UN General Assembly
1986

Development does not automatically mean wealth. Development means an evolutionary process that makes possible increasing satisfaction of the needs of human beings, families and communities. Development means the individual and collective right to acquire cultural values, to pursue a dignified material life and gradually to participate actively in the life of the society. Development means that the individual can hope for gradual improvement and the assurance that the Government will co-operate with the individual to that end, without impediment of any kind. But development also means - and this is a concept that seems to recede further every day - that the international community should take note of the simultaneous, common need for that phenomenon to take place all over the world. It is natural that not all communities will achieve the same degree of development, but it is also an inescapable truth that the development of some cannot continue at the expense of the vast majority.