UN General Assembly
1988

Our world may live to see the day when people with an acute awareness of the problems facing mankind and the intellectual and technological means to analyse them can resolve them. Safeguarding the environment is one of these problems. The outstanding work done by the Brundtland Commission two years ago, but whose conclusions are still valid, is one such analysis. Unfortunately, when we talk about mobilizing ourselves and fighting these scourges, even for our survival, our world seems to be impotent. We can only hope that humanity will soon find the collective means to confront adversity and mend its ways. At this stage, I should like to voice the indignation of my country at the scorn shown by industrial societies for the lives of our peoples by transforming Africa into a cheap dumping ground for their refuse, whether radioactive or not, but certainly harmful. We appeal to the conscience of the rich States to consider with us those practices as being crimes bearing the seed of long-term genocide.