1. "Peace, universal peace is undeniably the supreme good" said President Ahidjo at this rostrum just two years ago [1244th meeting, para. 30]. The subject of peace has been developed by the many distinguished speakers who have preceded me, among whom I should like to mention particularly the significant presence of the highest authority of Catholic Christianity, His Holiness Pope Paul VI. Peace is the boon for which mankind, individually and collectively, has been searching since its beginnings; it is the raison d’être and the aim of the United Nations.
2. I should like to put before you, frankly and sincerely, the point of view of the Federal Republic of Cameroon on this subject, in the hope that my modest contribution, added to so many others, may help to build a better world and eliminate the scourge of war and the tyranny of poverty.
3. Before doing so, may I, Mr. President, associate myself with the many representatives who have congratulated you on your election to the high office which you so worthily occupy and who, through you, have paid a well-deserved tribute to your dear country, Italy, with which Cameroon maintains relations of co-operation based on mutual respect, esteem and friendship. May our Organization, under the wise and clear-sighted guidance of a statesman of your culture and stature, be strengthened in its difficult task of fostering and maintaining world peace.
4. May I also, on behalf of my country and on my own behalf, offer sincere congratulations to that great son of Africa, our brother Mr. Quaison-Sackey, Minister for Foreign Affairs of Ghana, who had the rare distinction of guiding the difficult nineteenth session of the General Assembly and of enabling the Organization to survive the lamentable paralysis which had been forced on it and which still threatens it in its striving for the noble aims which are so dear to all of us.
5. I must not fail to take this opportunity to congratulate the Secretary-General, U Thant, whose devotion to the United Nations arouses great admiration and esteem in my country, which has full confidence in him.
6. Finally, it gives me pleasure and satisfaction to welcome the three new members of the Afro-Asian family which have recently joined us: the States of the Gambia, the Maldive Islands and Singapore. On behalf of the Government of Cameroon I offer their peoples every good wish.
7. I have to admit that ours is a sick world. It is a sick world because there is no peace, sick because peace is disturbed, because peace is threatened.
8. As with a sick person who is to be cured, there must be a frank and sincere diagnosis of this suffering world. Indeed, mankind must diagnose its own illness, must criticize itself, must carry out its own examination of conscience. Then it will discover that the root causes of its ills are, as I intend to show, failure to respect fundamental human rights, the fearful race towards weapons of mass destruction, the complex and dangerous crisis facing the United Nations, the continued opposition of certain backward and retrograde Powers to the decolonization of vast territories which they have occupied and are trying to keep under their domination in flagrant violation of the sacred principle of the right of peoples to self-determination and, lastly, the refusal of some people to acknowledge the virtues of genuine peaceful coexistence,, which is applicable not only to political ideologies but to all communities, all religions and all races. Finally, mankind will also discover that its ills are inseparable from the existence of utterly anachronistic economic and commercial systems.
9. Mankind will then be able to prescribe remedies whose suitability and effectiveness I shall endeavour to explain later; administered with faith and courage, these remedies will save it from the collective suicide which threatens it but which, I am convinced, it truly desires to avoid.
10. In embarking on the diagnosis of our sick world, I shall begin fey dealing with human rights, those immutable and fundamental rights on which the full development of the human person's enormous potentialities depends. Unfortunately, this development of the individual, an absolutely essential condition for a lasting peace, is still being hindered by evils which it has become more imperative than ever before to eliminate. Yes, by fostering in himself everything that is "infinitely small" at the expense of the "infinitely great", man is imprisoning himself in racism and intolerance. Worse still, despite the many eloquent lessons provided by history and the science he has not yet accepted the principles which constitute the pillars of the Organization: the equality of men and their sacred right to the pursuit of individual or collective happiness. What a strange contradiction! What a curious disparity between the hackneyed phrases of pious speeches and the unjustifiable inaction of some of us!
11. Thus it was that a few days ago [1342nd meeting] we listened to the spokesman for the Johannesburg impostors speak of this rostrum in defence of what is called apartheid and is in reality the humiliation, exploitation and even murder of man by man, all because of a difference in skin pigmentation. You listened to him, gentlemen, and it is strange that his words have not led' you to uncover the threat to peace.
12. We, for our part, still consider the pernicious doctrine defended by Verwoerd and his accomplices to be a regrettable creation of the man who, small, vicious, but still human, commits himself to violence in the hope of thus ensuring his own safety. Yes, his words remind us of the terrible experience which the world underwent barely a quarter of a century ago and which, as you know, was war.
13. Should our action therefore amount merely to healing the wounds of war? Action by the Organization and by each of its Members is needed more than ever today. It is our bounden duty, the fulfilment of which would obviate the need for the peoples of South Africa to kill one another, for the African countries to intervene and for men who honour justice and respect for the human person to come to the aid of those who would be fighting to rid the world of a shameful scourge. Is it not a conflict of serious and unforeseeable proportions that is in prospect? It is, and the Members of the Organization must avert it, must avert this war which undoubtedly threatens us. I feel fond to deplore the extreme passivity of certain great Powers and their dilatory strategy of continually inviting us to begin, resume or reopen consideration of the applicability of sanctions to South Africa. Meanwhile, the Verwoerd régime is institutionalizing its criminal ideology.
14. No, the time has come for the international community to shoulder its responsibilities. In any case, as we all know, the 1964 London Conference on Economic Sanctions against South Africa reached the conclusion that economic and commercial sanctions are economically necessary, politically desirable, and lawful. Sanctions represent the last chance for the international community to solve the thorny problem of apartheid peacefully. In the name of Cameroon, of Africa and, indeed, of mankind, I declare to the Assembly and to all the Governments represented here that the only road to peace lies in the genuine application of sanctions, under the terms and in the spirit of Chapter VII of the United Nations Charter, to South Africa, which persists in its odious policy of apartheid.
15. As I have said, apartheid is really no more than one manifestation of the many barriers that man contrives to raise to impede man's development. Yes, apartheid is a manifestation of racism to which my country is fortunately not subject. Racism, too, is merely one aspect of all the forms of moral and human under-development from which our world is still suffering. My country denounces It in all its aspects. My country also solemnly condemns every obstacle to the full development of man's potentialities, every attack on his liberties, every distortion of his rights.
16. This is one of the important remedies we prescribe for fostering and maintaining the peace of this world in which free-born man, man of every epoch, should be able to live in all dignity.
17. Unfortunately, there are many other threats to peace which cause us concern, among them the arms race. At a time when hunger and poverty are prevalent in many regions of the world, there are countries in other regions which are wasting resources of a scale unprecedented in the world's history by manufacturing and accumulating weapons so destructive that peace is seriously threatened.
18. The Kellog-Briand Pact of l928, which outlawed war, is no more than a memory of the past. The lessons of history, and in particular of the two recent wars, with their painful consequences for mankind, no longer seem to be of any value whatsoever. The frightening arms race challenges the principle of peaceful settlement of disputes, although that principle is enshrined in the United Nations Charter.
19. Worse still, the possession of nuclear weapons, by conferring power and prestige on the State which has them, is a temptation to a growing number of countries, thus making the safety of mankind even more precarious.
20. It is therefore imperative that all responsible men should face the problem of disarmament with at least a minimum of goodwill and in a spirit of cooperation and realism. As President Ahmadou Ahidjo said during the eighteenth session of the General Assembly:
"... the process of true disarmament must be set in motion, and everything that represents a permanent threat of destruction hanging over mankind must be destroyed. We must achieve complete and controlled disarmament which will lead to a peace such as Jaurés defined at the beginning of this century, 'a deep-rooted, lasting, organized, final peace'." [1244th meeting, para. 33.]
21. The Federal Republic of Cameroon therefore advocates the adoption of the following parallel and simultaneous measures:
(1) The Moscow Treaty on the partial banning of nuclear weapons tests, which gave rise to confident hopes, should be extended to underground tests, so that the entire process of the manufacture of nuclear weapons may be stopped.
(2) The proliferation of nuclear weapons must be ended.
(3) My Government associates itself with the recent initiative designed to induce all States to undertake, in a way that has yet to be determined, never to use nuclear weapons.
(4) My Government is strongly in favour of the destruction of stockpiles of nuclear weapons.
22. In this connexion, my Government deplores the slow pace of the work done by the Eighteen-Nation Committee at Geneva, especially as the Disarmament Commission at its most recent meetings in New York this summer laid down a precise programme of work with a clearly established order of priorities.
23. This is the way in which my country would like to see the problem of disarmament approached. Furthermore, in order to give an impetus to the work of the Eighteen-Nation Committee at Geneva and to invest it with a certain authority, my Government would like to see a world disarmament conference convened without delay. It therefore associated itself with several non-aligned countries at Cairo last year in putting forward the idea of such a conference, an idea which was taken up and adopted by the Disarmament Commission with the support of a very large majority of its members.
24. The United Nations is not immune to the convulsions which are shaking the world. The crisis which has been sapping its strength ever since its establishment, which reached its culmination during the most recent session of the General Assembly and which still persists, offers depressing evidence of this fact. It is hot my purpose, however, to analyse that crisis or to go into its history. I shall confine myself to an examination of its most important aspects as they are seen by my Government.
25. The first of these aspects is the desire of the great Powers to transfer to a world organization the spirit of the former Concert of Europe. Although the United Nations was born of the general desire for an organization capable of ensuring that there would never again be war, the small countries' role in the Organization is rather limited. It seems to us that with the; increase in the number of those countries, particularly as a result of the process of decolonization, they should be given an increasingly important place in the principal organs of the United Nations, which constitutes a forum for all.
26. As the Charter of the United Nations affirms the sovereignty of States and their juridical equality, it would be appropriate to translate those principles into fact by allowing the small countries to contribute effectively to the preparation of the decisions that are taken here. This international Organization should be made more democratic and its structure should be adapted to the realities of the contemporary world. My world would like here and now to express its satisfaction at the Enlargement of the Security Council and the Economic and Social Council.
27. The second aspect of the internal crisis of the United Nations is, as our Secretary-General, U Thant, so rightly indicated a short time ago at San Francisco, the contradiction between the national interests of States and the general interests of the international community. There is, indeed, such a contradiction — or, to put it more exactly, there is an absence of the will to abide by the principles laid down in the Charter, particularly when those principles conflict with national interests.
28. The third and final aspect is the fact that some countries pay scant heed to the decisions taken here. Yes, once again, it is the attitude of South Africa and Portugal in particular which comes to mind in this connexion. That attitude, in our opinion, can lead only to the slow but sure destruction of the United Nations.
29. In these circumstances, the United Nations certainly cannot discharge its principal responsibility, that of maintaining peace. We think that the General Assembly and the Security Council should co-operate whenever there is a breach of the peace or a threat to peace. In this connexion, the Report of the Special Committee on Peace-Keeping Operations and the principles set forth therein constitute a valid basis for discussion with a view to the establishment of flexible but effective machinery which would enable the United Nations to carry out its responsibilities.
30. Finally, I come to colonization. When one speaks of decolonization — or rather of non-decolonization — one has in mind in particular certain parts of Africa where this phenomenon still exists despite the assaults which, thanks largely to the efforts of the United Nations, have been made upon it. Instead of helping to mobilize all our resources for the only truly worthy struggle — the struggle of man for man and not the struggle for man against man - inveterate and unrepentant colonialists continue to impose an odious régime of exploitation and humiliation on millions of human beings who are our brothers. In Southern Rhodesia, in Angola, in Mozambique, in Guinea (Bissau), in South West Africa and elsewhere, men born free are subjected to injustice and sham.
31. As far as Southern Rhodesia is concerned, I must confess that my Government finds the vacillating attitude of the United Kingdom surprising and disquieting in the extreme. Like the other African countries which are members, of the Organization of African Unity, Cameroon, desirous of preserving the peace which is so dear to us all, urges the United Nations to remind the United Kingdom of its responsibilities in that Territory, particularly with a view to preventing any unilateral declaration of independence in Southern Rhodesia by the Ian Smith team.
32. With regard to the Portuguese colonies, my country deeply deplores the attitude of all those who, while claiming to be friends of Africa, nevertheless continue to help Portugal in its desperate effort to retain its hold in that continent. From this rostrum Cameroon urgently appeals to all countries to associate themselves with the efforts of the Organization of African Unity to put an end to the enslavement by Portugal of the peoples of Mozambique, Angola and so-called Portuguese Guinea.
33. As far as South West Africa in concerned, Cameroon, Africa and — we hope — all the Members of the United Nations will refuse to accept a fait accompli in that Territory.
34. Self-determination is a sacred principle. The Declaration on the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples must be implemented to the
full so that colonialism must be totally eradicated once and for all.
35. As I have mentioned the name of the Organization of African Unity, I should like to recall our philosophy with regard to this institution, which is very dear to us Cameroonians and whose existence is entirely in conformity with Article 52 of the United Nations Charter. The Organization of African Unity seems to us to be both a stage of the movement towards universality and a field of experimentation where we can test the principles on the basis of which my country believes that a better world can be built.
36. The United Nations itself, which, if it is to be viable, must avoid utopianism, should resolutely attack the problems of economic and social development within the framework of regional regroupings and should, first and foremost, teach all its Members the meaning of tolerance and respect for the equal sovereignty of all.
37. On this basis Cameroon is firmly confident that Africa will one day achieve unity in freedom and peace. It most earnestly cherishes the Same hope for all the other parts of the world and looks forward to the day when America, Europe, Asia, Oceania and Africa will join in a great celebration commemorating the end of poverty, the end of injustice, the end of war.
38. Africa with its vestiges of the colonial era is not, unfortunately, the only part of the world where there is trouble, Europe, Asia and the Middle East, where many hotbeds of tension persist, have their troubles too. Many solutions have been advocated in one area or another. All of them are indicative of our common desire to safeguard peace. Cameroon, moved by that same desire, urgently recommends negotiation as the only means of settling all these disputes.
39. Thus, with scrupulous respect for the Security Council resolutions calling for a cease-fire, we urge India and Pakistan, those two brothers in our great Afro-Asian family, to refrain from applying any solution or taking any step which would have the effect of aggravating the controversy dividing them. It is essential that they should do so, for the persistence of a state of tension in that part of the world, where so much effort must still be made to promote economic and social development, would place on the United Nations the terrible responsibility of finding and imposing a solution which might be a harsh one for both parties.
40. We are likewise in full sympathy with the people of Viet-Nam, who have suffered so much and so long not only from war but also and primarily from foreign intervention. Cameroon has no doubt whatever that this sister nation must be allowed to choose in full freedom the régime which it prefers. Let the military at last withdraw and let the diplomats heal the deep wounds which too many years of suffering have inflicted on the Viet-Namese.
41. Let the German people, to whom we are bound by very special historic time, also find peace after a fratricidal war, the last vestiges of which we earnestly hope will disappear.
42. In all the other conflicts, may the opposing parties, realizing that “all they that take the sword shall perish with the sword”, put an end to the horrible spectacle with which war confronts us, bring their weapons to the forge to be transformed into useful tools and sit down at the conference table to negotiate.
43. The threat to world peace does not come solely from the grave situations to which I have referred. The condition of under-development which is common to the greater part of the human race is also unquestionably one of the most formidable dangers confronting it.
44. It is particularly significant that the twentieth session of the General Assembly is being held just half-way through the United Nations Development Decade and after the first session of the historic United Nations Conference on Trade and Development. These special circumstances should give each of us an increased awareness of his responsibilities with regard to the development problems of the backward countries. First and foremost, it would be advisable to take stock in order to establish whether the hopes which the Organization had aroused in the less favoured countries had been fulfilled and whether the machinery established, especially as regards the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, is such as to enable us to reach the goals we have set ourselves.
45. So far as the United Nations Development Decade is concerned, the Organization decided that by the end of this period a minimum annual rate of economic growth of 5 per cent should be achieved in the developing countries. Ha this goal, which could not be described as ambitious, been achieved? Definitely not. This is clear from the statement made at the end of the thirty-ninth session of the Economic and Social Council by its President, who said, inter alia:
"It should be recalled, however, that this session opened with the acknowledgement that the results obtained up to the mid-point of the United Nations Development Decade were disappointing; that the gap between rich and poor countries, measures by the per capita income, was steadily widening; that what could be expected of life differed shockingly from region to region, because of the difference in health standards and disparities in nutrition; that the highest rates of population growth were to be found in the poor countries and that the population question was one of the greatest worries; that agricultural output was not increasing sufficiently, particularly in the countries which had the most mouths to feed; that the assistance provided by the developed countries and the multilateral financing institutions was insufficient to support the efforts made by the 'Third World’ to achieve development; that the indebtedness of the capital-importing countries was placing an extremely heavy burden on them, which was difficult to carry."
This is not a reassuring picture. It should give US serious food for thought.
46. If the results for this first half of the Decade are on the whole disappointing, can we hope that the Trade and Development Board, which we established a year ago by resolution 1995 (XIX), will function effectively and satisfactorily? Despite the untiring efforts continually exerted by Mr. Prebisch, the Secretary-General of the Conference, to whom I should like to pay a well-deserved tribute on-behalf of my delegation, we cannot close our eyes to the hard facts.
47. The implementation of the recommendations adopted by the Conference is meeting with the most serious obstacles. In many cases, the industrialized countries are finding in their development a common denominator for opposing the legitimate demands of the less favoured countries, thus refusing to honour the recommendations for which they themselves voted. Moreover, while they are able to agree to oppose the developing countries, as I have just said, the developed countries are no longer agreed among themselves as soon as the implementation of a recommendation requires the improvement of their respective economic systems. Then they no longer hesitate to transform the Conference into a confrontation, where the developing countries find themselves faced with a false problem — the problem of having to choose between a particular economic system used by this or that country.
48. The developing countries, for their part, are striving with the means at their disposal to put into practice the principles and recommendations of the Final Act of the Geneva Conference. In Latin America, Asia and Africa, efforts are being made to achieve organized economic growth. Regional integration, harmonized Industrialization and development banks exist or are envisaged in each of the regions I have mentioned. The assistance of the United Nations regional economic commissions is extremely useful in this respect. Our efforts do not stop there, however; we think that wider co-operation would accelerate our process of economic development.
49. Consequently, within the framework of sub-regional co-operation, my Government has signed the treaty creating the Central African Customs and Economic Union, which at present comprises the Central African Republic, the Congo (Brazzaville), Gabon, Chad and Cameroon. My country is also co-operating with other neighbouring countries — Nigeria, Chad and Niger — in the development of the basin of Lake Chad.
50. At the national level, my Government is trying to create better living conditions in the country through the diversification of crops, the stabilization of prices for certain exports such as cocoa, coffee and groundnuts, and the national industrialization of the country by the creation of institutions suitable for rapid economic development.
51. On the subject of economic co-operation with the industrialized countries, allow me to reaffirm here that my Government remains profoundly attached to the principles of international co-operation among States, with mutual respect for sovereignty. It was for this reason that Cameroon signed the Convention of Association with the European Economic Community, which provides a means of assisting the developing countries, particularly by establishing the necessary machinery for technical and financial assistance. We think that similar measures should be adopted at the international level to accelerate the economic development of the less developed countries. In this connexion, one of the recommendations of the Geneva Conference requests each industrial country to devote 1 per cent of its national income to international economic assistance. But how many countries represented here can say that they have honoured the unanimous vote they took on this occasion?
52. My Government supports all realistic and effective forms of economic co-operation, especially when, as is the case in most of the developing countries, the efforts made at the national level are in danger of being nullified by excessive fluctuations in commodity prices.
53. The studies of the United Nations show clearly that the developing countries' share in world exports has decreased still further over the past five years, as a result of the decline in commodity prices. The great London weekly, The Economist, wrote a few weeks ago:
"The vitally important exports from many tropical countries in Latin America, the West Indies and Africa are now” being sold at prices which are lower, in absolute terms, than those prevailing at the worst moments of the slump between the two wars."
This is true of coffee, sugar and, above all, cocoa, of which my country is one of the largest producers. For the latter commodity, in particular, prices have never been so low as this year. The efforts made by my Government to stabilize prices at the national level will now be useless, for our Stabilization Fund can no longer bear the great weight of supporting prices in view of their continual and catastrophic decline. We are therefore awaiting with great impatience the results of the meeting of the Working Party on Prices and Quotas of the United Nations Cocoa Conference, which is to be held at Geneva on 18 October 1965 and one of whose principal objectives is to fix a minimum guaranteed price for the 1965-1966 season. It is essential that our planters should be able to receive a just remuneration for the work they do.
54. Generally speaking, we in Cameroon consider that only market organization by the conclusion of international commodity agreements can enable the developing countries to obtain fair, remunerative and stable prices. We feel that the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, which is responsible for supervising the conclusion of such agreements, would have an easier task if the Governments represented here applied their political will to the attainment of such noble objectives.
55. This is how, at this stage of history, we see our suffering world. We are overwhelmed by a feeling of deep and serious anxiety about the sad future which awaits mankind if it fails to become aware of its ills and, above all, if it does not courageously and faithfully apply to them the remedies I have just , recommended, which are for us the Cameroonian way to peace. Yes, the Cameroonian way to the peace which depends on our joint efforts, the peace which will be achieved only by our concerted actions, the peace which we all seek.
56. Let us say it out loud: we do not mean only the peace which the prosperous nations tend to identify with their own security and simply with the absence of armed conflict, but also — and necessarily — the true peace, which is a framework in which human beings with a health spirit and a minimum of well-being can thrive in the plenitude and grandeur for which the Creator destined them.
57. If war is the enemy of peace and if peace is the supreme good of mankind, why should we not be the enemies of war and, in contrast, the friends of peace? Yes, the true peace as I have just defined it, the peace on which the President of the Federal Republic of Cameroon focused the attention of the General Assembly at its eighteenth session, still merits contemplation and I should like once again to quote the memorable words which my Head of State spoke on that occasion:
"Twice in half a century, this civilization — our civilization — has shown that it knows how to wage war. Let us now prove that it is capable of keeping the peace.” [1244th meeting, para. 102.]