UN General Assembly
1960

83. I should like, on behalf of Ireland, to warn other anti-colonialist countries present here against the propaganda which attempts to represent the United Nations as providing in some way a mask for imperialist intervention. The United Nations is on the contrary a body in which the small nations have an influence such as they have never before possessed in their history: an influence quite out of proportion to their material power and resources; an influence, moreover, which will disappear if this Organization should fail. As a representative of one small nation addressing the representatives of others I would say, adapting the words of the Secretary-General, that this is in a very special sense our Organization. It is both our duty and our interest to rally to its defence when it is attacked. If smaller Powers are to be effective in building a better world order, they must, at whatever short-term inconvenience to themselves, support the Charter and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, no matter where or by whom they may be violated,