On October 12, 1979, Fidel Castro addressed the United Nations General Assembly in New York on behalf of the 95 members of the Movement of Nonaligned Countries. Despite pressure from the United States, the sixth summit of the nonaligned movement had been held in Havana the previous month and had elected Fidel Castro as chair.
Most Esteemed President;
Distinguished Representatives of the world community:
I have not come to speak about Cuba. I am not here to denounce before this assembly the aggressions to which our small but honorable country has been subjected for 20 years, neither have I come to injure, with unnecessary adjectives, our powerful neighbor in his own house.
We have been charged by the sixth summit conference of the heads of state or government of the Movement of Nonaligned Countries to present to the United Nations the results of its deliberations and the positions derived from them.
We are 95 countries from all continents, representing the great majority of humanity. We are united by the determination to defend the cooperation between our countries, free national and social development, sovereignty, security, equality and self-determination.
We are united in our determination to change the present system of international relations, based as it is on injustice, inequality and oppression. In international politics we act as an independent world force.
Meeting in Havana, the movement has just reaffirmed its principles and confirmed its objectives.
The nonaligned countries stress that it is imperative to do away with the enormous inequality separating the developed countries from the developing countries. We are struggling to eradicate the poverty, hunger, disease and illiteracy from which hundreds of millions of human beings still suffer.
We aspire to a new world order, one based on justice, fairness and peace; one that will replace the unjust and unequal system prevailing today, in which, as the final summit declaration states: “Wealth is concentrated in the hands of a few powers whose wasteful economies are maintained by the exploitation of workers as well as by the transfer and plunder of the natural and other resources of the peoples of Africa, Latin America, Asia and other regions of the world.”
Among the problems to be debated in the present session of the General Assembly, peace is a concern of the first order. The search for peace is also an aspiration of the Movement of Nonaligned Countries and has been the subject of its attention at the sixth summit conference. But for our countries, peace is indivisible. We want a peace that will equally benefit the large and the small, the strong and the weak, a peace that will embrace all regions of the world and reach all its citizens.
Since its very inception, the Movement of Nonaligned Countries has considered that the principles of peaceful coexistence should be the cornerstone of international relations, constituting the basis for the strengthening of peace and international security, for the relaxation of tensions, and the expansion of this process to all regions of the world and to all aspects of international relations. And they must be applied universally in relations among states.
At the same time, the sixth summit conference considered that these principles of peaceful coexistence should also include the right of peoples under alien and colonial domination to self-determination, independence, sovereignty and territorial integrity; the right of every country to put an end to foreign occupation and the acquisition of territory by force; and the right of every country to choose its own social, economic and political system.
Only in this way can peaceful coexistence be the foundation for all international relations. This cannot be denied. Analyzing the structure of the world today, we see that these rights of our peoples are not yet guaranteed. The nonaligned countries know full well who our historical enemies are, where the threats come from and how to combat them.
That is why, in Havana, we reaffirmed, “the quintessence of the policy of nonalignment, in accordance with its original principles and essential character, involves the struggle against imperialism, colonialism and neocolonialism, apartheid, racism (including Zionism) and all forms of foreign aggression, occupation, domination, interference or hegemony, as well as the struggle against great power and bloc policies.”
It will therefore be understood that the final declaration also linked the struggle for peace with “political, moral and material support for the national liberation movements and joint efforts to eliminate colonial domination and racial discrimination.”
The nonaligned countries have always attached great importance to the possibility of and necessity for détente among the great powers. The sixth summit conference pointed with great concern to the fact that in the period after the Colombo summit conference [of 1976], there was a certain stagnation in the process of détente, which has continued to be limited “both in scope and geographically.”
On the basis of that concern, the nonaligned countries—who have made disarmament and denuclearization one of the permanent and most prominent objectives of their struggle, and who took the initiative in convening the 10th special session of the [UN] General Assembly on disarmament—examined the results of negotiations on strategic arms and the agreements known as SALT II. They feel that those negotiations constitute an important step for the two main nuclear powers and could open up prospects for more comprehensive negotiations leading to general disarmament and the relaxation of international tensions.
But as far as the nonaligned countries are concerned, those treaties are only part of the progress toward peace. Although negotiations between the great powers constitute a decisive element in the process, the nonaligned countries once again reiterated that the endeavor to consolidate détente, to extend it to all parts of the world and to avert the nuclear threat, the arms buildup, and war, is a task in which all the peoples of the world should participate and exercise their responsibility.
Mr. President, basing ourselves on the concept of the universality of peace, and on the need to link the search for peace, extended to all countries, with the struggle for national independence, full sovereignty and full equality among states, we, the heads of state or government who met at the sixth summit conference in Havana, gave our attention to the most pressing problems in Africa, Asia, Latin America and other regions.
It is important to stress that we started from an independent position that was not linked to policies that might stem from the contradictions between the great powers. If, in spite of our uncommitted and objective approach, our review of international events became a denunciation of imperialism and colonialism, this merely reflects the essential reality of today’s world.
Thus, having begun the analysis of the situation in Africa and recognizing the progress made in the African peoples’ struggle for their emancipation, the heads of state or government stressed that a fundamental need of the region is the elimination from the continent, and especially in southern Africa, of colonialism, racism, racial discrimination and apartheid.
It was imperative to stress the fact that the colonialist and imperialist powers are continuing their aggressive policies with the aim of perpetuating, regaining or extending their domination and exploitation of the African nations.
This is the dramatic situation in Africa. The nonaligned countries could not fail to condemn the attacks on Mozambique, on Zambia, on Angola, on Botswana, the threats against Lesotho, the constant efforts to destabilize the area and the role played by the racist regimes of Rhodesia [Zimbabwe] and South Africa. The pressing need for Zimbabwe and Namibia to be completely and quickly liberated is not just the cause of the nonaligned countries or of the most progressive forces of our era, but is already contained in resolutions and agreements of the international community through the United Nations. It implies duties that must be accomplished and infractions that must be denounced internationally.
Therefore, when in the final declaration the heads of state or government condemned by name a number of Western countries, headed by the United States, for their direct or indirect collaboration in maintaining racism, oppression and South Africa’s criminal policy of apartheid, and when on the other hand they recognized the role played by the nonaligned countries, the United Nations, the Organization of African Unity [OAU], the socialist countries, the Scandinavian countries and other democratic and progressive forces in supporting the struggle of the peoples of Africa, this did not reflect the slightest manifestation of an ideological leaning. It was simply the expression of an objective reality. To condemn South Africa without mentioning those who make its criminal policies possible would have been incomprehensible.
More forcibly and urgently than ever, the sixth summit conference expressed the need to end the situation in which the Zimbabwean and Namibian peoples’ right to independence is denied, and the pressing need of South Africa’s black men and women to attain equality and respect as human beings. It also affirmed the need to guarantee conditions of respect and peace for all the countries of the region.
The decision to continue support for the national liberation movements, the Patriotic Front [of Zimbabwe] and for SWAPO [of Namibia], was as unanimous as it was expected. Let us state very clearly now that this is not a case of expressing a unilateral preference for solutions through armed struggle.
It is true that the conference praised the Namibian people, and SWAPO, their sole, authentic representative, for having stepped up and advanced the armed struggle, and that it called for total and effective support for that form of combat. But that was due to the fact that the South African racists have slammed the door on any real negotiations and that the efforts to achieve a negotiated solution go no further than simple maneuvers.
The attitude toward the Commonwealth’s decisions at its Lusaka meetings last August to have the British government, as an authority in Southern Rhodesia, call a conference to discuss the problems of Zimbabwe, confirmed that the nonaligned countries are not opposed to solutions that may be achieved without armed struggle, so long as they lead to the creation of a genuine majority government and so long as independence is achieved in a manner satisfactory to the fighting peoples, and that this is done in accordance with the resolutions of such bodies as the OAU, the United Nations and our own Movement of Nonaligned Countries.
Mr. President, once more the sixth summit conference had to express its regret over the fact that Resolution 1514 of the UN General Assembly, concerning the granting of independence to colonial countries and peoples, has not been applied to Western Sahara. We should recall that the decisions of the nonaligned countries and the resolutions of the United Nations, and more specifically Resolution 3331 of the General Assembly, have all reaffirmed the inalienable rights of the people of Western Sahara to self-determination and independence.
In this problem Cuba feels a very special responsibility since it has been a member of the UN commission investigating the situation in Western Sahara, and our representatives were able to confirm the Saharawi people’s total desire for self-determination and independence.
We repeat here that the position of the nonaligned countries is not one of antagonism toward any country. The welcome that we gave to the agreement between the Republic of Mauritania and the Polisario Front, and to Mauritania’s decision to withdraw its forces from Western Sahara, is in keeping with our principles and the agreements of the United Nations. The same is true for our censure of the extension of Morocco’s armed occupation of the southern part of Western Sahara, previously administered by Mauritania. Therefore, the conference expressed its hope that the committee established at the 16th OAU summit conference would make it possible to ensure that the people of Western Sahara are allowed to exercise their right to self-determination and independence as soon as possible.
Those same principles and positions determined the resolution on Mayotte and the Malagasy Islands and the need for them to be reintegrated into Comoros and Madagascar respectively.
Mr. President, there can be no doubt that the problem of the Middle East has become one of the situations of greatest concern in today’s world. The sixth summit conference examined the problem’s two-fold dimension.
The conference reaffirmed that Israel’s determination to continue its policy of aggression, expansionism and colonial settlement in the occupied territories, with the support of the United States, constitutes a serious threat to world peace and security. The conference also examined the problem from the standpoint of the rights of the Arab countries and the question of Palestine.
For the nonaligned countries the Palestinian question is the crux of the problem of the Middle East. They form an integral whole and neither can be settled in isolation from the other.
No just peace can be established in the region unless it is based on total and unconditional withdrawal by Israel from all the occupied Arab territories, as well as the return to the Palestinian people of all their occupied territories and the restoration of their inalienable national rights, including their right of return to their homeland, to self-determination and to the establishment of an independent state in Palestine in accordance with Resolution 3236 of the UN General Assembly [November 22, 1974].
All measures taken by Israel in the occupied Palestinian and other Arab territories, including the establishment of colonies or settlements on Palestinian land or other Arab territories—whose immediate dismantlement is a prerequisite for a solution to the problem—are illegal, null and void.
As I stated in my address to the sixth summit:
We are not fanatics. The revolutionary movement has learned to hate racial discrimination and pogroms of any kind. From the bottom of our hearts, we repudiate the merciless persecution and genocide that the Nazis once visited on the Jews, but there is nothing in recent history that parallels it more than the dispossession, persecution and genocide that imperialism and Zionism are currently practicing against the Palestinian people.
Pushed off their lands, expelled from their own country, scattered throughout the world, persecuted and murdered, the heroic Palestinians are a vivid example of sacrifice and patriotism, living symbols of the most terrible crime of our era.
Can anyone be surprised that the conference, for reasons stemming not from any political prejudice but rather from an objective analysis of the facts, was obliged to point out that US policy, in aligning itself with Israel and working to attain partial solutions favorable to Zionist aims that guarantee the fruits of Israel’s aggression at the expense of the Palestinian Arabs and the entire Arab nation, played a major role in preventing the establishment of a just and comprehensive peace in the region?
The facts—and only the facts—led the conference to condemn US policies and maneuvers in that region.
When the heads of state or government reached a consensus condemning the Camp David agreement and the Egypt-Israel treaty of March 1979, their formulations had been preceded by long hours of detailed study and exchange which had allowed the conference to consider those treaties not only as a complete abandonment of the cause of the Arab countries, but also as an act of complicity with the continuing occupation of Arab territories.
These words are harsh, but they are true and just. It is not the Egyptian people who have been subjected to the judgment of the Movement of Nonaligned Countries. The Egyptian people command the respect of each and every one of our countries and enjoy the solidarity of all our peoples.
The same voices that denounced the Camp David agreements and the Egypt-Israel treaty eulogized Gamal Abdel Nasser, a founder of the nonaligned movement and an upholder of the fighting traditions of the Arab nation. No one has been, is or ever will be ignorant of Egypt’s historical role in Arab culture and development, or of its merits as a founding nation and a driving force in the Movement of Nonaligned Countries.
The conference also considered the problems of Southeast Asia. The growing conflicts and tensions that have been created in the region are a threat to peace that must be avoided.
Similar concern was expressed by the sixth summit conference in relation to the situation of the Indian Ocean. The declaration adopted eight years ago by the UN General Assembly that the Indian Ocean should be a zone of peace has not been fulfilled. Far from being reduced, the military presence in the region is growing. Military bases have been extended as far as South Africa and are also serving as a means of surveillance against the African liberation movements. The talks between the United States and the Soviet Union are still suspended, despite the recent agreement between the two countries to resume them.
All this led to the sixth summit’s invitation to all states concerned to work effectively to fulfill the objectives of the UN declaration on the Indian Ocean as a zone of peace.
The sixth summit conference also analyzed other issues of regional and world interest, such as European security and cooperation, the problem of the Mediterranean, the tensions that still exist there and that have now been increased as a result of Israel’s aggressive policy and the support given it by certain imperialist powers.
The conference studied the situation in Cyprus, still partially occupied by foreign troops, and in Korea, still divided despite the Korean people’s desire for a unified homeland. This led the nonaligned countries to reaffirm and broaden resolutions of solidarity aimed at fulfilling the aspirations of both peoples.
It would be impossible to refer to all the political decisions of the sixth summit conference. If we were to do so we would be unable to touch upon what we consider to be one of the most fundamental aspects of that sixth summit: its economic perspectives—the clamor of the people of the developing countries, weary as they are of their underdevelopment and the suffering it engenders. Cuba, as the host country, will present to all members of the international community copies of the conference’s final declaration and additional resolutions. But before informing you of how the nonaligned countries view the world economic situation, what demands they make and what their hopes are, perhaps you will allow me to take a few more moments to inform you of the movement’s approach to current Latin American issues.
The fact that the sixth summit conference was held in Latin America gave the heads of state or government meeting the opportunity to recall that the peoples of that region began their efforts to obtain independence at the very beginning of the 19th century. They also did not forget, as the declaration states:
Latin America is one of the regions of the world that historically has suffered the most from the aggression of the imperialism, colonialism and neocolonialism of the United States and Europe.
The participants in the conference were forced to point out that remnants of colonialism, neocolonialism and national oppression remain in that region. The conference called for the eradication of colonialism in all its forms and manifestations. It condemned the presence of foreign military bases in Latin America and the Caribbean, such as those in Cuba and Puerto Rico, and again demanded that the US government and other colonial powers restore to those countries the parts of their territory occupied by those bases against the will of their people.
The experience in other areas led the heads of state or government to reject and condemn any attempt to create in the Caribbean a so-called “security force,” a neocolonial mechanism that is incompatible with the sovereignty, peace and security of these countries.
By calling for the restitution of the Malvinas [Falkland] Islands to Argentina, by reaffirming its support for the inalienable right of the people of Belize to self-determination, independence and territorial integrity, the conference once again showed what its declaration had defined as the very quintessence of nonalignment.
It welcomed the fact that as of October 1, the treaties on the Panama Canal concluded between the Republic of Panama and the United States would enter into force. It gave its full support to those treaties, calling for them to be fully respected in both letter and spirit, and it called on all the states of the world to adhere to the protocol under the treaty concerning the permanent neutrality of the Panama Canal.
The heads of state and government reiterated their solidarity with the struggle of the Puerto Rican people and their inalienable right to self-determination, independence and territorial integrity, despite all the pressure, threats and flattery that was brought to bear by the US government, and the demand that the issue of Puerto Rico be considered a domestic matter for the United States. They called upon the US government to refrain from any political or repressive maneuvers perpetuating the colonial status of that country.
No more appropriate tribute could be paid to the Latin American traditions of freedom and to the heroic people of Puerto Rico, who in recent days have just celebrated another anniversary of the Cry of Lares, which expressed their indomitable will for freedom almost 100 years ago.
When speaking about the Latin American reality, the heads of state or government, who had already analyzed the significance of the liberation struggle in Iran [1979], could not fail to refer to the revolutionary upheaval in Grenada and the remarkable victory of the Nicaraguan people and their vanguard, the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN), or to emphasize the historic significance of that event for the peoples of Latin America and of the world. The heads of state or government also highlighted something new in Latin American relations that sets an example for other regions of the world: the way in which the governments of Panama, Costa Rica and Mexico, as well as the member countries of the subregional Andean Pact—Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru and Venezuela—acted in solidarity and unity to achieve a just solution to the Nicaraguan problem, as well as Cuba’s traditional solidarity with the cause of that people.
I confess that these considerations on Latin America would alone have justified the Cuban people’s efforts to give a worthy reception to the fraternal nations of the Movement of Nonaligned Countries in Havana, but for Cuba there was much more than this. There is something for which, on behalf of our people, we would like to acknowledge at this forum of the United Nations.
The Havana summit supported the Cuban people’s right to choose their own political and social system, and their claim to the territory occupied by the Guantánamo [US naval] base, and the blockade with which the US government continues to isolate and destroy the Cuban revolution was condemned.
We appreciate the deep feeling and the universal resonance of the movement’s recent denunciation, in Havana, of the hostile acts, pressures and threats against Cuba by the United States, declaring them to be a flagrant violation of the UN Charter and the principles of international law, and a threat to world peace.
Once again we respond to our brothers and sisters, assuring the international community that Cuba will remain true to the principles of international solidarity.
Mr. President, history has taught us that when a people frees itself from a colonial or neocolonial system and obtains its independence, this is simultaneously the last act in a long struggle and the first in a new and difficult battle. This is because the independence, sovereignty and freedom of our supposedly free peoples are constantly threatened by foreign control over their natural resources, by financial impositions on the part of official international bodies and by the precarious situation of their economies, all of which diminish their full sovereignty.
For this reason, at the onset of their analysis of the world’s economic problems, the heads of state or government again emphasized:
…the paramount importance of consolidating political independence through economic emancipation… and that the existing international economic system runs counter to the basic interests of the developing countries, and that it is profoundly unjust and incompatible with the development of the nonaligned countries and other developing countries, and that it does not contribute to the elimination of the economic and social evils that afflict those countries.
…the historic mission that the Movement of Nonaligned Countries should play in the struggle to obtain the economic and political independence of all developing countries and peoples; to exercise their full and permanent sovereignty and control over their natural and all other resources and economic activities; and to promote a fundamental restructuring of the world economy through the establishment of the new international economic order.
The statement concludes with the following words:
The struggle to eliminate the injustice of the existing international economic system and to establish a new international economic order is an integral part of the people’s struggle for political, economic, cultural and social liberation.
It is not necessary to delve into how profoundly unjust and incompatible the existing international economic system is with the development of the underdeveloped countries. The figures are so familiar it is unnecessary for us to repeat them here. There is a debate about whether there are only 400 million undernourished people in the world or whether that figure is now 450 million, as certain international documents have stated. Even 400 million hungry men and women is enough of an indictment.
But no one doubts that all the hopes raised in the developing countries appear to have been dashed and extinguished at this end of the second development decade.
The director general of the Food and Agricultural Organization [FAO] has acknowledged:
Progress is still disappointingly slow in relation to the long-term development goals contained in the International Development Strategy, in the Declaration and the Program of Action on the Establishment of the New International Economic Order, in the resolution of the World Food Conference and in several subsequent conferences.
We are still a long way from achieving the modest 4 percent annual average increase in the developing countries’ food and agricultural production, which was proposed 10 years ago to solve some of the most pressing problems of world hunger and to approach consumption levels that are still too low. As a result of this, food imports by the developing countries, which right now constitute an aggravating factor in their unfavorable balance of payments, will soon, according to FAO figures, reach unmanageable proportions. In the face of this, official commitments of foreign aid for agriculture in the developing countries are dropping.
This panorama cannot be prettied up. At times, certain official documents reflect circumstantial increases in the agricultural production of some areas of the underdeveloped world, or stress the cyclical price increases registered by some agricultural items, but these are transitory advances and shortlived advantages. The developing countries’ agricultural export revenues are still unstable and insufficient to meet their import needs for food, fertilizer, and other items required to raise their own production. Per capita food production in Africa in 1977 was 11 percent less than that of 10 years earlier.
While backwardness in agriculture is perpetuated, the process of industrialization cannot advance. It cannot advance because most of the developed countries view the industrialization of the developing countries as a threat.
In 1975, the Lima World Conference on Industrialization proposed that the developing countries set themselves the goal of achieving 25 percent of the world’s manufacturing output by the year 2000. But the progress made since that conference has been so insignificant that if the measures proposed by the sixth summit conference are not implemented, and if a crash program is not put into effect to modify the economic policies of most of the developed countries, that target will never be met. We currently account for less than 9 percent of the world’s manufactured output.
Moreover, our dependency is further demonstrated by the fact that the countries of Asia, Africa and Latin America import 26.1 percent of the manufactured goods that enter into international trade while exporting only 6.3 percent of them.
It may be said that some industrial expansion is taking place, but it does not occur at the necessary pace, or in the key industries. This was pointed out at the Havana summit. The world redistribution of industry, the so-called industrial redeployment, should not consist of a renewal of the deep economic inequalities that emerged in the colonial era of the 19th century. At that time we were condemned to be producers of raw materials and cheap agricultural products. Now, an effort is being made to take advantage of the abundant labor power and starvation wages and to transfer the low technology industries to our countries, the industries of lowest productivity and those that most pollute the environment. We categorically reject this.
The developed market economies today absorb more than 85 percent of the world’s manufactured goods, including those whose industrial production requires the most advanced technology. They also control more than 83 percent of all industrial exports, and 26 percent of those exports go to the developing countries, whose markets they monopolize. The most serious aspect of this structure of dependence is that our imports—consumer items as well as capital goods—are all manufactured according to the demands, needs and technology of the most developed industrial countries, and the patterns of consumer societies, which are thus introduced through the cracks by way of our trade, contaminating our own societies and adding a new element to the already permanent structural crisis.
The result, as was noted in Havana, is that the gap between the developed and the developing countries not only persists, but has substantially increased. The relative share of the developing countries in world output has decreased considerably during the last two decades, with even more disastrous effects on such problems as malnutrition, illiteracy and poor sanitation.
Some would like to solve the tragic problem of humanity with drastic measures to reduce the population. They remember that in other eras wars and epidemics helped to reduce population. They wish to go even further. They want to blame underdevelopment on the population explosion.
The population explosion is not the cause but the result of under-development. Development will bring solutions to the problems of poverty, and education and culture will help our countries to attain rational and adequate rates of growth.
A recent World Bank report paints an even bleaker picture. It is possible, the report states, that by the year 2000, some 600 million people on this earth may still be submerged in absolute poverty.
Mr. President and distinguished representatives: The state of agricultural and industrial backwardness from which the developing countries have not managed to emerge is undoubtedly the result of unjust and unequal international relations. As the final declaration also points out, to this is now added the prolonged world economic crisis.
I will not dwell too long on this aspect. But, let us state that we heads of state or government consider that the crisis of the international economic system is not a phenomenon of a cyclical nature, but is rather a symptom of the underlying structural maladjustments and of a lack of equilibrium that are part of its very nature. We also believe that this imbalance has been aggravated by the refusal of the developed market economies to control their external imbalances and their high rates of inflation and unemployment. That inflation has been engendered precisely in those developed countries that now refuse to implement the only measures that could eliminate it. Let us further point out, and this is something to which we will return and which has been set down in the final declaration, that this crisis is also the result of persistent inequality in international economic relations, and that eliminating the inequality, as we propose, will contribute to reducing and eliminating the crisis itself.
What are the main guidelines formulated in Havana by the representatives of the Movement of Nonaligned Countries?
We condemned the persistent diversion of human and material resources into an arms race, which is unproductive, wasteful and dangerous to humanity. We demanded that a substantial part of the resources now devoted to arms, particularly by the major powers, be used for economic and social development.
We expressed our grave concern over the negligible progress that has been made in the negotiations for the establishment of a new international economic order. We pointed out that this was due to a lack of political will on the part of most of the developed countries and we specifically censured the delaying, diversionary and divisive tactics adopted by those countries. The failure of the fifth UN Conference on Trade and Development [UNCTAD] session highlighted this very situation.
We confirmed that the unequal exchange in international economic relations, defined as an essential characteristic of the system, has, if possible, become even more unequal. While the prices of manufactured goods, capital goods, foodstuffs and services that we import from the developed countries are constantly rising, the prices of the raw materials we export are stagnating and are subject to constant fluctuation. The terms of exchange have worsened. We emphasized that protectionism, one of the factors aggravating the Great Depression of the 1930s, has been reintroduced by some developed countries.
The conference deplored the fact that in the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade [GATT] negotiations the developed countries did not take into account the interests and concerns of the developing countries, especially the least developed among them. The conference also denounced the way in which certain developed countries are intensifying their use of domestic subsidies for certain products, to the detriment of the products of the developing nations. The conference further deplored the shortcomings in the scope and operation of the Generalized System of Preferences and, in that spirit, condemned the discriminatory restrictions contained in the US Foreign Trade Act and the inflexible positions adopted by some developed countries, which prevented an agreement on these problems at the fifth session of UNCTAD.
We expressed our concern over the constant deterioration of the international monetary situation. The instability of the exchange rate of the main reserve currencies, along with inflation, increases the imbalance in the world economic situation. It creates additional economic difficulties for the developing countries, by lowering the real value of their export earnings and reducing the value of their foreign currency reserves.
We also pointed out that the disorderly growth of international liquidity, mainly through the use of devalued US dollars and other reserve currencies, is a negative factor. We noted that while the inequality of international economic relations is increasing the developing countries’ accumulated foreign debt to over $300 billion, the international financial bodies and the private banks are raising their interest rates, imposing shorter terms of loan amortization, and thus strangling the developing countries financially.
The conference denounced these as elements of coercion in negotiations, allowing the developed countries to obtain additional political and economic advantages at the expense of our countries.
The conference noted the neocolonialist determination to prevent the developing countries from exercising their full, effective and permanent sovereignty over their natural resources and it reaffirmed this right. For this reason it supported the efforts of developing countries producing raw materials to obtain just and remunerative prices for their exports and to improve, in real terms, their export earnings.
Moreover, the conference paid a great deal of attention to the strengthening of economic relations and to scientific, technical and technological exchanges among the developing countries. The concept of what could be defined as “collective self-reliance,” that is, mutual support and collaboration among the developing countries so that they will depend, in the first place, on their own collective forces, is given greater emphasis in the Declaration of Havana than ever before.
Cuba, as chair of the movement and coordinating country, together with the Group of 77, intends to do everything necessary to promote the program of action on economic cooperation drawn up by the conference.
Nevertheless, we cannot conceive of that “collective self-reliance” as anything even remotely resembling self-sufficiency. Rather, we consider it to be a factor in international relations that will mobilize all the possibilities and resources of that considerable and important part of humanity represented by the developing countries, incorporating them into the general current of resources and economies of both the capitalist camp and the socialist countries.
Mr. President, the sixth summit conference rejected the attempts of certain developed countries to try to use the question of energy to divide the developing nations.
The energy problem can only be examined in its historical context, taking into account the fact that the wasteful consumption patterns of some of the developed countries and the role played by transnational oil corporations has led to the squandering of hydrocarbons, and noting the pillaging role of transnational corporations that have benefited from cheap energy supplies—which they have used irresponsibly—until only recently. The transnationals have been exploiting both the producers and the consumers and reaping unjustified windfall profits, while at the same time falsifying facts by shifting the blame for the present situation on to the oil-exporting developing countries.
Permit me to recall that in my opening remarks to the conference I pointed to the desperate situation of the non-oil-producing underdeveloped countries, especially the least developed ones, and I expressed my confidence that the nonaligned oil-producing countries would devise formulas to help alleviate the unfavorable situation of those countries, which had already been hit by world inflation and unequal trade relations and who suffer serious balance-of-payments deficits and sharp increases in their foreign debt. But this does not obviate the principal responsibility of the developed countries, their monopolies and their transnational corporations.
In adopting this approach to the energy issue, the heads of state or government stressed that this subject should be the main focus of global negotiations within the United Nations, with the participation of all countries and linking the energy question to all the development problems, to financial and monetary reforms, to world trade and raw materials, so as to make a comprehensive and global analysis of all aspects that bear on the establishment of the new international economic order.
No review of the main problems confronting the developing countries within the context of the world economy would be complete without an examination of the functioning of the transnational corporations. Once again their policies and practices were declared unacceptable. It was charged that in their search for profits they exhaust the resources, distort the economies and violate the sovereignty of developing countries. They undermine the rights of people to self-determination, they violate the principles of non-interference in the affairs of states and they frequently resort to bribery, corruption and other undesirable practices, through which they seek to subordinate and succeed in subordinating the developing countries to the industrialized countries.
In view of the inadequate progress achieved in the United Nations to draw up a code of conduct regulating the activities of transnational corporations, the conference reaffirmed the urgency of early completion of this work, in order to provide the international community with a legal instrument by which to control and regulate, at the least, the activities of the transnational corporations in accordance with the objectives and aspirations of the developing countries.
In setting forth all the overwhelming negative aspects of the economic situation of developing countries, the sixth summit conference called special attention to the mounting problems of the least developed and most disadvantaged countries, those landlocked or isolated in the hinterlands, and asked that urgent measures be adopted to alleviate their problems.
This, Mr. President and distinguished representatives, was the far from optimistic, rather somber and discouraging picture which the members of the Movement of Nonaligned Countries considered when they met in Havana. But the nonaligned countries did not allow themselves to be overcome by frustration or exasperation, however understandable that might have been. While drawing up strategic concepts for advancing and continuing in their struggles, the heads of state or government repeated their demands and defined their positions.
The first and fundamental objective in our struggle consists of reducing and finally eliminating the unequal exchange prevailing today that converts international trade into a very useful vehicle for plundering our wealth. Today the product of one hour’s labor in the developed countries is exchanged for 10 hours of labor in the underdeveloped countries.
The nonaligned countries demand that serious attention be paid to the Integrated Program for Commodities which, until now, has been manipulated and juggled in the so-called North-South negotiations. Similarly, we demand that the Common Fund, which was supposed to act as an instrument of stabilization establishing a permanent linkage between the prices we receive for our products and those paid for our imports, and which has scarcely begun to have an impact, be given a real boost.
For the nonaligned countries this linkage—which permanently ties the prices of their exports to the prices of basic equipment, industrial products, raw materials and technology that they import from the developed countries—constitutes an essential pivot for all future economic negotiations.
The developing countries demand that the countries that have created inflation and stimulated it through their policies adopt the necessary measures to control it and thus put an end to the aggravation of the unequal exchange between our countries.
The developing countries demand—and will continue their struggle to achieve—access to the markets of the developed countries for the industrial products of their incipient economies. They demand a halt to the vicious protectionism that has been reintroduced in the international economy and that threatens once again to lead us into a deadly economic war. And they demand that a general system of nonreciprocal tariff preferences be applied generally and without deceptive falsehoods so that the young industries of the developing countries can develop without being crushed in the world market by the superior technological resources of the developed countries.
The nonaligned countries consider that the negotiations about to be concluded on the Law of the Sea should not be used as certain developed countries seek to use them—to ratify and endorse the existing imbalance as regards sea resources—but should serve as a vehicle for equitable redress. The conference on the Law of the Sea has once again highlighted the arrogance and imperialist determination of some countries that, placing their technological possibilities ahead of the spirit of understanding and accommodation requested by the developing nations, threaten to take unilateral action in carrying out deep-sea mining operations.
The foreign debt of the developing countries has now risen to $335 billion. It is estimated that about $40 billion a year goes to servicing this foreign debt, which represents more than 20 percent of their exports. Moreover, the average per capita income in the developed countries is now 14 times that of the underdeveloped countries. This situation is not sustainable.
The developing countries need a new system of financing that enables them to obtain the necessary financial resources to ensure continuous and independent development of their economies. These financing methods should be long-term and low-interest. The use of these financial resources should be completely at the discretion of the developing countries. This will enable them to establish a system of priorities for their own economies, in accordance with their own plans for industrial development, and it will help prevent those funds from being absorbed, as they are today, by transnational corporations that use alleged financial contributions for development to aggravate the distortions of the developing countries’ economies and reap maximum profits from the exploitation of these countries’ resources.
The developing countries, and on their behalf the Movement of Nonaligned Countries, demand that a substantial portion of the immense resources now being squandered by humanity on the arms race be dedicated to development. This would contribute both to reducing the danger of war and helping improve the international situation.
Expressing the position of all the developing countries, the nonaligned countries call for the establishment of a new international monetary system to put an end to the disastrous fluctuations to which the main currencies used in the international economy are subject, especially the US dollar. That financial disorder hits the developing countries, which hope that when the outlines of the new international monetary system are drawn up, they, as the majority of the countries in the international community, representing more than 1.5 billion people, may be given a voice in the decision-making process.
Mr. President and distinguished representatives:
Unequal exchange is ruining our peoples. It must end!
Inflation, which is being exported to us, is crushing our peoples. It must end!
Protectionism is impoverishing our people. It must end!
The existing imbalance in the exploitation of the resources of the sea is abusive. It must be abolished!
The financial resources received by the developing countries are insufficient. They must be increased!
Arms expenditures are irrational. They must cease and the funds thus released must be used to finance development!
The international monetary system prevailing today is bankrupt. It must be replaced!
The debts of the least-developed countries, and of those in a disadvantageous position, are impossible burdens to bear, and have no solution. They must be cancelled!
Indebtedness oppresses the rest of the developing countries economically. There must be relief!
The economic chasm between the developed countries and the countries seeking development is not narrowing but widening. It must be closed!
These are demands of the underdeveloped countries.
Mr. President and distinguished representatives: Response to these demands, some of which have been systematically presented by the developing countries in international forums through the Group of 77 and by Movement of Nonaligned Countries, would permit a change of course in the international economic situation that would provide the developing nations with the institutional conditions for organizing programs that would definitively place them on the road to development.
But even if all these measures were implemented, even if all the mistakes and evils of the present system of international relations were rectified, the developing countries would still lack one decisive element: external financing.
All the domestic efforts, all the sacrifices that the peoples of the developing countries are making and are willing to make, and all the opportunities for increasing their economic potential by improving the conditions in which their foreign trade is carried out, would not be enough.
In light of their true present financial situation, they need further resources to be able both to pay their debts and to make the enormous expenditures required on a global level for the leap into development. Here again, it is not necessary to repeat the figures.
The sixth summit conference was concerned not only because the debts of the underdeveloped countries are practically unbearable, but also because that debt is growing each year at an alarming rate. The data contained in the recent World Bank report, which came out while we were holding the conference in Havana, confirmed that the situation was growing worse every day. In 1978 alone, the foreign public debt of 96 developing countries rose by $51 billion. This rate of growth has raised the foreign debt to the astronomical figures already mentioned.
We cannot, Mr. President, resign ourselves to this gloomy prospect!
The most renowned economists, both Western and those who ascribe to Marxist concepts, admit that the system of international indebtedness of the developing world is completely irrational and that its persistence endangers the entire precarious and unstable world economic balance.
Some try to explain the surprising economic fact that the international banking centers continue to provide funds to countries that are technically bankrupt by arguing that these are generous contributions to help those countries meet their economic difficulties. But this is not so. In fact, they are operations for saving the international capitalist order itself. In October 1978, the Commission of European Communities admitted by way of clarification:
The present balance of the world economy depends to a considerable extent on continuing the flow of private loans to non-oil-producing developing countries… on a scale unprecedented prior to 1974, and any obstacle to that flow will endanger that balance.
World financial bankruptcy would be very hard, most of all for the underdeveloped world and workers in the developed capitalist countries. It would affect even the most stable socialist economies. It is doubtful that the capitalist system would be able to survive such a catastrophe. It is likely that the resulting economic situation would engender a world conflagration. There is already talk of special military forces to occupy the oil fields and the sources of other raw materials.
While it is everyone’s responsibility to be concerned about this somber prospect, first and foremost it is the duty of those who possess the greatest wealth and material abundance.
In any case, the prospect of a world without capitalism is not too frightening to us revolutionaries.
It has been proposed that instead of a spirit of confrontation we employ a sense of world economic interdependency that will enable us to call on the resources of all our economies to obtain joint benefits. But the concept of interdependency is acceptable only when you begin by admitting the intrinsic and brutal injustice of the present interdependency.
The developing countries will not accept the unjust and arbitrary international division of labor that was imposed on them by modern colonialism with the English industrial revolution, and that was intensified by imperialism as “interdependency.”
If we wish to avoid confrontation, which seems to be the only road open to the developing countries—a road offering long and arduous battles of proportions no one can predict—then we must all seek and find formulas for cooperation to solve the great problems, which, while affecting our peoples, cannot be solved without also affecting the most developed countries in one way or another.
Not so many years ago we stated that the irrational squandering of material goods and the subsequent waste of economic resources by developed capitalist societies had already become intolerable. Is that not the cause of the dramatic energy crisis that we face right now? Who, if not the non-oil-producing underdeveloped countries, are bearing the main brunt of it?
This desire to put an end to the waste of resources by the consumer societies is very widely held. A recent document of the UN Industrial Development Organization states, “The present way of life, especially in the industrialized countries, may have to undergo a radical and painful change.”
Naturally, the developing countries cannot and do not hope that the transformation they seek and the financing they require will be given to them as a gift, coming as a result of a mere analysis of international economic problems. In this process, which implies conflict, struggle and negotiation, the nonaligned countries must rely first of all on their own decisions and efforts.
That conviction emerges clearly from the sixth summit. In the economic section of the final declaration, the heads of state or government acknowledge the need to carry out in their countries the necessary economic and social structural changes. They consider that this is the only way to eliminate the present vulnerability of their economies and to turn simple statistical growth into genuine development.
The heads of state and government recognize that this is the only way their people will be willing to pay the price required of them to become the main protagonists in the process. As I said at the summit, “If the system is socially just, the possibilities of survival and economic and social development are incomparably greater.” The history of my own country provides irrefutable proof of this.
The emerging and desperate need to solve the problem of underdevelopment brings us back, Mr. President, to the problem I mentioned a little while ago, which is the last one I would like to submit to this 34th Session of the General Assembly. I refer specifically to international financing.
One of the most serious phenomena accompanying the accelerated indebtedness of the developing countries, as we have already said, is that the majority of funds they receive from outside go to covering their trade balances and negative current accounts, renewing their debts and making interest payments.
If we take as an example the non-oil-exporting developing countries, to whose situation I referred at the Havana conference, we note that in the last six years alone they have run up deficits in their balance of payments of over $200 billion.
In view of this, the investments required by the developing countries are enormous, and they need them primarily, almost without exception, in those branches of production that yield low profits and therefore do not appeal to private foreign lenders or investors.
To increase the production of foodstuffs so as to do away with the malnutrition that affects those 450 million people I mentioned earlier, we must provide extensive new land and water resources. According to estimates of specialists, an additional 76 million hectares of land in the developing countries would have to be cultivated and over 10 million additional hectares of land irrigated in the next 10 years to meet these needs.
Irrigation systems for 45 million hectares of land would have to be repaired. Therefore, and even the most modest estimates admit—I refer to aid and not the total flow of resources—that between $8 billion and $9 billion a year will be required to achieve an agricultural growth of between 3.5 to 4 percent in the developing countries.
With regard to industrialization, the estimates are far higher. The UN Conference on Industrial Development, when defining the goals for the Lima session, stated that at the heart of international development policy there should be a target to achieve by the year 2000 annual levels of growth of between $450 billion and $500 billion a year, of which a third, that is, from $150 billion to $160 billion, will have to be financed from external sources.
But Mr. President and distinguished representatives, development includes more than agriculture and industrialization. Development primarily involves attention to human beings, who should be the protagonists and the goal of all development efforts.
To cite the example of Cuba alone, I will point out that during the last five years our country has invested an average of nearly $200 million a year in school construction. Investment in medical equipment and construction of public health facilities averages over $40 million a year. Cuba is only one of nearly 100 developing countries, and is one of the smallest in terms of land mass and population.
It can easily be deduced that the developing countries will need billions of dollars more to be invested every year to overcome the results of backwardness in education and public health services.
This is not, ladies and gentlemen, our problem alone, a problem solely for the countries victimized by underdevelopment and insufficient development. It is a problem for the international community as a whole. On more than one occasion, it has been said that we were forced into underdevelopment by colonization and imperialist neocolonization. The task of helping us to emerge from underdevelopment is therefore first and foremost a historic and moral obligation for those who benefited from the plunder of our wealth and the exploitation of our men and women for decades and for centuries. But at the same time, it is the task of humanity as a whole.
The socialist countries did not participate in the plunder of the world and they are not responsible for the phenomenon of underdevelopment. But even so, because of the nature of their social system, in which international solidarity is a foundation, they understand and assume the obligation of helping to overcome it.
Likewise, when the world expects the oil-producing developing countries to contribute to the universal flow of external financing for development, it does not present this as a historic obligation and duty, which no one can impose, but as an expression and a recognition of the duty of solidarity among underdeveloped countries.
Those developing countries that are relatively more advanced should also make their contributions. Cuba, which is not speaking here on behalf of its own interests and which is not defending national objectives, is willing to contribute, in accordance with its means, thousands or tens of thousands of technicians: doctors, teachers, agronomists, hydraulic engineers, mechanical engineers, economists, middle-level technicians, skilled workers and so on.
The time has come for all of us to join in the task of drawing entire peoples, hundreds of millions of human beings, out of the backwardness, poverty, malnutrition, disease and illiteracy that keeps them from enjoying full human dignity and pride.
We must therefore mobilize our resources for development. This is our joint obligation.
Mr. President, there are so many special multilateral funds, both public and private, whose purpose it is to contribute to some aspect of development, whether it is agricultural, industrial, or meeting deficits in the balance of payments. Therefore it is not easy for me, in presenting to this General Assembly a report on the economic problems discussed at the sixth summit conference of nonaligned countries, to formulate a concrete proposal for the establishment of a new fund.
But there can be no doubt that the problem of financing should be discussed thoroughly and fully in order to find a solution. In addition to the resources already mobilized by various banking channels, loan organizations, international bodies and private finance agencies, we must discuss and decide on the strategy for the next development decade, so that it will include an additional contribution of no less than $300 billion at 1977 real value, to be invested in the underdeveloped countries and to be made in annual installments of at least $25 billion from the very beginning. This aid should be in the form of donations and long-term, moderate and low-interest credits.
It is imperative that these additional funds be gathered, as the contribution of the developed world and of other countries with resources to the underdeveloped world, over the next 10 years.
If we want peace, these resources will be required. If there are no resources for development there will be no peace.
Some may think that we are asking too much, but I think that the figure itself is still modest. According to statistical information, the world’s annual military expenditure amounts to more than $300 billion.
With $300 billion you could, in one year, build 600,000 schools with a capacity for 400 million children; 60 million comfortable homes for 300 million people; 30,000 hospitals with 18 million beds; 20,000 factories with jobs for more than 20 million workers. Or you could build irrigation systems to water 150 million hectares of land, which, with appropriate technology, could feed a billion people. Humanity wastes this much every year on its military spending. Furthermore, consider the enormous waste of youthful human resources, of technicians, scientists, fuel, raw materials and other things. This is the fabulous price of preventing a true climate of confidence and peace from existing in the world.
In the 1980s, the United States alone will spend six times this much on military activities.
We are requesting less for 10 years of development than is spent in a single year by the ministries of war, and much less than a 10th of what will be spent for military purposes in 10 years.
Some may consider our proposal irrational, but true irrationality lies in the madness of our era; the peril threatening humanity. The enormous responsibility of analyzing, organizing and distributing these resources should be entrusted entirely to the United Nations. These funds should be administered by the international community itself on an absolutely equal basis for all countries, whether they are contributors or beneficiaries, with no political conditions attached and without the size of the donations having any influence on voting power to decide when loans are to be granted and to whom.
Even though the flow of resources should be measured in financial terms, it should not consist only of money. It may well be composed of equipment, fertilizer, raw materials, fuel and complete factories valued in the terms of international trade. Aid in the form of technical personnel and their training should also be considered as a contribution.
Mr. President and distinguished representatives: With the support of the UN secretary general, assisted by the president of the General Assembly and with all the prestige and weight of this organization behind them, and supported from the very outset by the developing countries and especially the Group of 77, we are convinced we would be able to call together the various factors we have mentioned and initiate discussions in which there would be no room for the so-called North–South, East–West antagonisms. Instead, all forces would be joined together in a common undertaking, a common duty, a common hope. That is how this idea we are now submitting to the General Assembly could be crowned with success.
This is not a project that will only benefit the developing nations. It will benefit all countries. As revolutionaries we are not afraid of confrontation. We have placed our trust in history and people. But as a spokesperson and interpreter of the feelings of 95 nations, I have the duty to struggle to achieve cooperation among people, a cooperation which if achieved on a new and just basis, will benefit all the countries of the international community and will especially improve the prospects for peace.
Development in the short term may well be a task entailing apparent sacrifices and even donations that may seem irrecoverable. But the vast world now submerged in backwardness with no purchasing power and extremely limited consumer capacity will, with its development, add a flood of hundreds of millions of consumers and producers to the international economy. It is only in this way that the international economy can be rehabilitated and help the developing countries emerge from crisis.
The history of international trade has shown that development is the most dynamic factor. A major portion of the trade of today takes place among fully industrialized countries. We can assure you that as industrialization and progress spread throughout the world, so too will trade spread to the benefit of all.
For this reason, on behalf of the developing countries, we advocate our cause and we ask you to support it. This is not a gift we seek from you. If we do not come up with effective solutions we will all be equal victims of the catastrophe.
Mr. President, distinguished representatives: Human rights are very often spoken of, but we must also speak of humanity’s rights.
Why should some people go barefoot so that others may ride in expensive cars?
Why should some live for only 35 years so that others may live for 70?
Why should some be miserably poor so that others can be excessively rich?
I speak on behalf of the children of the world who don’t even have a piece of bread. I speak on behalf of the sick who lack medicine. I speak on behalf of those who have been denied the right to life and to human dignity.
Some countries border the coast; others do not. Some have energy resources, others do not. Some possess abundant land on which to produce food, others do not. Some are so glutted with machinery and factories that you cannot breathe the air because of the poisoned atmosphere. And others have only their own emaciated bodies with which to earn their daily bread.
In short, some countries possess abundant resources, other have nothing. What is their fate? To starve? To be eternally poor? Why then civilization? Why then the conscience of humanity? Why then the United Nations? Why then the world?
You cannot speak of peace on behalf of tens of millions of human beings all over the world who are starving to death or dying of curable diseases. You cannot speak of peace on behalf of 900 million illiterate people.
The exploitation of the poor countries by the rich must cease.
I address myself to the rich nations, asking them to contribute. And I address myself to the poor nations, asking them to distribute.
Enough of words! We need deeds!
Enough of abstractions. We want concrete action! Enough speculating about a new international economic order, which no one understands. We must now speak of a real, objective order that everyone understands!
I have not come here as a prophet of the revolution. I have not come here to ask or to wish that the world be violently convulsed. I have come to speak of peace and cooperation among the peoples. And I have come to warn that if we do not peacefully and wisely resolve the present injustices and inequalities, the future will be apocalyptic.
The rattling of weapons, threatening language and overbearing behavior on the international arena must cease.
Enough of the illusion that the problems of the world can be solved by nuclear weapons. Bombs may kill the hungry, the sick and the ignorant; but bombs cannot kill hunger, disease and ignorance. Nor can bombs kill the righteous rebellion of the peoples. And in the holocaust, the rich, who have the most to lose in this world, will also die.
Let us say farewell to arms, and let us, in a civilized manner, dedicate ourselves to the most pressing problems of our times. This is the responsibility, this is the most sacred duty of all the leaders of all the world. This, moreover, is the basic premise for the survival of humankind.
Thank you.