UN General Assembly
1963

139. Burundi has been Independent for only one year. It was in June 1962 in this Assembly that it was decided to cease regarding Burundi, internationally, as a dependent territory. Yet our ties with this great and noble Organization are as old as the Organization itself. In connexion with the 1914-1918 world conflict, the Supreme Council of the Allied Powers, deciding to place German East Africa —of which Burundi was a district under international control, brought us into relationship with the international organization of the day: the League of Nations. At the time when the League collapsed because it had not been true to its raison d'être —the maintenance of peace— the principle of nationalities, in fashion during the nineteenth century, had become the right of men to self-determination. Our country progressed from the status of a Mandated Territory to that of a Trust Territory, and the foreign Administering Power undertook to co-operate fully with the United Nations General Assembly and Trusteeship Council in the discharge of all their functions. All this was settled during the first years following the Second World War. But not until 1962 was it recognized that in our case too it was not for one people to dominate another,