UN General Assembly
1968

93. Without wishing to belittle the efforts made by the United Nations in this area, it is no exaggeration to say that the industrial countries will refuse to make any real contribution to the war against under-development. Without such a commitment, every resolution and recommendation of all the bodies established for that purpose will remain a dead letter. Hence, the first step must be to remove certain constraints of a political nature. For example, it is absolutely pointless to discuss the item entitled "Permanent sovereignty over natural resources” unless there is general agreement on the need to safeguard and respect the sovereignty of States over all their resources. To state and reaffirm the principles of natural law is useful in so far as the will exists to apply them in practice. Consequently the time has now come for our Organization to concern itself with the application of the decisions it has adopted, for that, we believe, is one of the primary conditions for the success of the next Decade.