UN General Assembly
1979

46. The United Nations has proclaimed 1979 the International Year of the Child, In this perspective we must ask ourselves whether there will continue to ac-cumulate over the heads of this new generation of children the threat of common extermination for which the means are in the hands of the modem States, especially the major world Powers. Are the children to receive the arms race from us as a necessary inheritance? How are we to explain this unbridled race? 47. The ancients said: Si vis pacem, para bellum. But can our age still really believe that the breath-taking spiral of armaments is at the service of world peace? In alleging the threat of a potential enemy, is it really not rather the intention to keep for oneself a means of threat, in order to get the upper hand with the aid of one's own arsenal of destruction? Here, too, it is the human dimension of peace that tends to vanish in favour of ever new, possible forms of imperialism.