United Nations General Assembly

“ The Asian-African declaration, they added, was in fact designed to obtain concerted action—through the United Nations—for the independence of dependent peoples and territories, without any conditions or reservations and without any undermining of their right freely to develop their own political, economic, social and cultural institutions. ”

“ The struggle of the peoples for liberation was a great historic process which could not be checked. The United Nations, they declared, was duty bound to put an end to the colonial system and the best contribution it could make would be to adopt the draft declaration submitted by the USSR.
Representatives of some Latin American Members said that the juridical traditions of their countries made them natural allies of the cause of independence for colonial peoples. ”

“ All States shall observe faithfully and strictly the provisions of the Charter of the United Nations,the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and this Declaration on the basis of equality,non-interference in the internal affairs of all states, and respect for the sovereign rights of all peoples and their territorial integrity. ”

“ All armed action or repressive measures of all kinds directed against dependent peoples shall cease in order to enable them to exercise peacefully and freely their right to complete independence, and the integrity of their national territory shall be respected. ”

“ However, they favoured independence and freedom everywhere, in all attitudes and under all systems, and they felt the debate should therefore be widened to include all issues relating to freedom—such as freedom of speech and freedom to worship. ”

“ The representatives of Guatemala, Honduras and Panama were among those who pointed out that colonialism still existed in the Western Hemisphere; remaining colonies in America represented an area of about 2,700,000 square kilometres, with a population of more than 3,000,000 people. The representative of Cuba maintained that the Assembly should recommend that self-determination and sovereignty be granted to the people of Puerto Rico. ”

“ In spite of that, remarkable progress had been made; it could be said that without the efforts of the administering authority the people of New Guinea would have had no immediate hopes of advancement or self government. ”

“ They therefore appealed to all delegations to study the text carefully and open-mindedly, so that a period of humanity's history which should have been left behind—that is, the exploitation of peoples by other peoples and the domination of countries by other countries—could be forgotten. ”