UN General Assembly
1973

36. Twenty-eight years after the Second World War we are still struggling with the problems that war left behind. The national economies of countries on both sides of the war were shattered. Years of economic effort to raise living standards to decent levels were destroyed in five years of vendetta, vindictiveness, callousness and complete disregard for the human person and, indeed, for the survival of our planet. This same war brought in its wake an event which, though salutary and justifiable in its moral significance, none the less compounded the economic problems which faced the world and which continue to do so. This event was the emergence of independent sovereign countries, expected and willing to play their part in the general effort to reconstruct the economy of our planet.