UN General Assembly
1985

Those are the essential terms of the problem; if today we were to imagine for em instant that foreign debt had magically disappeared, we would still not have found the solution to the roots of the problem. We would only have found incidental relief: that of maintaining the present international conditions of trade and investment flows. Within a decade we would surely witness a renewal of the same critical problems of today. To view foreign debt as a purely economic problem is as mistaken as to view the crisis in Central America as a purely political problem. Central America has lately become the stage of a tragedy where violence is manifest in all its forms: civil wars, conflicts across borders, terrorism, repression. How can we stop this infernal process that destroys lives, well-being and wealth, and that continues to inflict indescribable suffering on the peoples of that region, who deserve a better fate?