UN General Assembly
1992

There is at least one other non-military threat to peace and security that Australia hopes will get increased attention from this General Assembly, and that is the failure of Governments to observe the fundamental standards of human rights as set out in the Universal Declaration and the more detailed Covenants, to which so many of us have subscribed. The Secretary-General in his report "An Agenda for Peace" (A/47/277) very properly emphasizes in this context the question of the rights of minorities. It is understandable that, freed from the iron restraints of totalitarian regimes, some ethnic and linguistic groups have sought and no doubt will continue to seek - to establish their own political entities. As has been all too graphically demonstrated in the States of former Yugoslavia, Iraq and elsewhere, there is no easy answer to these aspirations, particularly when self-determination would in such cases be synonymous with fragmentation and itself be a source of threat to international peace and security. War, particularly civil war, also engenders many of the greatest abuses of human rights.