May I extend to you, and through you to the Tunisian Government and nation, my own warm congratulations and those of the Government and people of Costa Rica on your election to the office of President of the Assembly—congratulations which my delegation wishes to be placed' on the records of the general debate.
92. It has been the practice of my delegation to concentrate the major part of its attention on the problems which affect our country; we believe that that policy is what a due sense of proportion demands, having regard to the influence we are able to exert on the conduct of the high affairs of world politics. Today, however, the situation is so serious that it affects the survival not of a group of nations but of all nations. Faced with the power-madness of those who daily announce the destruction of their alleged enemies, accompanying their threats with acts such as the reckless resumption of nuclear testing, we who are doomed to die have no other recourse than to raise our voices; and I do so not on behalf of a small country which is a Member of this Organization but as a member of the human race, to appeal for calm and moderation in the face of the tempest of passion set off once again by the historic ill-judgement of the men of power, who have forgotten the wise maxim that he who sows the wind reaps the whirlwind.
93. Costa Rica, which has been a Member of the United Nations since its foundation, is more than ever convinced that this institution, besides being the finest instrument ever designed by man in his desire to maintain a supreme organ capable of regulating and resolving the differences between the Governments of the world with a view to preserving peace through justice/ is also the most effective protector of the small States. The great Powers, it seems to us, do not need the United Nations for their military defence. They are sufficient unto themselves. The weaker States, on the other hand,, are protected by this Organization against any aggression, and have free access to this rostrum to broadcast to the world their complaints against social, economic and political
injustice. It is the weak, the small, the under-developed
countries, without distinction and in whatever part of the globe they may be situated, which must devote their efforts to strengthening the United Nations morally and materially. The most unchallengeable demonstration of the Organization's achievements may be seen in the new nations which have attained their independence under its maternal wing. But for the magnificent work of the United Nations, the new States which now share in our tasks would never have thrown off colonialism without shedding a drop of blood. All of them are to our Organization what her children were to the mother of the Gracchi — her proudest jewels. To be a member of the United Nations in itself implies being against colonialism and all forms of discrimination; for one of the Organization's purposes is to bring independence to the colonies and aid them in their development. The fact that there should be serious problems between some countries and their territories or colonies is understandable; but we are confident that these problems will be settle by peaceful means and that the day of independence is not far off. So far as we are concerned, just as we believe that all men are born equal so we believe that nations are absolutely entitled to be born to freedom and independence.
94. One of the factors which has reduced the effectiveness of the United Nations—and this has been a matter of considerable concern to us—is undoubtedly the veto exercised in the Security Council, a veto used to such excess that the Council's resolutions have remained without effect. One necessity if the United Nations is to be helped to greater achievements is to revise the right of veto; and for that reason it seems inexplicable to us that any support should be expected for the proposal that the executive organ of the United Nations—for that is what the office of the Secretary- General is—should include in its ranks, with the right to veto its decisions, any person coming from the Power which has stultified the work of the Security Council. If we are sincere in the distress we expressed at the irreparable loss of Mr. Hammarskjold, the Secretary-General, then we must translate our tears into acts, and must follow the counsels offered by the distinguished departed in his desire to lend dynamism to the office he held. The office of Secretary-General must not be, nor can it be, converted into a triumvirate of the type of those which brought such discredit upon themselves in the political history of Rome and of the French Consulate. If he is to be able to act, the Secretary-General must be vested with indivisible authority. In championing this' view we are at once being faithful to our own convictions and honouring the memory of the man who, both in his life and in his work, was an integral part of the United Nations: Dag Hammarskjold.
95. Regrettable problems have arisen in connexion with the applications for membership in the United Nations of the newly-independent countries. It is the view of my delegation that all States which, on achieving their independence, possess the juridical attributes recognized by law and satisfy the requirements laid down in the Charter should be admitted to member ship without being subjected to political manoeuvres which treat them as objects available for exchange, pledge or sale. It is inexplicable to us how leaders who style themselves champions of anti-colonialism can deny a colony which has achieved its independence the right to enter this Organization, with the bald assertion that they would admit it if some other State, protected or proposed by them, were accepted. The consequence is that we have peoples that are the victims of the political strategy of certain great Powers—which are very quick to forget the demagogic harangues they have treated us to on this very subject of colonialism. Equality of treatment—that is what my country stands for.
96. To turn to other fields of our work: we need changes to reflect the fact that there are now a hundred States Members of the Organization, or double our original number. The procedure of the various organs must be revised and their membership must be expanded. It is wrong that in a matter of such plain logic the revision of the Charter should have met with resistance based on petty political considerations so that the functioning of the Organization's entire administration is being hampered. Just as seats are added in the General Assembly chamber and the Committee rooms when new Members are admitted, so should places be added on a proportional basis in the Security Council and the Economic and Social Council, subject to the provisions of the Charter, which require adequate representation in accordance with the principle of geographical distribution. The problem is an easy one to solve and should not be complicated; and we accordingly declare our view that an increase in the membership of the two Councils is an urgent necessity.
97. We have continued to maintain our opinion that nationalist China represents a moral concept which is in harmony with the principles on which the United Nations is founded, and that Red China, on the contrary, is manifestly opposed to the Organization's purposes. The United Nations is made up, at any rate so far as its spirit is concerned, or States which believe that human felicity is to be found in peace, and that all conflicts between nations must be settled by peaceful means. What we receive from communist China is not messages of peace but heralds of war. We cannot but note that Red China does not directly state its desire to come to seek peace and international co-operation within the United Nations. Others speak in its name; as though Red China had not the means to tell the world, in its application for membership, what it would propose to do if it were admitted— whether its intention is to abjure war and become a peace-loving nation dedicated to international cooperation or whether it will come to use the veto or to destroy our Organization. I have been unable to hear from the lips of any of communist China's semi-official advocates, who claim to speak on its behalf, what are the intentions of their principal. Nationalist China is a State; it possesses an entirely legitimate Government, a population of eleven million and a clearly-defined territory; moreover, it has been a bastion of the law. I cannot conceive how we could desert it and agree to its being replaced by aggression and brute force. Accordingly, Costa Rica stands today, as it has always stood, at the side of whoever in its view supports principles and justice. In a matter in which the spirit and the letter of the Charter are at stake, our position is inflexible and we shall hold to it.
98. Our brother Republic of Ecuador has expressed for us the anxiety we feel with regard to the question of Berlin, which is keeping the world on the brink of war. We shall never tire of repeating that the shield of the small nations must be justice. Our sole strength is morality, and our sole objective liberty. For that reason, our support and our co-operation will be forthcoming in any matter that involves the very essence of our way of life. We have no hesitation in supporting Ecuador, which has expressed the hope that those responsible for the German tragedy will realize that Germany cannot be suppressed, that the people of Germany must decide their own fate and that they must be given the freedom to give clear expression to their right of self-determination.
99. The people of Costa Rica have sent me a message asking me to tell the General Assembly that they have symbolized their attitude on the Berlin question by the dispatch of a wagon load of coffee. This message reads as follows;
"The traditionally free people of Costa Rica wish to express their moral support and their deep sympathy for the thousands of refugees who have succeeded in courageously escaping from East Berlin.
"When we go far back into our country's culture, we find that the obvious symbol of our democratic, proud and honest way of life is the richly decorated wagon which is in daily use by our industrious peasants. Such a wagon, carrying a full load of our finest coffee, we send with our affection to a brave ' people which has resolved to break for ever the shackles of tyranny. It carries the sincere greetings of a people dedicated to freedom and democracy.
"On 15 September, Costa Rica's independence day, the 'Freedom Wagon', laden with hundreds of pounds of 'grains of gold' contributed by the people, was paraded through the principal streets of the capital, and crowds of students thronged round it and escorted it to demonstrate the joy they felt on the eve of its dispatch to West Berlin."
This offering is decorated with the following legend
"Freedom Wagon. The people of Costa Rica, desiring to demonstrate their complete support of the cause of the refugees from East German communism, send their traditional wagon, laden with 'grains of gold' plucked from the very heart of the Motherland, as a token of their faith in the ultimate triumph of freedom and of a democratic and united Germany."
That is how Costa Rica has demonstrated its feelings on the German tragedy.
100. The resumption of nuclear tests has spread dismay throughout the world, which feels itself drawn into a struggle which it does not want. We are amazed at this evidence of bad faith. While we were being told of the need for the prohibition of nuclear armaments, it seems that these armaments were being manufactured in such numbers that the stocks available were considered adequate to permit an attempt to terrorize the world by exploding nuclear devices daily for several days, regardless of the fact that the radiation caused, as the Canadian delegation has already pointed out, would affect the health of the peoples.
101. My delegation wishes to remind the Assembly of all the arguments which were advanced a few months ago in support of the appeal made by Morocco and other African countries that France should be called upon to refrain from carrying out nuclear tests in the Sahara. On the basis of these arguments, as also for profoundly humanitarian reasons, my delegation has always been opposed to nuclear tests. So far as concerns these inhuman experiments, we should do well to appeal also to those who are terrorizing the world with the threat of atomic annihilation by proclaiming the destructive power of their infernal machines to have some consideration for the lot of the children and young people of all nations, who are growing up in an atmosphere of anxiety which fills them with uncertainty and with distress for the imminent end of the world. Those responsible must be convinced once and for all that they cannot reduce the world to rubble without themselves being destroyed in the process.
102. My delegation remains particularly grateful to Canada for having invited us, at the fifteenth session
of the General Assembly, to co-sponsor a constructive draft resolution on disarmament; for my small country is so dedicated to the idea of disarmament that its Constitution prohibits the existence of an army. We are still unreservedly in favour of genuine disarmament, and for that reason we support the proposal made by Mr, Kennedy, President of the United States [1013th plenary meeting]. In our view it is not only the great Powers whose armaments raise the threat of great wars, who should disarm. We should like to see the small Powers disarm too, for we feel that armies eat up the very scarce resources of our weak economies, and in most cases serve only to sustain political regimes repugnant to the peoples. In Latin America, at least, there has never been a single dictatorship, whether of the right or the left, that has not based its tyranny on the army. We are against armaments which are used for wars between nations, and we are also against armaments which are used within the frontiers of States to enslave peoples or subject them to the tyranny of Governments lacking majority support.
103. Our real problems are those of economic underdevelopment, which, apart from the material evils it brings in its train, is the source of social injustice caused by inequality among peoples. The principles of the Charter will not be realized until we have left behind the backwardness which at present afflicts the great majority of the human race. The struggle is not in itself an easy one, considering its complexity and the real difficulties it involves. For that reason, we must not, in an enterprise of such grandeur, waste our energies in raking- over the embers of the past to determine the nation or nations responsible for the evil. We must turn to the past only for the purpose of studying the causes and eliminating the origins of the evil, and in no circumstances in order to dissipate our energies in vain recriminations. Costa Rica was once a colony, and it knows how the great Powers, in their struggle for commercial domination, made the colonies the victims of their ambitions, cloaking these with attractive banners decorated with symbols of the ideal. The important thing, I repeat, is to begin the task of extricating ourselves from under-development, and to work hard at it. We in Costa Rica are firmly resolved to put an end to poverty, ignorance and disease, and we know that in this titanic struggle we must be able to rely on the deep understanding and the co-operation of the United Nations. We enthusiastically welcomed the United States "Alliance for Progress" plan, which will be of great help to us in achieving our goal, and which demands of us adequate plans of our own, men trained to carry them out and world markets in which justice prevails.
104. We consider it important to draw attention to some of the essential problems involved in the struggle against under-development. The first thing we have to do is to put our own houses in order, by ensuring that our countries are properly organized to produce what they need to feed themselves adequately, that they are self-sufficient, and that if, because of their agricultural economies, they are exporters of some primary commodity—such as coffee;, in our own case—they have fair markets for their produce. That is where one of the most serious difficulties lies; so much so that until a favourable solution is found there can be no progress in our task. The price of coffee is not fixed by our farmers and producers; it is fixed for us by the buyer—who, however, prices his manufactures on the basis of his costs of production and the standard of living of his workers. We sell very cheap and buy very dear. That is why we say that until this problem is solved there can be no progress; for what is the use to us of a loan to help us develop a new industry, for example, if our basic industry remains sick? We must find a way to stabilize markets. Our coffee, our cotton, our bananas, our sugar must fetch stable prices, allowing for the wages of those who produce them. This problem of prices and their stabilization is not one for Governments alone but for the peoples also; the peoples must, in the anxious times through which the world is now passing, co-operate in solving it—particularly those which have highly-developed economies. We are repeating this because the Press has recently reported a new fall in the price of coffee, and the manufacturers have excitedly announced a reduction of a few cents a pound. Do they know what this reduction of a few cents means to the peasants in our country who produce the coffee? A reduction of one cent on 20 million sacks of coffee at $1.32 per sack, for example, means a loss to the producers of $26,400,000. But there is worse yet. This loss falls upon the ill-fed, diseased and ignorant; in general terms, it falls upon those countries whose economies are based on the agricultural product in question. If the housewives of the highly-developed countries knew what great evils such a reduction of a few cents in the price of a pound of coffee caused, if they knew that it meant greater hunger, less housing, greater poverty for their fellow-men over the seas, they would certainly not accept the few cents they gain—which in any event cannot improve their family budget. We have spoken of these problems before from this rostrum, and we shall be compelled to repeat our words so long as the injustice continues.
105. A new item has been placed on our agenda at Denmark's proposal, relating to the need for a study of over-population [item 84]. In our opinion this problem is not simply one of economics, and we are obliged, because it would have serious implications for the social and political organization of our country—not to speak of its religious organization—to oppose such a study in the form in which it has been proposed. Our society is based on the family, on marriage. Our Civil Code provides that "the object of marriage is procreation and mutual aid". In Costa Rica, marriages take place for the purpose of procreation. Abortion is punishable under the Criminal Code. This is not the time for me to enlarge on the matter, but I must say enough to make it clear that to agree to this new study we should have to transform our social and juridical organization from top to bottom. We do not, of course, deny the importance and seriousness of the problem, but in our view its solution depends essentially on education in all its aspects, which will help families, within the framework of their own moral and religious convictions, to remedy this acute situation.
Let me in conclusion reaffirm our ideological position. That position has in no way changed, since we are a free and independent State by virtue of our ethnic origins, our education in Christian civilization and the fact of our having had our birth in America, which has always been the land of liberty. For that reason, and because in our country we worship God and revere liberty, we have no ideological problem. Our problem, as I have already said, is an economic one; and it is because it appreciates that fact that the Government of the United States has undertaken to join with us in this struggle against under-development, in this fight to do away with poverty, so that to the dignity of the free man may be added his right to satisfy his needs and to enjoy the well-being which the civilization of our day, in its many inventions, has placed, to be enjoyed, within the reach of everyone who labours and earns his bread by the sweat of his brow.