UN General Assembly
1989

Respect for the right of peoples to self-determination and independence is not only just? it is also good politics and essential to the attainment and maintenance of world peace. The General Assembly clearly recognized that fact when it adopted the Declaration on the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples way back in December 1960. Yet today, nearly three decades later, colonialism is still very much in evidence. Again, that is a practical reality of our times. The right of peoples to decide their own destiny is being denied not only in the well-publicized cases of southern Africa and the Middle East, especially Palestine, but also in countries in the Pacific, the Caribbean basin and elsewhere.