UN General Assembly
1986

I would suggest, therefore, that in the period ahead, if this work is to have concrete and lasting value, the united Nations might with profit concentrate on how best to ensure the widest possible implementation of the various international human rights instruments now in force. Nothing would do more to enhance the reputation and popular perception of the United Nations than the knowledge that its decisions and resolutions had a significant impact on the possibility for ordinary men and women to live out their lives in dignity and in freedom. We must therefore work to ensure that the machinery for the correction of abuses and for the investigation of grievances is developed so that individuals everywhere can have the confidence of redress where that is now denied. For a great part of mankind repression takes the form of hunger, disease and poverty. The human costs are immense. At the same time, the political consequences are becoming more evident as the stability of many developing countries is called into question by the mounting social and economic difficulties they have to face.