UN General Assembly
1972

5. Every year we congregate ritually in New York for the General Assembly session. Every year we return to our countries having passed a vast number of resolutions and having poured out endless rhetoric that gets recorded in documents of the United Nations that are produced by the ton. However, strangely enough, a program of action, particularly in the political arena, is conspicuous by its absence; expressions of pious hope find no concrete reality; swelling rumbles of economic discontent pass unnoticed; threats to peace continue in ever-widening dimensions. International issues of a complex nature are tainted by competing ideologies and cold war politics and polemics. The Security Council finds itself locked in bitter debate and magnificent inaction in emergency situations. The liberation of over 30 million enslaved and colonially dominated Africans still remains an undischarged responsibility on the part of the international community. Escalation of conflict through massive injections of sophisticated arms to areas of potential and actual war are too frequent. Economic development in the third world remains at an embryonic stage. World markets, advanced technology and international finance are still the zealously guarded preserves of the affluent States. Although new horizons are opening up in space technology, the exploitation of resources of the sea and the application of environmental controls, it remains to be seen how the newly emergent nations would share the ensuing benefits.