UN General Assembly
1971

79. As we look around the world today we see areas of great and unparalleled prosperity, where larger and larger numbers of people enjoy more and more of the material benefits of life, side by side with other vaster areas inhabited by the majority of the world's population where poverty and hunger are still part of the daily scene. This deep and divisive inequality has long been recognized by responsible statesmen everywhere as containing within itself the seed of future catastrophe, and declarations have not been lacking-especially within this Organization-stressing the need for action to remedy this state of affairs before it is too late. The proclamation of this decade as the Second United Nations Development Decade [resolution 2626 (XXV)J was a useful step in the right direction. But declarations in themselves must be met by concrete efforts on the part of the world community to achieve unprecedented results.