UN General Assembly
1972

85. In Africa, for example, if the United Nations were to be judged only on its record in questions of decolonization and racial discrimination there would be little reason for gratification over its achievements. It is now exactly 26 years since the Organization became involved with African problems, when India in 1946 raised the question of racial discrimination in South Africa. Since then the General Assembly and the Security Council have between them passed about 130 resolutions, while the International Court of Justice has delivered not less than half a dozen opinions, all on questions of decolonization and racial discrimination in Africa. Many of those resolutions and opinions have disappeared into the morass of good ideas that "might have been". For all its involvement in those questions, spread over a quarter of a century, the United Nations has not been able to improve the lot of Africans and thereby halt the now accelerating drift towards a major conflict and the escalation to more violence; and the extent of this spiral is any body's guess.