be enough that no one is willing to incur these terrible responsibilities; it will also be necessary to show by deeds a sincere will to succeed; and all our peoples are watching you; certain propaganda tricks, certain stratagems do not deceive them.
8. But it is not only guns and bombs that threaten the peace of the world. Peace will not be secure so long as there are peoples, entitled like the rest to life and freedom, who are held in slavery, or even in a gilded subjection —if such there can be— which they do not want. An injustice to one is a threat to all; that has not changed, and we shall have no pause or respite until all those still held in colonial bondage against their will have regained their freedom. Most of the States which in the past colonized others have finally come to understand that it is in the nature of things for colonies one day to attain independence. They have helped in the process, or resigned themselves to it, and have succeeded more or less happily in decolonizing. Others, in contrast, who have learned nothing, diabolically persist in an error which threatens to destroy them, even though the whole trend of world history is before their eyes as a lesson. To proclaim, in 1963, that such-and-such a colony, thousands of kilometres away —an utterly foreign country where, what is more, a policy of complete assimilation and perfect equality among men has never been practised— to proclaim that that colony forms an integral part of the colonizing country is both nonsense and obscurantism. Let no one be surprised that the people concerned refuse to knuckle under.
9. For our part, we cannot remain indifferent. Silence, inaction, from us would be nothing else but complicity, and we could not be accomplices of the colonialists, those fossils from bygone days. And since we love peace, since we want peace, and because there will be no real peace so long as an oppressed people remains anywhere on earth, because we feel ourselves to be in solidarity with all those who are still oppressed, we have decided to face the laggards of colonialism with a resolute front and firm action.
10. Please understand us and believe us: we should have preferred to harness our enthusiasm and resources, which our countries need so badly and so urgently, to tasks more agreeable and more beneficial to our peoples. But can a clear conscience be bought at the cost of a betrayal? We shall not betray our brothers, who are waiting to enjoy their freedom as we do and to set themselves, in whatever way their free choice dictates, to the stirring task of building their country.
11. Shall we speak frankly? In this matter of decolonization, the so-called great Powers have a considerable responsibility. Nothing will make us believe that, if they really wanted, the process of decolonization would not be irresistibly speeded up. There is no State in the world today that could hold out for long, entirely alone, against a quarantine imposed by all the others. Without a shot being fired, Portugal —for we must call it by its name— would be obliged to take the action which others have taken so successfully and from which, quite unawares, it stands to gain a great deal. For that to happen, the freedom of man must not be outweighed by what some regard as their strategic and others as their economic interest.
12. What is true of Portugal is also true of South Africa, the realm of apartheid. As we know, there are yet other places where racial discrimination is practised and in abominable fashion. Wherever it is and whatever it comes from, we condemn it. But let us be fair to those who do not resign themselves to it, who ban it by law and fight day by day to abolish it, in contrast to South Africa, where the law, the State and the Government are its most determined champions.
13. We are told; "Let us keep our specialized and technical bodies free from political disputes. Let us not paralyse them with quarrels that do not concern them. Let us confine debate on certain subjects exclusively to the competent organs —the Security Council and the General Assembly— and let the specialized agencies get on with their practical work of co-operative assistance." Apart from the fact that our peoples do not want such assistance and co-operation from just anybody —for we are just as concerned with the hand that gives as with the manner of giving— the logic of this piece of advice is only skin-deep. For this is not merely a question of politics; it is also a question of principle and morality. Would you let a notorious bandit, a highwayman, go free and allow him, for instance, to sit in your country's Academy of Sciences, simply because he was also an undisputed scientific genius and because the Academy in question dealt only with purely scientific and technical problems? The problem is a complex one, we admit; we do not shut our eyes to that fact. It has been raised from this very rostrum in the last few days, and our task in the days to come will be to seek a straight answer to it.
14. What sort of United Nations do we want? This raises the pressing question of changes in our Organization. Those who founded the United Nations eighteen years ago did not foresee the present situation, where a third of the membership is made up of former colonized countries which are now independent and which must have their say in the conduct of world affairs.
15. We have worked out specific proposals for changes in the composition of the Security Council and certain specialized organs. We ask that our congeners should be more widely and more equitably associated with the administration and operation of all organs. Since everybody seems agreed on the justice of this position, we hope there will be no difficulty about acting on our proposals. A reformed United Nations, in which each and every country was more fairly represented, and in which certain working methods were encouraged, could not but do better service to our common ideal.
16. To keep the peace and to raise the level of living of all peoples: such are the primary objectives of the United Nations. It must be enabled to work for them effectively.
17. In the matter of assistance to under-developed countries, it is time to get away from bureaucracy, from the countless reports —interesting, as they unquestionably are— from the volumes of records of survey missions and all the rest of it, and get down to specific, practical reality. We must reduce, and drastically, the excessive length of time taken up by applications, studies and missions which in the majority of cases, alas, result only in documents for the archives or the library shelves.
18. I must confess that I hesitated to address this Assembly because, without denying the work undertaken by the United Nations since its foundation, without minimizing the decisive part it has played in the liberation of our young States, and without underestimating its noteworthy contribution to the maintenance of peace, we must admit that we have demonstrated our capacity for words more clearly than our capacity for action. As this autumn begins, what are we doing? Are we performing a rite? Are we the last of the conversational salons? You have been hearing the same statements for years, and they will be back again this year, over a hundred times, noble, eloquent and fine. But then what? The Berlin wall will remain the absurd symbol of a divided people denied self-determination; the Israel-Arab dispute will remain the painful consequence of refusal to negotiate and refusal to show tolerance. In Laos, in Viet-Nam, in China, the world and peace will be kept in suspense, while men whose only crime is that they are not of the same colour as others, or that others, more fortunate, learned the art of conquest and enslavement before them, will continue to claim, at the cost of their lives, their rightful place at the common table; whereas if everyone really wanted peace and decided to create the conditions for it, one-hundredth of the sums now swallowed up in engines of destruction would be enough to change the meaning of life for many people and the face of the earth for all.
19. I am not the first one here to say this: a single weapon from today's arsenals can do more damage by itself than all those used during the last war put together. Yet at the same time cancer, for instance, continues its ravages and scientists wait in vain for the wherewithal to carry on their research.
20. Achievements in space baffle the imagination and do only honour to the genius of man. However, I should like to put these questions to the great Powers, who will soon be flying away together, arm-in-arm, to the moon; "Are you sure you have done your whole duty on earth? Are all human beings eating their fill? Have all children access to a minimum of education? Have you taken care to allay the anxieties and distress of the peoples? This earth —our earth, man's earth— have you made it more humane and men more brotherly?" We await a reply to these questions.
21. One of our colleagues was speaking the other day of the two fountains which play at Geneva, one at the Palais des Nations, the other beside the Lake. Here, let us admit it, we give Niagara some competition. We African peoples are in favour of palaver and negotiation; we believe in the virtues of speech; but we believe even more in the virtues of action. And the time for action has come; hence the brevity of my statement, which I acknowledge to be contrary to the custom here. We have our work cut out and we are in a hurry. You have all the means and are entitled either to squander them or to hoard them. In our view the greatest people, the greatest State, will be, not the one that owns the most destructive bomb or the one that first lands on the moon, but the one that does most for understanding between men and nations, the one that works hardest for the happiness of mankind by driving back disease, ignorance, poverty and hunger.
22. Dahomey, my country, is for self-determination and freedom for all. It believes in human solidarity and brotherhood. It wishes to make its modest contribution, earnestly and in all conviction. May the United Nations prove fertile ground for our enthusiasm in all these matters, for we are among those —to echo a speech still ringing in our ears— who want to take their stand in the United Nations in order to raise the world to a just and lasting peace.