Mr. Belaunde observed that the fourth session of the General Assembly was being held under the anxiously watching eyes of humanity. A sincere self-examination would make it possible to say without exaggeration that the Organization had passed through a grave period of crisis.
81. Without denying the growing institutional and technical development, and the great services which were being rendered by the United Nations and its specialized agencies in various parts of the world, it must be conceded that in such an organization it was necessary to consider not only technical progress and institutional development, but above all the spirit, the moral atmosphere upon which international peace and justice were founded.
82. The League of Nations had also solved many technical problems, but it had not known how to safeguard the fundamental principles of community life among nations, namely, the principle of the supreme dignity of the human person and the principle that the State was subject to justice.
83. Hidden causes, incompatible with those two concepts essential to the international community, had sapped the life-blood of the League of Nations. And there was a danger that, despite technical developments and increasing institutional progress, the same erroneous concepts of life might infiltrate into certain sectors, creating an atmosphere of distrust in all humanity.
84. To deny the existence of that atmosphere of distrust would be insincere and positively dangerous, because the clearer and more emphatic the diagnosis of the ills which had beset humanity during the preceding years, the more effective would be the cure.
85. Mr. Belaunde spoke of the spirit which had animated the San Francisco Conference, and recalled the profound emotion felt by the representatives of the younger nations when the representative of China had said that in the Dumbarton Oaks proposals, the word “justice” was not mentioned. It had then been proclaimed that the world community was not to be a super-State, nor was it to be a balance of absolutely sovereign States, but a true family of nations.
86. It was for the sake of the principles proclaimed in the Preamble of the Charter that the Peruvian delegation desired to safeguard that instrument. Just as it was impossible to conceive of biological life without air, so it was impossible to conceive of international life except in an atmosphere of justice. For that reason it was necessary to proclaim that international life would have no consistency unless there was a return to the old idea that the State lived and moved in an atmosphere of international peace and justice, an idea which had only disappeared because of the separatists, the exclusivists and the nationalists of the seventeenth, eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
87. Those standards had been established in the preamble and in the principles of the Charter, but unfortunately provisions contrary to those foundations of international life had filtered into the operative part of the Charter. In Mr. Belaunde’s view, two provisions were involved. One of those was not essentially unjust, but it had been worded in an equivocal fashion. Thus in the matter of international jurisdiction, no mention had been made of the principle set forth in the arbitration treaty signed in Washington in 1929, which proclaimed that matters which were within the domestic jurisdiction of a State in accordance with international law were excluded.
88. But more serious was the fact that a false principle concerning relations among nations had been adopted and had led to consequences which nations were suffering and would suffer for a long time to come.
89. For one moment it had been thought that unanimity would be achieved in all matters, and it had been established as an absolute rule. The smaller nations had wanted to differentiate coercive measures from pacific measures and had said that a normal situation in the international community was one where questions could be solved by peaceful means, where the rule to be applied was not that of unanimity but only the rule of a specified majority.
90. In the case of enforcement measures, the veto could be applied as Belgium and Peru had proposed; Peru, however, had gone so far as to accept the principle that in the case of enforcement measures which might jeopardize the political balance of the Organization, the rule of unanimity was necessary. The mistake was to have established unanimous decisions as the rule and majority decisions as the exception.
91. Mr. Belaunde said that, in order to avoid any controversy likely to disturb the peaceful atmosphere in which the meetings of the Assembly were being held, he did not wish to reopen the discussion on that matter. The small nations should, however, take advantage of the opportunity to make a cordial and respectful appeal to the great Powers to look upon the exercise of the veto as approved by the Assembly as the moral expression of the obligation which they had assumed at San Francisco. For at San Francisco the great Powers had declared that it should not be forgotten that the veto was to be used only in exceptional cases.
92. The veto, when used without any reason, was not consistent with the legal concepts underlying the Charter; when used in that way, the veto implied the idea of a State in which the Government was essentially a power and a political institution of absolute supremacy. The delegation of Peru therefore maintained that the idea that justice was more important than the State was incompatible with the veto; in its view, civil law was based on respect for the individual and human freedom. Sovereignty meant the liberty of the State to develop freely in economic, political and cultural spheres, but to develop with responsibility.
93. The delegation of Peru looked upon the rights and duties of the State from a different point of view from that of the International Law Commission. The rights and duties of States were closely connected with the actual concept of the State; if the State were considered as an entity based on force, its rights and duties would not be the same as those of the State considered as a moral entity, free and responsible before justice. Many rights which were different from those enumerated and considered in the draft declaration of the International Law Commission resulted from the latter conception. It was necessary to emphasize the right of free development, not merely from a political but also from a juridical and cultural angle, and to condemn not only political intervention, but also intervention in the economic and cultural spheres.
94. Mr. Belaunde recalled the meeting of the Congress of lawyers in Lima which had condemned such forms of intervention. He added that his delegation did not understand why the International Law Commission had disregarded statements which Peru considered fundamental. The United Nations was not a super-state and Within it each State had its sovereignty, its domestic and jurisdiction and its spiritual characteristics which were as important as sovereignty.
95. It was not possible to allow considerations of political influence, of ideological similarities, or any other such considerations, to govern votes concerning the admission of new Members to the United Nations. The idea of the universality of the United Nations which had been established in San Francisco required that any nation, any organized people which had fulfilled its international. obligations and was peace-loving, should belong to the United Nations, de facto and de jure.
96. Consequently, the purely political criterion should be abandoned and the criterion which was in the Charter should be applied. In considering an application from a new country for membership in the United Nations, the fact that that country existed as a State, that it had a Government which controlled the administrative machinery, and that that Government was peace-loving, should be an adequate criterion.
97. Mr. Belaunde said that the Assembly had a very high and noble mission, that it was the Charter of the United Nations in action, and that it should represent the juridical conscience of mankind. It must eschew any debate which divided the nations into groups whether racial or cultural.
98. From a practical point of view, the Assembly could do something which might seem modest, but which was really very important: it could consolidate and affirm existing law and facilitate its execution. In considering each particular case, the United Nations should carefully note whether it involved a principle of existing law, contractual or philosophical, which had been accepted and sanctioned by international law, and then give that principle all the weight and all the moral authority of a vote, by an enormous majority of the Assembly, if possible. The Assembly would then become, not only the guardian of the spirit of the Charter, but also the reformer of international law.
99. In conclusion, Mr. Belaunde said that it had been from Lima that Bolivar had made his appeal to the' countries of America for solidarity and international justice. Peru had repeated that message at all conferences, and all the sister countries of America would recognize the position that Peru had held in the vanguard of the defenders of the principles of international law.