Uruguay

On behalf of the Government of Uruguay I should like to offer Sir Leslie Munro my sincere congratulations on his election as President of the twelfth session of the General Assembly. My delegation was among those which voted in favour of his election to that high office, and it welcomed the wise intervention of the Secretary for External Relations of Mexico, Mr. Padilla Nervo, urging the Assembly to seek a compromise formula in order to fill this very Important post. We should like at the same time to express our warm appreciation of the decision taken by the Lebanese Minister for Foreign Affairs, Mr. Charles Malik, whose noble and generous attitude has earned him the Assembly's appreciation and gratitude. Both Mr. Charles Malik and Sir Leslie Munro, our President, are loyal and steadfast servants of this international community of States to which Uruguay has the honour to belong. 142. The events which took place in 1956 were the gravest the international community had had to face since Korea. And In both of the cases which arose, the General Assembly proved itself a worthy defender of the principles of the Charter. 143. In the first case - the war between Israel and Egypt and the subsequent armed intervention in the Suez Canal area - the General Assembly assumed its supplementary powers in the delicate matter of preserving the peace, as it had done in 1950 when faced with the aggression against the Republic of Korea. 144. In the second case - the Hungarian revolution - the General Assembly made use of its powers of investigation and, in defence of its honour and prestige, reasserted its competence as the international body legally established by the Charter to deal with such incontestably vital matters as the right of self-determination of peoples and respect for the fundamental freedoms of the human person. 145. My Government wishes once again to express its sincere appreciation of the honour conferred upon it by its selection as a member of the Special Committee appointed to investigate events in Hungary, whose findings provided the basis for the Assembly's subsequent resolution [1133 (XI)]. 146. When the Assembly takes such resolute and unequivocal stands in support of international law and morality, it strengthens the faith of the peoples in the destiny of the United Nations. 147. In the first of the cases I have mentioned, the Assembly's decisions were respected by the States whose Governments were urged by the United Nations to respect the rules of law. We must hope - and it is the sincere wish of my delegation - that the same will occur in the case of Hungary. In the face of violations of the Charter which jeopardize the future of the international community, there cannot be two standards or two separate and even contradictory policies. 148. The tragedy of the Hungarian people affects the very basis of peaceful relations between nations. This belief is reflected in the resolution [1133 (XI)] which the Assembly adopted by an unprecedented majority: 60 in favour, 10 against and 10 abstentions. 149. Two significant facts should be underlined in this connexion. First, among the countries abstaining were several Asian States which had signed a joint declaration at New Delhi on 14 November 1956 stating that it was "the inalienable right of every country to shape for itself its own destiny” and that "the Soviet Union forces should be withdrawn from Hungary speedily". Secondly, the great majority of the new Members recently admitted to the United Nations voted in favour of the measures proposed. This fact, in our view, confirms the belief of the supporters of universality - of which Uruguay has always been one - that broader membership would strengthen the Organization. 150. These considerations are directly related to the duties of peaceful coexistence which, at a time when harsh reality is putting the very existence of the United Nations to the test, are the key to its future. 151. Our conduct in dealing with this vital problem must always be inspired by the tolerance and mutual understanding which the Charter enjoins on all Member States. 152. We regard it as evident that the United Nations was not founded to impose regimes or ideas on peoples or on men. We are a reflection of the world, and its complexity and variety are inconsistent with monistic institutions or Ideologies. We believe, nevertheless, that there are limits to the discretionary powers of States in matters affecting peace and security. While every State has the right to maintain its independence and its personality, it must be remembered that States Members have assumed specific obligations which set limits that may not be transgressed for they are the boundaries of a common international jurisdiction established, at a time when hopes ran high, by the concurrence of sovereign wills. 153. It is, I think, appropriate to recall these limits. The first is axiomatic: the immense benefits of peace and security are incompatible with unrestricted sovereignty. This fact is most clearly exemplified in the crucial problem of the control of nuclear weapons. If the control is made subject to the Security Council, there will be no control, for the simple reason that the Council’s action ultimately depends upon one major consideration: whether the great Powers choose to exercise their right of veto; but the veto, in our view, is the worst expression of unrestricted sovereignty. 154. The veto is not a legitimate power, for power that is outrageously arbitrary and absolute can never be regarded as legitimate, least of all in the present world situation when tension, fear and anxiety have reached an almost intolerable level. 155. There can be no better opportunity for the great Powers to demonstrate their love of peace than by submitting their differences on this grave matter to the most representative body within the United Nations, the General Assembly. 156. The decisions of States, which may safeguard peace or precipitate war, are taken by the men who constitute the governments; but confronting these men, and above them, are the peoples. In the present dramatic situation, let us remember that in the preamble of the Charter the peoples, who nowhere wish for war, declared their determination at the birth of the United Nations, "to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war, which twice in our lifetime has brought untold sorrow to mankind”. 157. The attainment of the ideal of a lasting peace is, of course, a dynamic process depending on the harmonious interplay of all the many factors involved, for, as has so often been said, the problems of peace and security are indivisible. 158. The United Nations was born out of a world in ruins still lit by the flames of the great conflagration. In the last stages of that orgy of violence, in which great and small nations had been invaded, occupied and put to the sword, in which human beings had been subjected to the grossest outrages against liberty and dignity, the Charter was drawn up with the aim of establishing the pillars of an international organization and jurisdiction for the purpose of preserving and strengthening the essential foundations of peace. 159. Among these pillars were the self-determination of peoples and respect for fundamental human rights, the enforcement and promotion of which throughout the world are inconsistent with the principle of unrestricted sovereignty. Animated by these principles and ideas, the authors of the Charter gave expression to the desire that democracy and peace should be ever more closely linked together. This had been President Wilson's dream at the end of the First World War; his noble and far-seeing ambition had been to replace the balance of power by a union of peoples able freely to guide their own destinies, thus ensuring that the future of the world was not left at the mercy of the personal power of dictators. 160. The Peace of Versailles was made and unmade under the banner of nationalism. When this, our second League of Nations, was set up at San Francisco, we included the principle of self-determination of peoples in its Charter, so that each people could shape their own destiny, but self-determination was indissolubly linked with the fundamental human freedoms which are at the basis of government that is truly representative of the people. 161. Human freedoms and the self-determination of peoples are, we believe, inseparable rights, and we therefore consider that they were rightly embodied in a single Instrument. These inseparable rights are an expression of the driving forces behind a movement towards freedom, whose importance should not be underestimated. As Ferrero said with great wisdom, "while power comes from above, freedom comes from below". This is why the right of self-determination Is attained by evolution or by violence depending on whether the fundamental human freedoms are respected or not. The support given by the United Nations to the first of these methods, peaceful evolution, has already borne fruit abundantly. Seventeen new States have attained independence since the establishment of the United Nations and this achievement, whose consequences are incalculable, is in our view enough to justify the existence of this international community to which Uruguay is proud to belong. 162. Both the spirit of the Charter and the draft International Covenants on Human Rights under consideration by this General Assembly reflect the desire that peace and democracy should increasingly go hand in hand. Article 4 of the draft Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, for example, does not admit of any limitation upon the enjoyment of these rights that is inconsistent with the general welfare in a democratic society. In addition, article 21 of the draft Covenant on Civil and Political Rights proclaims freedom of association with no restrictions other than those necessary in a democratic society. 163. Unquestionably, we all start from a common belief in the excellence of democracy, conceived not merely as a form of government or as an electoral system, but as a way of social and political life based on equality, in which the will of the State is expressed with the consent of the majority and the free opposition of minorities. 164. However, in our view, the draft Covenants before the General Assembly are defective in that they do not embody an explicit and unequivocal statement of one of the essential conditions of genuine democracy, and it is our hope that this shortcoming will be corrected. It should be expressly stated that each political society should allow a multi-party system, for this is the supreme guarantee of freedom, of freedom of thought and association, and of freedom to participate freely in public affairs. 165. If this high ideal were attained everywhere, types of slavery which exist in certain sovereign States would disappear. Such slavery is fostered by certain ideologies and institutions which we hold to be inconsistent with the Charter and which embody the single-party system as an organ of the State. In such States, political ideas and ways of thought are suppressed; men are condemned without the right to defend themselves and forced to change their opinions, beliefs and even their ways of thinking, to conform to the line desired or imposed by the State. 166. In view of these and other no less important attacks upon fundamental freedoms, my delegation feels bound to reiterate the views it has expressed before on so many occasions. If the dignity and value of human beings are attacked within the boundaries of a State, the attack affects the legal rights of the whole world, and not only of the nation concerned. Violations of human rights were one of the underlying causes of the last world war. The dictators who unleashed that war had begun to build up their power by means of such violations before they embarked on their programme of conquest. This belief is embodied in the preamble to the Charter and is inherent in the powers which the Charter gives the Organization in this field; indeed, the Charter makes respect for such freedoms one of the essential foundations of peaceful coexistence. 167. In this belief, my delegation continues to hope that the draft International Covenants on Human Rights may be considered and approved by the Assembly within the near future. Nine years have already elapsed since the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was adopted in Paris [resolution 217 (III)] and acclaimed by the world, but the principles embodied in that historic declaration are still mere statements of belief. 168. Our views as to what should be included in the Covenants are in accordance with the spirit of the Charter. As the presidents of the American Republics stated in the Declaration of Panama on 22 July 1956, "The State is the servant of man and not his master." These noble words recall the great and eternal truths of Western civilization, that human beings possess inalienable and imprescriptible rights, preceding and transcending those of the State, the latter’s purpose being merely to preserve them and harmonize them in their respective spheres of action. Thus the aim of law, both national and international, is to ensure the freedom and the happiness of man. These views are radically at variance with other ideologies, which are, we believe, inconsistent with the Charter, since they hold that the citizen receives his freedoms from the State and that he cannot assert his rights at the international level except through the State. 169. In making these observations, I am concerned to emphasize the importance my delegation attaches to safeguards to ensure the effective enjoyment of these sacred rights, in particular the right of the individual to take his case to international authorities, either directly or through representative associations. The right of petition in this form affords the surest guarantee against abuses of power. Uruguay’s traditional views on this subject have been fully stated in connexion with its proposal for the appointment by the General Assembly of a High Commissioner (Attorney-General) for Human Rights. The text of this proposal was included in the basic working papers on the draft Covenants by decision of the organ concerned. 170. I should like, in concluding my remarks on this topic, to say, reflecting my country’s traditional dedication to this cause, that in our view human rights cannot and should not be thought of in quantitative terms. We are as deeply concerned with the sanctity of a single human life, with all that it entails and signifies, as with the self-determination of a people. 171. It is with these considerations in mind that I refer to the disappearance of Jesus de Galíndez, an incident which has made an impression on public opinion that cannot be overestimated or ignored. We know that the circumstances of this tragic disappearance are being investigated and we sincerely trust that the investigation will make it possible to establish the facts. 172. This is not, of course, an isolated case. Similar incidents have occurred, although not all have received the same publicity. Because of the recurrence of such incidents, I feel bound to mention them and to emphasize that human rights are a problem of concern to public opinion which can and should receive the attention of international bodies. 173. International co-operation to promote the economic and social advancement of the world’s peoples has become one of the corner-stones of peaceful coexistence. As the Charter recognizes, the larger freedom to which the United Nations is committed depends on better standards of life, based on the increased wealth that man can create under conditions of peace and confidence. Our objective must be an expanding world economy, assisted by the financial agencies set up by the Bretton Woods agreements and later strengthened by the assistance furnished by the Government of the United States. 174. Immense sums have been invested in reconstruction and development. The total over the past eleven years is in the order of $43,000 million. However, such investments might be even higher if the huge sums devoted to military expenditure could be made available for peaceful purposes. In such circumstances, the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development would be able to draw on greater funds to increase its lending activities. 175. A number of developments of first-rate economic and political importance relate directly to this topic, which is one of constant concern to the Assembly. I refer to the European Common Market, which the Italian Minister for Foreign Affairs mentioned [681st meeting] in his admirable statement, and the proposed free trade zone which would, if established, embrace the European nations represented on the European Organization for Economic Co-operation. 176. I may say, on behalf of my delegation, that we have the increasing well-being of Europe at heart, and in this we share the views expressed [680th meeting] by Mr. Aranha, the former Minister for Foreign Affairs of Brazil and a former President of this Assembly. Moreover, in the case of the European Common Market, we are gratified and encouraged by the efforts the nations concerned are making to set aside their past differences and quarrels to transform this area, which was the theatre of recent wars, into a strong bulwark of order and peace. 177. These significant developments enable us to appreciate the importance of economic regionalism as a powerful factor in the new world economic structure. 178. In the modern world, where the economic forces making for mechanized mass production for mass markets conflict with the "political factors” which set limits to expansion in the shape of national frontiers, regionalism can reasonably be considered as the synthesis of a contradictory process in which free trade is the thesis and economic nationalism the antithesis. Regionalism can therefore be considered consistent with the Charter’s goal of an expanding world economy if the greater strength resulting from regional unions has the effect of increasing the world's purchasing power, with a consequent rise in the consumption of goods and services. 179. Naturally, countries which, like Uruguay, belong to no economic or trade area, hope that this will happen, and we sincerely trust that regionalism will prove to be to the advantage and interest of the world. 180. In the Americas, it is also reasonable to hope that efforts will be made to achieve greater economic integration. Integration there is undoubtedly a more difficult undertaking, because of the similar types of goods produced, the differences in structure and costs, defective transport facilities and the various commercial systems in existence. We believe, nevertheless, that there are immediate prospects of progress, if other regions are prepared to understand our legitimate desires and help us to achieve them. 181. As a nation belonging to the southern part of the continent, we would suggest as a practical measure in that direction that our right should be recognized to grant the Latin American countries preferences without prejudice to the most-favoured-nation clause. This principle has been recognized and established in the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, in the case of the British-French Union and Benelux preferential systems, and the principle has been approved in the case of the European Coal and Steel Community. In Uruguay's case, this would mean that we would be able to extend to the other Latin American republics the preferences already granted to Argentina, Brazil, Bolivia and Paraguay under our trade agreements. 182. We also suggest that the American countries and the Common Market countries should conclude agreements establishing a multilateral payments system on the lines of the arrangements between Argentina and Brazil and the French and Netherlands currency unions. The importance of such arrangements to the countries of southern Latin America, which trade under bilateral payments systems, cannot be overemphasized, for they would enable us to use our favourable balance from trade with the European Common Market to increase our purchases in Latin America. 183. In making these suggestions, we are prompted only by the understandable desire that regionalism should serve the great aims of the Charter and promote economic advancement and social well being in the various parts of the world. 184. Because of its universality, the United Nations is a mirror of the world, where the invincible strength of public opinion cannot be disregarded. In this community of States, the greatest States are those with the most friends. Friendship and trust are won through respect for law and international morality. In the words of Ibsen’s famous character, the small countries can tell the great: "Those who stand alone are not strong." In the case of nations, as in the lives of men, there is no worse ally than isolation.