1. I should be remiss, Mr. President, if I did not congratulate you on your accession to the Presidency of this nineteenth session of the General Assembly, the consummation of an outstanding career which has been well served by your exceptional qualities both as diplomat and statesman. Not only have these qualities been recognized by spontaneous acclamation of the General Assembly, but you yourself have won a personal triumph. I should like once more to offer you my congratulations.
2. The ambition of our civilized century has launched mankind on an undertaking as gigantic as it is dangerous, marked by the precipitate progress of an atomic era which will achieve no real dignity unless it encourages the works of reason and uses them to build a harmonious world. But unfortunately it has instead collected together the remnants of discredited historical oppositions and fused them into a new formulation of the idea of coexistence which threatens both the primacy of, and any respect for, the principles of balance and co-operation. Will our modern world emerge unscathed from the arms race and from the ingenious refinement of the forces of destruction which, dispersed as they are throughout the remotest comers of the world, maintain tension and paralyse hope with a vision of doom?
3. The conscience of the world cannot approve the separatist moves and the divisive power of members of a community who, instead of obeying the imperative need to enrich our civilization, prefer to trick out in false finery the triumph of might over right by embarking on an undertaking which awaits in vain the precious collaboration of all and which renders it impossible for each man to receive the just reward of his own efforts.
4. In his stirring message to the Haitian nation and to the peoples of the world, delivered on the nineteenth anniversary of the founding of the United Nations, His Excellency Dr. François Duvalier, life President of the Republic of Haiti, expressed in these terms the principle of the collective responsibility of all nations for the survival of humanity: "At this turning point in my country, the choice is still definitely open. "The awakening of the peoples of the world has broken up the subsoil of human geography to remould it in keeping with the rights of all States to dignity and equality." "All nations, caught up in the hard facts of economic reality and confronted with the permanent threat to peace, whose inescapable challenge makes them all partners in the same destiny, must together write history anew, not a history which they suffer without understanding its intentions and situations, nor a history whose skilfully woven pattern involves the participants in the most unexpected implications, but a history which goes back to the spirit of common sacrifice: a work of justice without which the peace and harmony of the world will remain perpetually in jeopardy." The nations of the world would indeed be happy to contemplate the lineaments of this golden age, this era of co-operation, which the wise and edifying words of the leader of the Duvalier revolution bring still more vividly before our eyes.
5. The fears felt in all regions of the world have in the present circumstances only served to reinforce the universality of the purposes and principles of the Charter of the United Nations. More than ever, the Charter has restored the confidence shaken by inequalities, and confirmed the clearsightedness of that retrospective wisdom which denounces ambition. If these generously inspired basic principles had been kept constantly in mind they would at least, by making clear the dangers of our scarcely consoling reality, and by restoring to the human spirit the essential elements of balance, have been able to improve relations between Powers and win their support for the principle of giving actuality to the universal ideal, and for the needs of man's future. From this point of view, the nineteenth session of the General Assembly has begun its proceedings in most inauspicious circumstances.
6. Article 19 has become both familiar and famous; the extent and nature of the controversy it has aroused, because it touches the basic interests of all participants, will make it famous for generations to come. For after two years of debate in the Assembly the issues involved, which are crucial to the balance of any collective institution, and which were solved by an agreement between the original signatories to the Charter solemnly enshrined in Article 19 of that instrument — the famous Article 19, as we must call it; these issues have become well known to all peoples of the world and to all currents of international opinion accessible to the Press, radio and television, and are assuming the dimensions of a serious problem.
7. Because of its immediacy and urgency, which have increased during the long negotiations for which we have to thank our Secretary-General, U Thant, this problem has today acquired priority importance, or the effect of a condition precedent holding in abeyance the solution of many highly important political, social, economic and humanitarian questions and interrupting the very life of the United Nations; moreover, it has inevitably excited the interest of States and aroused the anxiety of the free world, which awaits a solution based on the responsibility of equal partners.
8. It is to be hoped that the problem will not be further obscured as a result of the debate now taking place. So long as this conforms to the principles proper to an international forum, and so long as it is directed to the achievement of a common goal, it will not give rise to misunderstandings or incident which might threaten what has already been accomplished.
9. Is the question one of interpreting the rules of United Nations expenditure? The International Court of Justice at The Hague ruled on the merits of this question in its advisory opinion, and the General Assembly confirmed the legal validity of that ruling by its majority vote approving a resolution [1874 (S-IV)] which was in a sense the judgement of a court of last appeal. It is thus a matter of established law that United Nations expenditure includes, in addition to the regular budgetary expenditure, the financing of peace-keeping operations in the Middle East and the Congo. In view of the mandatory nature of the General Assembly resolution, therefore, all Member States, given the irrefutable principle of collective obligations, are responsible for this expenditure.
10. On the other hand, can it be that the parties who have had recourse to arbitration, a universally recognized procedure, are refusing to accept the decision of the judges of the tribunal, although they had not previously challenged them?
11. Is it the intention of article 24, which has been invoked not without the unacknowledged purpose of complicating the debate, to give the Security Council, upon which it confers the high moral responsibility of maintaining peace, exclusive responsibility for authorizing expenditure resulting from operations decided on by the Council? That would be rather as though by thus delegating powers to other organs in order to ensure the effectiveness of United Nations action, the organ from which those powers emanate, that is the General Assembly, the original repository of rights and the expression of our common will, were revoking or renouncing those very powers.
12. That is not to say that the Charter, under Article 19, should follow the principles of internal law and rely on coercive action or the mandatory force of decisions, as organized societies do for their own protection. The Charter calls more than ever for that high spirit of understanding without which the respect for obligations undertaken by the Organization which is incumbent on each of its Members cannot exist.
13. It is the duty of each of us to work together for the success of the Organization’s mission, a task in which the sole reward will be the safeguarding of peace, and to refrain from involving the United Nations in the throes of a regrettable controversy and thereby hastening the collapse of our Organization, which is already undermined by an almost chronic financial crisis which desperate efforts have not yet ended.
14. In supporting the view that Article 19 of the Charter is applicable in this case, the Republic of Haiti has underestimated neither the collective responsibility of Members nor the importance of the moral obligation resting on all of us to contribute to the work of civilization and improvement which the United Nations is carrying out.
15. Unfortunately the lesson which the Republic of Haiti, a country which like the other under-developed countries of Latin America, Asia and Africa has attempted despite its own threatened and precarious economy to safeguard its voting rights in conformity with the provisions of Article 19, has drawn from the experience of this controversy is a very unedifying one.
16. May I therefore express the hope that the Assembly will understand the significance of the example of the less favoured countries, and that, in keeping with the principle of the judicial equality of partners in an international community, the Members affected by the application of Article 19 will show respect for principles and for the theory of obligations and will give convincing proof of their co-operation by making contributions to re-establish the finances of the United Nations, so that the Organization can continue to assist, at least, in maintaining the already too precarious peace and balance of the world, and to carry out, through its specialized agencies, its vast operational programme for the good of the world's peoples.
17. The United Nations will remain in jeopardy so long as an honourable solution is not found to the problem of Article 19, upon which the very life of its organs depends. We are on the horns of a dilemma: the use of delaying procedure may bring about the much-desired co-operation, but on the other hand by the end of the adjournment the conciliation of the diverging interests may have been rendered even more difficult — at a time when our century, with its rapid advances, is more and more throwing up crises of the most unpredictable nature.
18. We must mobilize the means which can be offered only by an organization which possesses both the qualities of youthful vitality and the attributes of an authority enriched by the experience of the past.
19. For after the nineteen years of our Organization's existence, which covers the entire post-war period, the world is still faced with an explosive situation.
20. Despite the awakening to independence of the African peoples, which with their element of contrast are bringing harmony to the ethnic composition of the United Nations, and despite the Assembly resolutions which marked the year of decolonization, apartheid continues to be enforced in all its savage rigour in the Republic of South Africa. International condemnation, to which the Haitian Government has added its own condemnation of the inhuman practices carried out against its racial brothers, whose only crime is to aspire to happiness and liberty, has failed to bring about the change of heart through which the principles of the Charter might be able to transform decline into true recovery.
21. The Mediterranean area has been no less tried by bloody events. The fruitless efforts of the Security Council are sufficient to indicate how complex are the emotional relations which exist between two communities, relations which the Powers turn to account in the shrewd calculations by which they hope to restore their supremacy. I refer to Cyprus, where incendiary bombs and fratricidal conflicts have sown disasters and sorrows whose memory is still a matter of concern to the organs of the United Nations.
22. The Haitian Government, greatly exercised, has expressed both to the Secretary-General, U Thant, and to the Security Council, its view that the United Nations must hasten measures to end this bitter situation, adding that any practical solution should preferably take into account the realities of the social and economic context in which the two groups exist, that in its opinion there is only one community, the Cypriot people, and that a federal constitution, guided by the evolution of its predecessors, should unify the States in an autonomous system which will not maintain incompatibility between Greek and Turkish Cypriots, but will progressively effect the political absorption of the aftermath of history and bring about the union of the two groups :in their common interest.
23. There are many other important problems on the agenda of this nineteenth session which I would beg leave not to discuss, because I am sure that you have already given them considerable thought and that all of them those which were not resolved at previous sessions and those which are new — will be taken up in the various organs and committees of the United Nations.
24. Another equally compelling concern pervades my thoughts as I speak from this rostrum: emotion, and an attachment to my country that is more than physical, impel me to describe to you the true Haiti, as manifested in so many ways by its people.
25. In that chosen land, Haiti, with its boundless natural wealth, lives the most generous nation in history. Predestined for the noble achievements of humanity, it has always demonstrated selflessness and brotherly love. This nation, which has given freely of its blood and its energy, wasted by toil, hunger and unrelenting struggles for its imperishable ideals, has thereby ceaselessly enriched contemporary Civilization.
26. In pursuing its glorious mission and in keeping with its historical tradition, it has never been content with less than the very summits of altruism, where brotherhood begins, where the birth of every new nation recalls the great epic of 1804, where the clamour for justice revives the glorious memory of our forefathers and rekindles in their sons the indomitable courage which has lighted the beacon of freedom over the cradles of all our oppressed brethren ever since the former colony of Santo Domingo was burned to the ground.
27. Savannah was a striking instance of that altruism. In one of the states of North America, Georgia, which might have been thought to be impervious to the appeal of degrading racism and which, by a surprising shift in historical direction, is today following a contrary course, more than 600, Haitians gave their lives as the tribute of brotherhood to the cause of the emancipation of the American Negro. Their lives were lost during the four years of merciless struggle of the War between the States; theirs was the same blood which only yesterday was shed in America in the name of the equality of all men without distinction as to race or colour.
28. Even more eloquent proof of that altruism is found in the testimonial offered by Simon Bolivar, the Liberator, to Alexander Petion, the first head of State of the first Negro Republic in the world, who had so often given him the material and moral help he needed for the realization of his great dream of emancipation of the peoples of Latin America. That testimonial, which should have appeared on the flyleaf of their history, was couched in the following terms: "In my proclamation to the people of Venezuela and in the decrees which I shall have to issue, I do not know whether I may be allowed to express my heartfelt feelings towards your Excellency and to leave to posterity an unimpeachable monument to your philanthropy." Such lofty sentiments, which are bound up with the militant action of Toussaint Louverture, James, Desalines and Miranda, nurtured the seeds of freedom and brotherhood sown by Abraham Lincoln, Jose Marti, Benito Juarez and so many other anonymous heroes for the benefit of the peoples of this hemisphere and the future of all mankind.
29. Those rights, essential to human dignity, have been the guideposts of our mission. When a nation stands behind its leader to secure their triumph, the vicissitudes of its history are of no consequence; the rights become all the more vigorous and universal because they acquire a sort of resistance as a result of changes in the social system. They have taken root so strongly that in-the end they will become part of the world conscience and no government worthy of that name will be able to disregard them without corrupting national sentiment and renouncing its identity as a free State and its glorious past; and national policy will have to ally itself with any undertaking that seeks to champion them.
30. That explains the significance of Haitian revolutionary policy, which has become a Duvalier policy inasmuch as it has conferred upon His Excellency Dr. François Duvalier, a leader, a scholar and a father, the exceedingly heavy burden of a lifetime presidency.
31. The realities of Haitian life demonstrate beyond any doubt the usefulness and necessity of perpetuating the personal power of Duvalier, whose slightest actions and initiatives have been so felicitous as to transform the nature of the relationship between the ruler and the ruled into deep respect for authority. That authority, which by its firmness tempered by solicitude inspires the confidence peoples must feel in great promises, is sustained by the high regard in which it is held by a people who have long been threatened by the chronic evils of under development and have all too often been oppressed by the vestiges of an anachronistic neo-colonialism.
32. Haiti’s history of poverty, hunger, sickness and illiteracy is a burdensome heritage for which the nation of tomorrow must not blame the workers of today. The energy which led the heroes of 1804 to overpower the bastions of slavery must not be allowed to decay. The lofty and generous vision of the future of the Haitian nation which was the dream of Toussaint Louverture must not be destroyed by the disaffection and absenteeism of his descendants. The great red beacon of the revolution which lighted our heroic past and guided our destiny as a people has rekindled the fever of achievement. It has aroused all the dynamic forces of our people, who hear only one voice, that of their leader. Thus the national consciousness invests in him the free and full exercise of sovereignty.
33. Not only does the enthusiasm of the Haitian masses continually enhance the spontaneous devotion of a whole nation to a man who symbolizes and has always symbolized its hopes, who has unfalteringly assumed the collective burden and who is recognized as father and master, but it becomes more than just an emotional loyalty: it is strengthened by one primary purpose, namely, to augment the personalized political power of the nation through which it is certain to find the means of solving its social and economic problems and of consolidating each new achievement.
34. The solution of the age-old problems of alienation and exploitation is incompatible with pluralism and partisanship, which simply provide opportunities for the enemy to undermine the revolution and the integrity of the nation. It can be achieved only by the action of personal power in organizing political life according to a system which virtually excludes any other. The lifetime presidency of His Excellency Dr. François Duvalier is both a programme and a salvation. Its main object is to bring about the rehabilitation of the Haitian and his environment.
35. The masses in the countryside, held down all too long by the concentration of wealth in the hands of a ruling minority, lived in conditions of virtual slavery: their labour was exploited, their lands despoiled, their sweat and blood wasted and their lives endangered by social injustice. Social injustice, ignorance and sickness, working hand in hand with an obsolete racism, made it easier for a privileged oligarchy seeking to direct the public good according to its whims and ambitions to perpetrate its offensive excesses.
36. The revolution of 1946, consolidated by the Duvalier revolution of 1956, by awakening the consciousness of all social classes and by proclaiming the right of every citizen to dignity, swept away the age-old myths of class superiority fostered by neocolonialism and demanded the just price of the blood of the descendants of former slaves sacrificed in the name of liberty and equality, who inhabit our cities, our towns and our countryside.
37. Its political philosophy, which is the measure of its achievements, is based on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which proclaims the faith of the peoples of the world in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person, in equal rights fqr men and women, essential to social advancement and to the achievement of better living conditions.
38. Although these principles have been constantly directed towards the building of an ideal society by overcoming the imperfections and selfish instincts which distort human relationships, nevertheless, because they are both reasonable and practical concepts governing human conduct, they have not overlooked the need for the co-operation of the political authorities, whose primary aim is to strive for the ideals they proclaim for the benefit of the people as a whole.
39. These principles have a universality akin to the essence of private law. By condemning retrogression and minority trends regarded as anti-social, anti-humanitarian and discriminatory, they unquestionably strengthen the sovereign rights of a State like Haiti, which is seeking to build a new order on the ruins of the neo-colonialism skilfully maintained by the traditional enemies of the people and, under the banner of Dessalines, to combat the eternal gravediggers of the Haitian nation who, by accepting at face value the expressed intentions of rank interventionists, are abetting what is in fact a flagrant violation of those human rights.
40. The Duvalier revolution has developed a clearer vision of the facts and of the conditions for progress than that of the revolutionaries of 1804. Its aim is to establish genuine Haitian democracy, democracy of the people, and, notwithstanding the devastation caused by natural disasters, to initiate an era of national rebirth. The François Duvalier labour code, the François Duvalier rural code, the programme for the rehabilitation of the countryside, the literacy campaign being feverishly carried out by the national organization for community education, are not the only evidence of government action, all of it permeated by social justice.
41. Extended to the regional scale, the new Duvalier revolution is an invitation to all the sister republics of America, from Tierra del Fuego to Alaska, to rid themselves unconditionally of the infantilism and congenital impotence to which we have fallen prey as a result of our chronic under-development.
42. The revolution has brought about a reappraisal of all human values beginning with the abolition of slavery, of all resources, all achievements and all the implications of demographic pressures and man’s impact on his environment. In response to the moral demands being made at this turning point in history, it is planning a liberation from all servitudes, it demands the equitable redistribution of wealth, the revision of the concepts of solidarity and co-operation, a new stride forward in integration and the right of the peoples of America to the boons of civilization and to happiness, without which the promise of today’s alliance will remain unfulfilled like illusions of progress.
43. Those are the desiderata of the Haitian revolution, which brings into close balance the programme of the rehabilitation of the Haitian people and the salvation of their sacred patrimony. That patrimony is being threatened by murderous waves of invasion directed against the territorial integrity and constitutional order of Haiti by gangs of refugees, aided and abetted by mercenaries and by the duplicity of certain foreign Powers.
44. That is Haitian reality and it is no different from that of the under-developed peoples of Latin America, Africa and Asia, which are having an ever greater influence on the trends of modern civilization and imposing a practical concept of co-operation under which a balanced international community depends on the political, social and economic stability of each of its members, and recourse to force, which is really incompatible with the spirit of peace and contrary to the basic right of the sovereignty of States, is prohibited.
45. Although a calculation of the wealth of our atomic civilization shows the advances of science, technology and industry, which have built skyscrapers, superhighways and space vehicles, an appraisal of the dividends from the shares in our international community cannot but demonstrate how poorly that wealth has been managed and how the preferential basis on which it is being distributed is continuing to widen the gap between the most favoured nations and the most needy.
46. May I, in conclusion, ask this Assembly to ponder the great theory of co-operation of His Excellency Francois Duvalier, a wise statesman and a man deeply imbued with the values which should govern international relations. I quote: "As I reaffirm, on behalf of the Haitian people and Government, my devotion to the purposes and principles of the United Nations, 1 should like to propose to this human society, so often deluded by makeshift solutions, a more satisfactory adaptation of the principle of co-operation to the positive values and pledges of nations. Without such cooperation, we cannot foster world prosperity or stability which are the essential prerequisites for peace and friendly relations between States. Such co-operation imposes the obligation of working together on the basis of equality of rights and mutual advantage, the obligation to respect the interests and needs of other States and not to interfere in their internal affairs; the obligation, finally, to provide assistance in every way to the less favoured nations, in the interest of human dignity, preservation of the peace and the happiness of peoples."