77. Madam President, I should like to begin my
statement in this general debate by tendering to you the
respectful greetings of the Costa Rican nation, which
regards your election to the august office of President of
the General Assembly of the United Nations as a symbol
and a tribute — a tribute to your outstanding personal
merits, which enabled you to win academic laurels despite
the adverse circumstances which stood in the way of your
thirst for achievement, and to accomplish your tasks as
capably as you have done in the distinguished offices which
you have held in other sectors of this international
Organization — and a symbol of the progress achieved by the
constant striving, maintained through several decades, for
the recognition of equal rights for men and women in all
fields of human endeavour, whether public or private. Your
election, Madam President, is also a well-deserved tribute to
a country, a continent and a race.
78. You represent in this Assembly a nation which came
into being less than 150 years ago, impelled by a thirst for
freedom, when the first beings who could call themselves
free men after suffering the rigours of slavery arrived on
your shores—at what is today your national sanctuary. And
so the fact that you are filling this high office also
symbolizes the aspiration of the United Nations and the
continuous struggle by this Organization and its specialized
agencies for the total, final and lasting abolition in every
corner of the globe of that archaic and monstrous institution
which recognizes some men as the property of other
men, in savage disregard of the inherent, natural and
inalienable rights which render every human being the equal
of his fellow-men in dignity and status, regardless of race,
sex, nationality or social origin.
79. Costa Rica records with pride that in 1823 it freed all
persons in slavery on its territory, in 1888 recognized the
full legal capacity of women in private life, and sixty years
later admitted women to all public offices on a footing of
complete equality with men. Therefore, in voting for your
election and in seeing you perform the duties of your high
office with the ability and distinction you bring to it, the
delegation of Costa Rica greets you warmly and whole-heartedly
and extends to you the expression of its deepest
homage, as it does to all women everywhere who are today
sharing with men the responsibilities for transforming the
world into a happier home, a place less troubled and one
with better prospects for all those who live in it.
80. I have also to pay a heartfelt tribute, on behalf of my
delegation and my country, to the memory of the President
of the twenty-third General Assembly of the United
Nations, Mr. Emilio Arenales, whose irreparable loss while
yet in the prime of life we still mourn. He was the first
statesman born in the Central American isthmus to achieve
the distinction of election to the Presidency of the General
Assembly, and although the work he was beginning was cut
Short, first by grave illness and then by death, his speech of
acceptance still echoes in this hall and points to the course
which we should follow and the mission we have to
perform in terms which have lost none of their freshness.
His words were stamped with the authority imparted by his
exceptional gifts as an eminent statesman and by his long
experience of the Organization’s work, and we should
therefore cherish them as a lasting message of imperishable
value, which should serve us as both a stimulus and a guide
in performing the important functions entrusted to this
Assembly and to each of its Members.
81. As the Assembly is aware, my Government, well
acquainted as it was with the talents displayed by
Mr. Emilio Arenales in his lifetime and desirous, too, of
paying a fraternal tribute to the Republic of Guatemala,
had the honour to nominate him for the Presidency of this
Assembly as a natural token of our sense of Central
American identity. We took this step with the enthusiasm
inspired by a man who, we knew, would fully and faithfully
carry out the task entrusted to him and would prove a
credit to the Central American isthmus and to his own
country. I cordially greet U Thant, the Secretary-General,
whose indefatigable and efficient work as head of this
Organization deserves the gratitude of every people and
every Government represented here.
82. The programme of work adopted by the General
Assembly for its twenty-fourth regular session is just as
heavy as it has been during the last few years, and the
variety of the items on its agenda reflects the manifold and
complex problems which still vex mankind a quarter of a
century after the first steps to set up this Organization were
taken against the inspiring background of the gardens of
Dumbarton Oaks in a corner of Georgetown, the historic
suburb of Washington, D.C. They are the same problems of
war and peace with which the United Nations has been
dealing throughout the years in its laudable desire to ensure
to men of all continents and of all races a destiny happier
and more secure than they enjoyed in earlier ages. The
continuing struggle and the victories that have been won
have not been enough to bring a lasting solution to these
problems. But this ‘should not discourage us; it should
rather stimulate us to continue seeking, with deeper
devotion and greater energy, ways and means of attaining
peace for the nations, tranquillity for men’s minds and
better living conditions for the human beings who obtain
the smallest share of the national product in the different
parts of the world.
83. Only a few months before the United Nations completes
the first quarter century of its existence, it is
saddening indeed to consider that the blood of young men
is still being shed on the banks of the Jordan, the Mekong,
the Niger and the Suez Canal. But we took heart from the
fact that two fraternal nations in our Americas have set the
world an example in complying with decisions of bodies set
up for the same purposes as the United Nations by calling a
cease-fire and withdrawing troops when their Governments
were invited to do so by the Meeting of Consultation of
Ministers of Foreign Affairs of the Organization of
American States, held at Washington on 26 July 1969.
84. This laudable action by the Governments of El
Salvador and Honduras in setting an example by accepting
our regional organization’s invitation to order a suspension
of hostilities and the withdrawal of armed forces to their
normal peacetime quarters deserves to be mentioned in the
annals of this august Assembly. The two fraternal Governments,
whose calm, generous and noble attitude should be
emulated whenever the threat or scourge of armed conflict
brings two or more States of our Organization face to face,
deserve a tribute of gratitude and fellow-feeling, a tribute of
admiration for allaying passions, curbing inflamed emotions
and complying with a resolution adopted by a peace-keeping
organization.
85. There are very few successes to record in the past year
with regard to disarmament problems. It is not surprising
that the year’s accounts are closing with a barely favourable
balance. So long as the States with the greatest economic
and military power maintain positions which set some
against others in the wide field of international politics,
they will not agree upon a reduction in their armed forces
or in their expenditure on equipment and weapons
produced for the purpose of destruction and death. We
regret to have to acknowledge this. We regret it because
these arms programmes are in themselves the effective cause
of the increase in tension and because the astronomical
sums lavished upon engines and weapons of war are at the
expense of programmes which might be devised to lead the
peoples of the whole world into an era of better food,
better housing, more comfortable clothing, more and better
schools, an era, in brief, of less personal anxiety and
greater personal happiness.
86. We can only note with satisfaction that in consequence
of the Treaty of Tlatelolco, which came into
force a few months ago, the greater part of the geographical
area of America and the majority of its States have been
safeguarded from the appalling devastation which would be
caused by a clash between armies equipped with short- or
long-range nuclear weapons. This first victory in the efforts
of the United Nations to curb the race to acquire larger and
more potent means of destruction in itself suffices to make
the year 1969 a milestone in the history of mankind. It is
with particular gratification that Costa Rica recalls the
names of Tlatelolco and of the principal artisans of this
remarkable instrument for peace so that they may be
placed to the credit of our Organization.
87. It would be a grave mistake to think that in outlawing
the use of nuclear weapons on the soil of Latin America, we
in our part of the continent are overlooking or are unaware
of the importance which atomic energy and nuclear power
may come to have for the peaceful purposes of progress and
advancement. Like all mankind, we are interested in the
favourable outcome of scientific research carried out for
such purposes and we welcome the steps which our
Organization is taking to keep abreast of new information
on the contributions which nuclear technology can make to
the economic and scientific development of the developing
countries and also to establish an international service for
nuclear explosions for peaceful purposes under appropriate
international control. The prospects opened up by the
achievement of control over the energy contained in the
atom are, it appears, far-reaching, and the hopes placed in
the use of this energy to harness rivers, level mountains,
modify soils and relieve the most painful diseases are an
earnest of better times for the developing countries. The
delegation of Costa Rica takes note of the encouraging
progress achieved at this stage of initial action in matters of
such importance and pledges its continued support for the
efforts to make the specialized bodies which have been or
are to be set up for these purposes more vigorous and more
efficient.
88. My delegation offers similar support for the work
which has continued since the twenty-second session of the
General Assembly to ensure that the mineral and other
resources of the sea-bed and ocean floor and the subsoil
thereof are regarded as the common heritage of mankind
and are exploited for its sole benefit, especially in order to
better the lot of the less-developed countries, their use,
accordingly, being reserved exclusively for peaceful purposes.
We are not unaware of the difficult legal and
financial problems which the United Nations will have to
tackle and solve in examining this stimulating proposal, but
they are certainly not greater nor more difficult than those
which the scientists, technicians and astronauts had to solve
in preparing and carrying out the first flight from the earth
to the moon. We must continue in faith our efforts to solve
these thorny problems in the hope that one day — a day not
too distant, we trust — mankind may benefit from the
inexhaustible wealth which apparently exists in the sea-bed
and ocean floor and the subsoil thereof and apply them to
the betterment of living conditions in the countries which
are the poorest because their economic development still
lags behind that of the industrialized nations.
89. The General Assembly has made the recognition and
protection of human rights its continuous concern and the
delegation of Costa Rica has lent its support on every
occasion that has offered. Beginning perhaps with the early
colonial period, when there came to our valleys men whose
way Of life had been formed by the egalitarian and
democratic ideals of the townships founded in the valley of
the Duero after the expulsion of the Moors, the Costa
Rican nation has maintained an abiding concern for
observance of the natural, immanent and inalienable rights
of men; and at every period in the development of the
concept of human rights, Costa Rica has taken a leading
place among the States enacting laws to protect them. As a
natural consequence, Costa Rica has also made a point of
taking the lead in the United Nations programmes in this
field; it was the first State to sign the International
Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, the
International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the
Optional Protocol to the latter. It was the first State, too,
to ratify these instruments and the first to deposit the
ratifications with the Secretary-General.
90. We consider that social peace in every country rests
essentially on the effective respect for these permanent
rights of the human being and that nothing that this
Organization does goes deeper or has greater implications
for the future than its repeated efforts to bring about the
contractual recognition of these rights and to broaden the
scope of the human relationships covered by them. Because
of these convictions and of our interest in this subject, which
so closely concerns the welfare of large masses of human
beings, we are disturbed by the delay in the ratification of
these Covenants, whose adoption was the outstanding event
at the twenty-second session of the General Assembly. All
the work of previous Assemblies and the devotion and
persistence of the many eminent statesmen who took part
in the preparation and final drafting of these instruments of
modern international law will have been in vain and come
to naught if it proves impossible to induce the Governments
represented in our Organization to ratify, by their own
particular constitutional processes, the Covenants opened
for signature by States at the end of 1967.
91. The creation of the post of United Nations High
Commissioner for Human Rights has been under discussion
for many years in this Organization, originally as a result of
a proposal by Uruguay and at recent sessions on the
initiative of Costa Rica. The item is on the agenda of this
session, too, and though it proved impossible in previous
years to press the proposal to a vote in the plenary meetings
of the Assembly, we cherish the hope that it may be
adopted this year in its new form so that this high United
Nations official can shortly embark on his important task
of watching, with due tact and discretion, over the
observance of fundamental human rights.
92. Resolutions adopted by the General Assembly have
decreed that the mandate of the Republic of South Africa
over South-West Africa, now known as Namibia, is terminated.
Costa Rica has supported the contention that the
mandate is not legally valid and considers that the
Assembly must take a firm stand in face of the disdain with
which the South African Government has treated the
international community’s repeated demands for Namibia’s
independence.
93. My Government is strongly in favour of the proposal
for convening a conference on the human environment in
1972. The serious problems presented by the increasingly
rapid growth of the world’s population, together with the
ecological imbalance caused by an unregulated increase in
the use of technology, are matters which should be of
concern to all the world’s countries.
94. We believe that colonialism or its vestiges are still a
danger to peace, and in view of the grave social and political
problem presented by the inhabitants of colonial territories,
we strongly support action by the United Nations to
implement the Declaration on the Granting of Independence
to Colonial Countries and Peoples. We eagerly await
the day when colonialism has vanished from the face of the
earth and when every territorial and political association of
nations is the result of a voluntary process.
95. The plight of certain religious or ethnic minorities
whose fundamental rights are denied in some countries is
serious and unjust. We cannot overlook the plight of these
groups of human beings whose sufferings are increasing not
only because their freedom is restricted but also because at
times they are subjected to cruel persecution. More resolute
action by the United Nations is urgently needed and a more
flexible and humanitarian approach by the countries which
harbour these minorities. The right to freedom of worship,
to freedom of movement, to a share in the political process,
to tranquillity and to the conservation of minority customs
and cultural identity is guaranteed by the Charter of this
Organization. Any discrimination against human beings is
odious, and my country repudiates it as contrary to the
principles upon which human dignity is based.
96. If a brief definition of the United Nations were
needed, it would have to be described as a first, rudimentary
but felicitous expression of the world government
without which peace among nations cannot be achieved or
conserved. But is peace of such a desirable aim? A climate
of peace is conducive to progressive achievements and that
is why we desire it. Efforts at development without peace
are doubly arduous and ultimately doomed to sterility. A
climate of peace without development is merely the
prelude to a subdued unrest that may erupt into chaos. It is
for this reason that the small countries view the United
Nations as the instrument in which they place their hopes
of achieving greater well-being and a peaceful life. How far
is the United Nations fulfilling these aims? For various
reasons, it has not been able effectively to settle the
disputes between nations which threaten or disturb the
peace. No matter whether they are major or minor disputes,
between many countries or few, with hundreds or only a
handful of victims, the United Nations, confined as it is
within the strait jacket of the great Powers’ political
interests, has not been able to extinguish the blaze or damp
down the conflagration. The great Powers can indulge in
the luxury of participating openly or covertly in creating
these disputes and they can also take the liberty of
intervening in the solution of those problems of lesser scope
which arise in the course of an international confrontation
or rivalry. Peaceful intentions are, therefore, being frustrated
by the world-wide competition between ideologies,
the passion of fanaticism or the territorial claims of the
victors. The small countries not only suffer as the result of
the unrest but also bear their share of the misfortunes
involved, since, obviously, great Powers at war cannot give
thought to small countries at peace.
97. Furthermore, to keep the arsenals ready and growing
makes it harder to supply ploughs to the countries which
need them. The promise to devote at least one per cent of
the gross national product to assistance to countries on the
fringes of progress has not been kept — far from it — by the
countries which bear the greatest responsibilities for the
world’s well-being because they are both the wealthiest
countries and those which most frequently jeopardize that
well-being.
98. While, on the one hand, very little is being done within
the institutional framework of this Organization to maintain
and strengthen peace and eliminate the obstacles in its
path, on the other, the task of development is being pushed
into the background of the wealthy countries’ concerns. It
is now a euphemism to talk of wealthy countries and poor
countries and to say that the wealthy are becoming
wealthier and the poor poorer. There is one country whose
gross domestic product will, it is said, amount to a million
million dollars next year. When we talk in such astronomical
figures, the word “wealth” loses all meaning and
we have to resort to figures of speech to express ourselves
adequately. A few days before I left my country I read in a
newspaper that the International Red Cross and Joint
Church Aid estimate that a million and a half people have
died of hunger and malnutrition in Biafra. When we talk in
such figures, do the words “poverty”, “inequity” and
“backwardness” have their usual meaning? Here too we
have to take leave of plain language and resort to literary
language if we wish to he precise.
99. We have before us, then, a world of super-developed,
gigantic, Cyclopean countries and a world of countries with
no development whatever, which may consider the word
“under-development” provocative and even injurious. The
distance between the two sets of countries is becoming
enormous. The gulf seems to be growing deeper and deeper.
But they all live on this globe, just as those who live the
easy and comfortable life of the wealthy in the great cities
and those who live the hard and deprived lives of the poor
in the belts of poverty round them are citizens of the same
country. Are we doing anything to alleviate these problems,
these tensions, these explosive contradictions?
100. Wherever we look, the attitude of the super-rich
countries is one of indifference. These countries all seem so
remote, so alien and so cold that we often wonder whether
we are not closer to the moon. Protectionism is revived
among them when it is a matter of buying from us, but
they all invoke free enterprise and economic liberalism
when it is a matter of selling to us. When our single crops
grew larger than the world demand for them, they advised
us to diversify, but now that economic diversification has
taken place, we find that the new crops are not strong
enough to overcome the barriers of tariffs or quotas.
Financial and technical assistance for infrastructural projects
or for the better training of human resources is being
watered down and meted out in such a way that the
interest we are paying already amounts to more than we are
receiving for these purposes. The international agreements
for the regulation of certain commodity markets ensure us
a steady income, but they also tie us to an obsolete
production structure. The United Nations Conference on
Trade and Development, which took place at Geneva from
23 March to 16 June 1964, held out hope of the adoption
of a more equitable system of world trade, but this hope
did not materialize, and all we are left with is yet another
bitter experience to remember.
101. The United Nations, then, will always be subjected to
a test beyond its capacity and resources while the clamour
of the poor neighbours is liable to disturb the quiet
digestion of the rich countries. And so long as this danger
exists, so long as there is neither peace nor development
and so long as countries continue this struggle, it must be
recognized that the dream of the founders of this Organization
remains unfulfilled.