UN General Assembly
1966

12. I wish to turn now to the critical state of the finances of our Organization and to the proposals made last year by the delegations of Ceylon, Costa Rica, Ghana, Ireland, Ivory Coast, Liberia, Nepal, Philippines and Somalia to restore mandatory assessments for peace-keeping. These co-sponsors felt certain that if we were to allow mandatory assessments for peace-keeping to lapse, mandatory assessments would not last long for all other purposes of the United Nations. Let us remember, in approaching this subject, that the very life of this Organization is involved, and that it is the nest hope, and perhaps the last chance, for mankind to mobilize the skills and resources of modern civilization to safeguard peace and to promote co-operatively the interests of all States and peoples. Like a super-sophisticated satellite, bereft of a source of energy to activate its equipment, the United Nations might orbit for a time, but it would do so aimlessly, if it were deprived of its essential source of energy — finance — to make good its decisions and exert a beneficent and fruitful influence on the affairs of men.