Costa Rica, 1995

It is the honour of the delegation of Costa

Rica to congratulate you, Sir, on your election to the

presidency of the General Assembly at this historic

session marking the fiftieth anniversary of the United

Nations. We are extremely pleased that a distinguished

son of Portugal, a country so closely linked to Latin

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America by history and culture, has been chosen for this

high position. We offer you our full cooperation in the

performance of your important duties.

We wish to express to Member States the gratitude of

the Government and the people of Costa Rica for having

elected our country to one of the vice-presidencies of the

Assembly. That election is a significant honour.

It also gives me pleasure to join previous speakers in

thanking the Minister for Foreign Affairs of Côte d’Ivoire,

His Excellency Mr. Amara Essy, for the splendid way in

which he performed his duties as President of the General

Assembly at its forty-ninth session.

Costa Rica wishes to convey its recognition of the

indefatigable work carried out by the Secretary-General and

by other Secretariat officials towards peace and security.

The devoted efforts of the Secretary-General to champion

a safer, fairer, more peaceful and more humane world for

future generations will be a great legacy for mankind, along

with his determination to transform and modernize the

Organization and carry it into the future.

Fifty years ago, Mr. Julio Acosta, former President of

the Republic and Minister for Foreign Affairs of Costa

Rica, who headed our country’s delegation to the United

Nations Conference on International Organization at San

Francisco, said that the future of the world lay with the

Charter of the United Nations, which was the most

important human document of the last 1,000 years. That,

indeed, is what it has been, at least over the last 50 years,

despite the many difficulties, the many frustrations, the

many conflicts. The Charter of the United Nations has set

a new course for mankind and has provided the

international community with an ethical code that grows

stronger every day.

Costa Rica, a founding Member of the Organization,

is firmly committed to the United Nations, in accordance

with its long-standing regime of democracy and respect for

human rights. The values and principles which give shape

to this Organization were an integral part of Costa Rican

life many years before the San Francisco Conference. With

the abolition of the armed forces in 1948, our country

renewed its faith in law and its hope that reason, not force,

would govern relations among human beings. With that

decision of President José Figueres, Costa Rica addressed

the world and declared peace. With the same thought in

mind, the Government of Costa Rica has promoted many

United Nations initiatives in support of peace and human

rights, including the establishment of the University for

Peace, the declaration of the International Year of Peace

and the creation of the office of the United Nations High

Commissioner for Human Rights. All these ideas are

aimed at realizing mankind’s dream of sustainable peace.

In the spirit of commemorating in deeds the fiftieth

anniversary of the Organization, Costa Rica proposed a

World Week of Peace, to begin on 24 October this year.

This initiative, sponsored by a large number of countries

and unanimously adopted by the General Assembly on

12 July 1995, would silence weapons everywhere in the

world for at least a week, so that in the future sustainable

peace might prevail over destructive war. Costa Rica

hopes that during the Week all Member States will carry

out pro-peace activities and reflect on how important it is

for mankind to learn to live under the sign of concord.

My delegation is aware of the practical constraints that

stand in the way of the World Week of Peace achieving

its goals on the desired scale. However, it is our belief

that any move that could be taken this week to promote

dialogue, coexistence and harmony between nations would

be a valuable contribution to the celebration of the fiftieth

anniversary of the United Nations and to the building of

the future. The effort will have been worthwhile if even

one human being — a child, a woman or a man — is

saved from death as a result of this initiative.

There are no conflicts without solutions. All ground

is fertile for reconciliation. How many tears were shed in

South Africa, how much blood was spilled in the Middle

East! However, animosity has gradually disappeared and

harmony is beginning to flourish. Multicultural democracy

is giving a new and peaceful direction to the history of

South Africa. With the recent agreement on the West

Bank, Israelis and Palestinians continue to show that

peace is always possible. If there is a will for peace,

peace can be achieved. In that context, the United Nations

must continue to be the forum where all the peoples of

the world have fair representation. No country should be

excluded from becoming a Member of this Organization.

For many years, the world prevented a general

conflagration by resorting to containment. Today,

although the East-West confrontation has dissipated, and

preventive diplomacy is making headway, there are still

latent seeds of world conflict, concentrated in the sub-

human conditions in which a large portion of the world’s

population live, and evident also in the massive decay of

the environment.

The urgent need to solve senseless conflicts such as

the one in the former Yugoslavia and to end the violence

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besetting so many places in the world should not make us

lose sight of the fact that true peace involves a series of

elements much more significant than the mere absence of

war. As has been recently stated by His Holiness Pope John

Paul II, who offered to the world such a beautiful message

of hope and goodwill today from this Hall,

“... peace is not limited to the silence of cannons. It is

nourished with justice and freedom. It needs the

atmosphere of a spirit rich in some fundamental

elements, such as the sense of God, the taste for

beauty, the love of truth, the choice of solidarity, and

the capacity for tenderness and the courage to

forgive.”

The fiftieth anniversary of the Organization is an

occasion for reflection, but we should also use it to

meditate on the challenge of our times: to achieve

sustainable development.

In Central America we have committed ourselves

firmly to a comprehensive peace process and

democratization, in a regional effort to build peace and

democracy where these are needed, and to strengthen them

where they already exist. This journey is culminating today

in the encouraging advances experienced in the dialogue in

Guatemala. Costa Rica is optimistic about the efforts to find

a lasting peaceful solution to the problem involving that

brotherly country. We give our full support to the

negotiation process being developed to that end under the

auspices of the United Nations.

Central Americans, who for many years have

successfully advocated this process of peace and

democratization, are today also committed to an alliance to

generate in our region a new model of development,

combining freedom and the well-being of the vast majority,

with respect for the natural environment. This Central

American commitment to the region itself and to the

international community is being implemented through

various actions and development projects. We hope that the

international community as a whole will understand and

appreciate Central America’s effort, and will lend it its

support, as several friendly nations have already done.

As an integral part of the process of the consolidation

of peace and the building of sustainable development,

respect for human rights is no longer just a legal and moral

obligation of Governments; it has become an essential

condition for harmonious life in every society. However,

we cannot disregard the fact that many situations in which

these rights are still ignored or violated persist, making the

task of the relevant international bodies doubly important.

It is not legal to violate human rights, but it is not right

to sit idly by, using the pretext of respect for sovereignty,

which is only hypothetical respect and borders on

complicity.

For Costa Rica, a party to the International

Covenants on this matter and the headquarters of the

Inter-American Court of Human Rights, it is essential that

the United Nations assume a more dynamic and energetic

role in the protection of fundamental human rights and

require from Member States strict compliance with their

responsibilities in this area. For this purpose, protective

entities, in particular the Office of the United Nations

High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), should be

provided with more resources. We must also strengthen

measures against States which ignore the

recommendations of those bodies, or prevent them from

performing their duties.

We are also concerned that overcoming the balance

of terror has not put an end to the arms race, and that is

a matter of concern to us. We cannot understand why at

this time in history there are still countries which, with

surprising levity, destroy the environment and endanger

their neighbours with nuclear tests. This is a flagrant

violation of the commitments that marked the conclusion

of the negotiations to extend the Treaty on the Non-

Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, and has a negative

effect on the tasks related to the drafting of the

comprehensive nuclear test-ban treaty. Costa Rica has

never possessed, and does not want to possess, nuclear or

chemical weapons, and strongly urges participant States

to speedily conclude negotiations on this treaty and to

ensure that it takes effect as soon as possible.

However, the danger of a nuclear holocaust should

not make us unconcerned about the problems caused by

conventional weapons, the traffic in which has a tragic

impact on the third world and keeps a series of very

harmful conflicts alive. Many Governments of

underdeveloped countries continue to waste resources on

weapons, resources needed desperately by their own

people for basic necessities. The democracies of the

industrialized world continue providing those weapons in

a business which undoubtedly, on a short-term basis, is

financially more profitable than cooperation for

development.

In 1994, relying on an initiative of the Government

of Romania, a group of 25 countries proposed to the

General Assembly the adoption of a voluntary, global and

non-discriminatory code of conduct for the international

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transfer of weapons. My delegation believes that this

subject must be reactivated without delay and also that

concrete action must be taken to make the Register of

Conventional Weapons within the United Nations effective.

The reduction of military spending has an immediate

repercussion on budget allocations for the promotion of

development and well-being. In Costa Rica, we learned this

lesson almost half a century ago and we have had no

reason since then to regret our decision. However, we also

believe that providing special treatment, such as cooperation

for development and the transfer of technology for peaceful

purposes, to countries which reduce military spending

would be a great incentive, as has been suggested by Oscar

Arias, a former President of Costa Rica and a Nobel Peace

Prize Laureate in 1987.

In the spirit of building a new world, a world better

than the one that existed 50 years ago, the international

community has the duty to promote changes in the area of

international economic relations.

In recent years, there have been significant

reformulations in international trade plans. A World Trade

Organization has been created to replace the General

Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, and there has been a

proliferation of regional free-trade plans. However, this has

not dissipated the worrying trends towards protectionism

that are increasingly being developed by industrialized

nations. While the underdeveloped countries are applying

programmes with a view to the adjustment and the opening

up of trade, the richest countries are imposing burdensome

limitations on trade. My delegation considers that the ninth

session of the United Nations Conference on Trade and

Development (UNCTAD), to be held in South Africa in

1996, must become a fundamental forum for the discussion

of these problems.

Since the first meeting of UNCTAD, held in Geneva

in 1964, 77 countries of the Third World have joined in

demanding more equitable conditions in regard to world

trade. The fight for this new international economic order

has today become a priority because, even though the

military-political blocs which divided the world in the

recent past have now disappeared, the gap between North

and South is becoming ever greater. In the circumstances,

we consider that the presidency of the Group of 77 and

China, to which Costa Rica was appointed a few days ago,

is not only a great honour but also an important

responsibility. Costa Rica is deeply grateful for the support

it received in achieving this significant position and we

hope that in the performance of our duties we will make a

constructive contribution towards the launching of the

Group of 77 into the new international realities.

For some years now, it has been suggested that there

is a need to redesign the United Nations in order to give

the Organization a new look in keeping with a different

world situation. Costa Rica, on various occasions, has

expressed its support for initiatives in this area, including

the suggestion that Germany and Japan should become

permanent members of the Security Council, and that we

should guarantee permanent representation for all regions

in that body. Today, on the occasion of the celebration of

the fiftieth anniversary, we wish to reiterate Costa Rica’s

firm commitment to the renovation of the United Nations.

It is urgent to take steps along the lines pointed out by

the Secretary-General in his “An Agenda for Peace” and

“An Agenda for Development”, and it is important that

the international system should comply with the

resolutions of the General Assembly and the mandates of

the Security Council. It is also essential to provide a

follow-up to, and implement, the commitments made at

the Rio, Copenhagen and Beijing conferences.

In celebrating the fifty years of its existence, the

United Nations is still young. It remains young because

its spirit is still generously irrigated with idealism and

with faith in mankind. The Organization remains young

because it still believes that the human being has a greater

capacity to convince than to shoot, to love than to hate,

to build than to destroy, to procreate than to kill.

Let us preserve this essence of youth in our

Organization. In 1995, as in 1945, in spite of

disappointments, bitter days and years, the United Nations

represents the hope that there will be a future for our

children. The United Nations is the most important

demonstration that there will be a future because the

words uttered in this Hall many years ago by the then

Foreign Minister and later President of Costa Rica, Daniel

Oduber, are still valid. He said that the United Nations

had revealed itself to be the only entity capable of

minimizing the sufferings which, alternating with the

satisfaction of being alive and of performing our duties,

were the common lot of mankind.

I would conclude with the inspiring words uttered by

His Holiness Pope John Paul II in this Hall this morning,

“The answer to the fear which darkens human

existence at the end of the century is the common

effort to build a civilization of love, founded on the

universal values of peace, solidarity, justice and

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liberty.” (Official Records of the General Assembly,

Fiftieth Session, Plenary Meetings, 20th meeting, p. 6).