Costa Rica, 1969

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.