The General Assembly of the United Nations has begun the work of its second session. This is a most solemn occasion and it gives to all of us, as the specially appointed representatives of the Member nations, a most propitious opportunity to appraise the work that has been done, that is to say, our achievements and our failures.
The international organization which we know by the name of the United Nations is the second attempt made by the nations of the world to create an agency efficient and powerful enough to ensure peace and justice to all mankind. I speak of peace and justice and not of one or the other because they are twin sisters. I cannot conceive of peace — that is to say international order — without justice. Peace alone, supported by the force of arms, is at best only a truce between two wars.
The whole purpose of the United Nations is simply this: to make it impossible for the nest world war to take place. We have come here to continue our efforts toward accomplishing this purpose. Our peoples are most insistent upon it, and they will not tolerate any failure that may be due to negligence in the fulfilment of our duties.
Let me bring to this Assembly this reflection: the League of Nations was the first attempt made by the world to set up an international organization to ensure peace based on justice. It did not fail because of defects in its charter, but because of the failure of the most powerful nations to support it. We have to recognize the fact that the world was much more optimistic at the time the League of Nations was established than it is now. We have avoided calling the new international organization a “League of Nations”, and we have moved from Geneva, Switzerland, to the city of New York in the United States of America. But we must realize that moving across the street is not by itself any assurance of success.
One of our greatest handicaps in solving the serious problems that we are facing today in the United Nations is the fact that everything was done at the San Francisco Conference in 1945 to make it practically impossible to amend the Charter. Indeed, any one of the five great Powers, by exercising the veto, may prevent such a move. The voice of the smaller nations, some forty-five in number, was raised in favour of making it feasible to improve a Charter which, from its inception, had many conspicuous defects. Our voice was hushed and faded away before the prospect of not having any Charter at all for the United Nations, even though for such an important matter we insisted that the right of veto should be waived.
It is true that a hew general conference of the Members of the United Nations may be convened by a favourable two-thirds vote of the General Assembly and by a favourable vote of any seven members of the Security Council. We find that provision in Article 109, paragraph 1, of the Charter; but, if we read a little further, we find, in paragraph 2 of that Article, that any modification of the Charter, adopted by the conference, will never take effect if any one of the five great
We realize, therefore, that all hope of ever improving the Charter has been lost for any practical purpose. Trivial or superficial changes may be introduced, and successfully adopted; but with regard to important matters about which the great Powers are most frequently in disagreement, the hope for any improvement Of the Charter is simply a vain one.
It must be recognized, to the credit of a large number of the smaller nations, that they foresaw and did their best to prevent most of the difficulties that the United Nations is facing at the present time. At least nineteen nations fought incessantly at the San Francisco Conference against the rule of unanimity of the five great Powers, commonly known as the veto power. The fact that seventeen of them abstained from voting against that specific provision was due only to the realization that unless this previous commitment of three of the great Powers was adopted, no Charter of the United Nations could be signed at San Francisco. Our respective delegations simply stepped aside and, in this manner, made the Charter possible.
But it must be recognized, on the other hand, that the great Powers, of their own volition, assumed the responsibility for making their rule of unanimity work for peace and international justice throughout the world. The delegation of El Salvador, and I assume that the same attitude will prevail on the part of the delegations of the other smaller countries, shall always stand in readiness to help in coping with the difficult situations that have arisen as the result of the immoderate use of the veto power.
I feel that it is our duty never to forget that the United Nations was conceived as an agency intended to work for peace and international order, and by no means as an agency that might undertake the ominous task of spreading ill-will and of interfering with the free exercise of sovereignty, in its internal affairs by any State, whether or not it is a Member of our Organization, A guarantee against such an eventuality was written into the Charter in Article 2, paragraph 7. This is a most emphatic acceptance of the principle of non-intervention which was first recognized by twenty-one American Republics in the Convention on the Rights and Duties of the States, signed at Montevideo in December 1933.
At San Francisco the delegations of the same American Republics were intent upon retaining the same principle in our Charter; it is obvious to me that my delegation — and I assume that this is true of all other delegations — would not have signed the Charter unless its text contained a most praise recognition of the principle of non-intervention in the internal affairs of States. We feel that this principle, as embodied in paragraph 7 of Article 2 of the Charter of the United Nations, is a guarantee of the freedom and independence of the smaller nations which we have not
surrendered to our international Organization, or to any foreign State.
I have said that peace cannot prevail without justice; therefore, the principle to which I refershould not only be applied to the States that are Members of the United Nations, but to all States exception. The Christian principle of “do unto others what you would have others do unto you” should be strictly applied. It would be incongruous, to say the least, for the United Nations, or perhaps more particularly for the great Powers which have recognized leadership in our Organization, to enforce peace in one comer of the world and to provoke dissension and strife in another No great nation can ever hope to have its policies properly understood by other States unless they are consistent in their meaning and in the application of the principles upon which they are founded. The same may be said of the United Nations. I express the hope, therefore, that whatever mistakes we may have made in the past, the principle of non-intervention in the internal affairs of States will henceforth be respected by our international Organization and that no undue interference in the internal affairs of any sovereign nation may ever be consummated.
If we act in any other manner, the United Nations will cease to be the agency for peace and justice which we all intended to establish when we met at San Francisco in 1945.
In pursuance of the interests of peace, we must realize not only that the Second World War has come to an end, but also that it is our most sacred duty, as representatives of peace-loving nations, to refrain from stirring up hatred between countries which are Members of the United Nations and those which are not When we signed the Charter of our Organization at San Francisco, we did not mean to establish an alliance of nations in order to continue the strife, but rather to organize for peace. We trusted that victory was in store for us and wanted to be ready for the peace to come. We realized that, in the course of time, even such nations as were bur enemies had to be admitted as Members of our international Organization, if peace was to be firm and stable.
As for our allies, we did not explore their history with a critical eye in order to ascertain their political aims as a requisite to admitting them to the United Nations. It was enough that they contributed to the final victory. There was no doubt that our purpose was to give our Organization a world-wide scope so as to invest it with a world- wide authority.
In Article 4 of our Charter which refers to the admission of new Members, we stated that there were only three requites for admission: first, that the applicant should be a peace-loving State; secondly, that the applicant should accept the obligations stated in the Charter for Member Nations, and thirdly, that it should be capable and ready, in the judgment of our Organization, to fulfil its duties as a Member. That is why the majority of the Members of the United Nations fail to understand why peace-loving States, such as Ireland, Portugal and Transjordan, which have applied for admission as Members of our international Organization, have been rejected in spite of the fact that they fulfil, in a most conspicuous manner, all the conditions required for new Members of the United Nations, conditions which are so clearly and specifically enumerated in Article 4 of our Charter. The only explanation for this failure of our Organization is again the veto power.
It is only natural that those smaller nations which were, in the majority, the bitter enemies of the rule of unanimity of the five great Powers at the time of the San Francisco Conference, should now expect the five permanent members of the Security Council to find a way to confine the use of the veto power within reasonable bounds. If this is not done, the only alternative will be the complete paralysation of the United Nations for any useful purpose — in other words, its total failure.
I have suited that the United Nations Organization was born in a much less optimistic atmosphere than the former League of Nations. To this I must add that most of our peoples now have less optimism concerning the happy outcome of our work than they had at the time of the San Francisco Conference. We must therefore have a healthy reaction that may kindle again hopes that are vanishing. We must give definite proof that the United Nations will became the agency for peace and international justice which our countries had in mind when the Charter was signed.
In some fields of endeavour we should come to the realization that we must travel a long way before expecting the United Nations to achieve full maturity; To cite an example: our Charter refers to the protection of essential human rights, but no instrumentality has been established for this purpose. It will be absolutely necessary to refer this matter to our International Court of Justice by means of a treaty which should provide for its compulsory jurisdiction. Unless this is done, all references to essential human rights in the Charter of the United Nations are of no avail, except in so far as they express an ideal which is still to be attained.
The delegation of El Salvador will continue to make most earnest efforts towards obtaining the following improvements of our Charter:
1. Elimination of the veto power;
2. Increase of the powers of the General Assembly;
3. Compulsory jurisdiction of the International Court of Justice in the final settlement of international disputes.
We hope that many other delegations have these same purposes in mind, and that in the course of time they will be fully accomplished.
Before bringing my remarks to a close, behalf of the delegation of El Salvador, I pledge our full co-operation in the work of the present session of the General Assembly, which we hope will constitute a definite step towards the achievement of the aims of peace and international justice which are contemplated in our Charter.