UN General Assembly
1970

153. The United Nations can take pride in its endeavor to help dismantle the old empires. The Charter has reaffirmed beyond equivocation the principle of self-determination of peoples in its opening Article. But that Article continued for too long a time to be a dead letter and the United Nations interest in it continued to be peripheral and academic. The advent of the new Member States in the late 1950s prompted a new initiative and a more radical and liberal interpretation of the Charter. Article 1, paragraph 2, became in effect the launching site of the general offensive against colonialism that culminated in resolution 1514 (XV), the Declaration on the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples.