UN General Assembly
1985

One of the most urgent problems of this decade stems from the lack of a system for financing development and the weakening of the institutions that were created for that purpose. I refer to the foreign debt of developing countries which threatens to paralyze economic growth, erode the process of democratization, upset social peace and destabilize the international financial system. It is a problem that involves the entire international community. The responsibility lies equally with the debtor countries, the creditor countries, private banking and international financial institutions. All of them therefore must be responsible for its solution; and to try to evade this responsibility may, in our opinion, be a mistake of unforeseeable dimensions.