UN General Assembly
1987

We have created a political system of social democracy in which the talents and enterprise of individuals are allowed free play and in which people are assured of health care, education, housing and working conditions as basic rights not subject to market-place negotiation. Moreover, that system is Institutionalised within a legal framework that guarantees the rights and freedoms of all citizens. But national sovereignty must signify more than the right to manage one's domestic affairs· The exercise of national sovereignty must encompass the right, the capacity and the will to manage one's relations with other nation States, free from all forms of external coercion, inhibition and interference· I am therefore distressed to note that many small States represented in this Organization have frequently found themselves the target of ill-conceived and lightly considered criticism ever since their emergence from colonialism·