YouSaid · the spoken record

Diaz Ordoñez

lines on the record: 32
first: 1950-09-24
most recent: 1955-09-24
sittings or episodes: 2
sources: un-general-debate

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“These are the plain reasons which have led the delegation of the Dominican Republic to advocate the establishment, at this tenth session of the General Assembly, of an ad hoc committee to make a calm and impartial study of the revision of the Charter, a study which will no doubt culminate in the convocation of the General Conference envisaged ten years ago in Article 109. 167. My delegation, representing one of the Governments which has willingly fulfilled, and continues to fulfil, its responsibilities to the United Nations, offers its full and disinterested assistance in pursuing the aforesaid purposes. In so doing, it proposes to demonstrate its devotion to the United Nations Charter and to help make that instrument as nearly perfect as possible, in the interests of universal justice, peace and security.”
1955-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 10 (1955)
“But let us not resign ourselves to hearing the same or similar remarks made about our own Charter, merely through want of just and timely amendment. 166. The Dominican Republic, as a founder Member of the United Nations, has at all times been faithful and loyal to the Charter. The ideas I have expressed here are not aimed to satisfy any nationalist interest, but are an attempt to do honour and contribute improvements to the basic document which was drawn up by the peoples of the United Nations for the purpose of guiding them in the search for universal peace, progress and security.”
1955-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 10 (1955)
“We are prepared to tolerate, for example, the fact that an important New York newspaper should have chosen the time when the Dominican Republic was honourably fulfilling a debt of humanity and friendship towards a friendly people by contributing several hundred thousand Dominican pesos — which are worth exactly as much as the same number of United States dollars — to the victims of the recent floods in the United States, that it should have chosen this time to launch a violent attack on my Government and others. Yes, we can tolerate this situation, since the Press is free, and any one is free to assess the facts and see them or not see them as they are, and free to remember or not to remember the history of my country.”
1955-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 10 (1955)
“If the United Nations, bearing on its escucheon the blot of the veto, is being used for these purposes, it is either because; it has reversed its historic function, or because its founding Charter is defective, or because these two reasons together are conspiring against its reputation, against its stability, and against its very existence. 165. If humanity today meets with injustice, let us endeavour to make sure that this injustice cannot be imputed to the Charter of the United Nations. Let us recognize that it is frequently attributable to other causes.”
1955-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 10 (1955)
“However, the alternative, which is what we are now witnessing, is nothing but the confirmation in power of a despotism which has overflowed national boundaries to become an international force. This is not what the nations intended, when they met in San Francisco in 1945 to draw up their Charter. And if that huge gathering of victors, out of the necessities of the moment and in order to capitalize their victory, acted wrongly, it is now time for them to revise their Charter so that it may better serve the interests of the moral and material peace of mankind. 164. The democratic world did not engage in the bloodiest of all wars so that a single will could impose its despotic wishes upon all nations by making use of the very instrument that was forged for purposes of world peace and equal and lasting justice.”
1955-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 10 (1955)
“These distinctions between great and small Powers, between permanent and nonpermanent members, and these authoritarian councils where the desires and interests of all can be fettered by the will of a single, privileged, permanent member, are incompatible with the spirit of the age and with our present conception of States. If the great wars of this century were waged for the salvation of democracy, what is the United Nations making of the principle of majority rule? Who will uphold the claim that the minority, reduced to its minimum of a single unit, should continue to impose its will on all the rest? 163. It is well that the rights of majorities and the rights of minorities should be adjusted freely according to their just and proportionate shares.”
1955-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 10 (1955)
“A child of peace, it advances towards peace with filial loyalty and in a spirit of democratic equality. As an international institution, the Organization of American States does not look to the past, where there are no differences for it to adjust or punish, but to the future, for it is only in the. future that we can and ought to find a better world. 162. The United Nations must really unite in a desire to review the Charter and bring it up to date. This Charter must not continue to enforce the discriminatory practice whereby some nations can be condemned to exile and prevented from being heard in the very forum where the destiny of the world, and therefore their own destiny, is being decided.”
1955-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 10 (1955)
“Inter-Americanism was not created in haste, nor following a feverish military crisis, nor in an atmosphere still reeking with the smoke and sweat of the battlefield; it was not created with discriminatory prejudices between great and small, greater and less, nor with distinctions between permanent and non-permanent members nor shackled with the iron manacles of the veto, the instrument of unilateral policy. Inter-Americanism was born of that process of prudent slowness in which time and experience collaborate like wise counsellors. Within its framework there is neither great nor small, nor any situation in which one Member State can impose its own will, directly or indirectly, on all the others. Within this system the democratic principle of majority rule can freely exercise its equalizing function.”
1955-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 10 (1955)
“The Americas have adopted different and more advanced procedures. The inter-American system, in the broad, noble and peaceful sense of the phrase, did not rise spontaneously like a ghost from the battlefields, bringing the scars and bloody bandages to the conference halls and still carrying upon its shoulders the dead bodies of the vanquished. It arose from the bloodless field of the international American conferences and the consultative meetings of the Foreign Ministers of the different republics of the hemisphere. To create this system, its members did not have to present imposing records of military service, nor were any of them stopped at the door and asked whether they were victors or vanquished. It was simply enough for them to be free men and to love the peace of the Americas and the peace of the world. 161.”
1955-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 10 (1955)
“That is to say, both international institutions came into existence as improvised groups of victors, which expressly excluded the vanquished and even nations which were merely neutral or displeasing to them. For this reason, neither ever possessed, nor possesses, the necessary conditions of stability for a genuine world organization. The ideas of universality and discrimination are absolutely incompatible with one another. Consequently, these international institutions devoted themselves to organizing victory — their victory — rather than to organizing peace. I do not think that this road will ever lead to a peace without a victor, to a general, truly universal, indivisible peace, having the character, functions and permanence of something belonging to everybody and intended for everybody. 160.”
1955-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 10 (1955)
“This initial act on the part of the liberator has borne fruit in ten inter-American conferences, held in Washington, Mexico City, Rio de Janeiro, Buenos Aires, Santiago de Chile, Havana, Montevideo, Lima Bogota and Caracas respectively, which have shaped the unity of the political thought of this hemisphere, characterized by peaceful solidarity and the cardinal principle of non-intervention, 159. If we compare what is happening in the Americas with what has happened in the world at large, we shall arrive at the following conclusions: the League of Nations, created by the Treaty of Versailles in June 1919, was formed of and by the group of victor nations of the First World War, and the United Nations, created by the San Francisco Conference, in June 1945, was formed of and by the group of victor nations of the Second World War.”
1955-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 10 (1955)
“Before and after the establishment of these two great organizations, regional units were formed, based on local geographical and political factors, which sought simultaneously to promote the success of the great organizations and to further their particular interests. Bolivar, the founder of countries and unifier of nations, worked to this end in Latin America and began the movement toward a union of Spanish American countries which culminated in the Treaty of Union, League and Perpetual Confederation signed in Panama on 15 July 1826 by the representatives of Colombia, Mexico, Peru and Central America.”
1955-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 10 (1955)
“It is the people of today, labouring under the burden of great wars, who have forged the concept of peace as a right which men should enjoy as naturally and freely as light and air. It is the people of the Americas in particular, the free men of the Americas, who seem to have welcomed, and tried to preserve, this simple, humane and precious idea. 157. In this century of great wars, we have witnessed two tremendous efforts to associate States for the main purpose of peace: the establishment of the League of Nations and that of the United Nations. The League of Nations, born in the first post-war period, was unable to withstand the powerful tidal wave of the Second World War. Today, the United Nations is the mast which holds aloft, against threatening gusts, the flag of universal faith and hope. 158.”
1955-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 10 (1955)
“The implacable neutrality of science, which places the inexhaustible arsenal of its secrets at the service of both pacifists and militarists, seems to permit the best and greater part of its inventions to be snatched up by the latter than by the former. 155. In days gone by, groups of nations and States had a complex function. They served equally for common defence, collective aggression, or for the establishment of balance-of-power systems which in the long run always proved unstable or temporary. Peace was a commodity which could be sold, purchased, or negotiated. In a word, none of the alliances or associations between States had, as its final purpose, the establishment of peace without asking a price, without setting time-limits, without imposing coercive conditions. 156.”
1955-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 10 (1955)
“If justice, peace and security are aspirations which increase in proportion to the cruelty of war, then no generation of mankind has ever been in more urgent need of such moral and material consolation than the people of the twentieth century. And, paradoxically, the people of the twentieth century are living closer to the threat of physical destruction than any other generation in the entire history of our planet. The more they need and seek for peace, the more they are beset and threatened by war. The greater and more lasting the peace they seek, the more destructive and ferocious is the war they find.”
1955-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 10 (1955)
“Consequently the signing of that Charter, including Article 109, constituted a recognition of the fact that revision was possible, and a moral and material obligation to respect this possibility. And L am not aware that any formal reservation was made with respect to this Article. 153. To postpone a problem is not to solve it. To dose one’s eyes in order not to see a conflict does not eliminate or diminish it. There is no material peace where there is no moral peace, and there is no moral peace where there is no justice. It is the request, demand, claim, supplication and entreaty of our Charter that it should be enabled to become more and more equitable every day. 154.”
1955-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 10 (1955)
“But it is necessary that I refer to this subject, because although the United Nations has done a great deal of work and achieved some positive results during the past five years, it is no less certain that, with respect to the fair, logical and scientific revision of its Charter, it has made absolutely no progress since 1945 and its movements have remained frozen like those of a paralytic, while the waters of time have flowed onward, in their course throughout a whole decade. 152. On the other hand, when the founders of the United Nations — including the “Big Five” — signed the Charter, they thereby confirmed the complete validity of all its texts, including, naturally, Article 109.”
1955-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 10 (1955)
“No matter how serious — as they most certainly are — certain other subjects before the tenth session of the General Assembly may be considered, there is no item that demands more immediate attention than this one, because no other item is of such importance to the world and to the very existence of the United Nations itself. We are all aware that this subject touches a sensitive spot. We are all aware that the four simple words “review of the Charter” produce a hostile reaction in certain quarters.”
1955-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 10 (1955)
“Hammarskjold, addressed his note of 25 July 1955 [A/2919] to the Member States, drawing their attention to paragraph 3 of Article 109 of the Charter and informing them that the provisional agenda of the tenth session of the General Assembly would include an item entitled “Proposal to call a General Conference of the Members of the United Nations for the purpose of reviewing the Charter”. The Secretary-General concluded by listing in this note the documentation which he had prepared in conformity with resolution 796 (VIII). 151.”
1955-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 10 (1955)
““Amendments”, they included Article 109. And in obedience to this wise display of foresight, the General Assembly, on 27 November 1953, at its eight session, adopted its resolution 796 (VIII), requesting the Secretary-General to prepare certain documentation for the purpose of facilitating, during the tenth regular session of the General Assembly, the consideration of the question of calling a general conference for the aforementioned purpose, 150. And for this reason also, the Secretary-General of the United Nations, Mr.”
1955-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 10 (1955)
“Consequently, if the United Nations is still far from achieving what was and continues to be its supreme aspiration, this is not because it has lacked the co-operation of the best minds, or because its servants, with true devotion to duty, have been grudging of their valour, resolution and loyalty. 148. It is possible that the underlying cause of the situation to which I refer is rooted in the very document which served as a birth certificate for the United Nations. I refer to the Charter signed at San Francisco. 149. The founders of the United Nations, that is, those who signed the Charter in 1945, were honest enough to foresee that their work could be improved on, since no work of man is endowed with absolute and lasting perfection. It was for this reason that among the provisions of Chapter XVIII of the Charter, under the heading.”
1955-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 10 (1955)
“For all these things this honourable institution deserves the gratitude and applause of the nations of the world; but activity, initiative and effort are all the more praiseworthy in proportion as they attain the goals which they set out to attain. 147. The greatest brains of our time in the political, economic and scientific world have contributed the best of their Intelligence to bringing about the success of the immense project inaugurated by the Charter of the United Nations, which was signed in San Francisco a little more than ten years ago. No other attempt ever made to solve the vital problems of nations was begun with more determination, or was aided by better men and a more united goodwill than this one.”
1955-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 10 (1955)
“On returning to this solemn gathering, entering once again this great laboratory of international political thought, where noble and courageous ideas are struggling to make righteousness prevail, to ensure the certainty of moral and material peace, and to achieve lasting and permanent security, it is only natural that I should draw a comparison between the United Nations of yesterday — since everything that lives has its yesterday, its today and possibly its tomorrow — and the United Nations of today. 146. We must all recognize the merits of the tremendous work which has been accomplished during the last five years by the United Nations. Its dynamic nature has proliferated in more and more activities; its indefatigable enterprise has created new agencies, its efforts have spread to ever wider horizons.”
1955-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 10 (1955)
“144. Five years ago I had the honour to address the fifth session of the General Assembly of the United Nations, when I was head of the delegation of my country, the Dominican Republic. Since then, I have not taken any personal part in the interesting debates of this distinguished international institution, and it is only indirectly, through the Foreign Ministry of my country, that I have been able to follow from a distance the difficult, complicated and laborious progress of this Organization, upon which humanity gazes with anxious and fearful faith. 145.”
1955-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 10 (1955)
“These two considerations are, first, the sincere desire to point out — so that it may be taken into consideration — that there has been a change in world public opinion in favour of such relations since resolution 39 (I) was adopted on 12 December 1946; and, secondly, the fervent wish to contribute to this world Organization a new and constructive element of unity and agreement, an element which is the more necessary and desirable at a time v/hen gales, blowing from a quarter we all know, are threatening to strip the petals off this white rose of peace which is called the United Nations Charter. 13. The Dominican Republic trusts that it is not alone in hoping for the adoption of this constructive and just proposal which, just and constructive as it is, it has submitted as a tribute to United Nations unity.”
1950-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 5 (1950)
“Apart from the reasons imposed by the logic of history and the irresistible force of tradition; apart from the historic heritage which has implanted in the soul of peoples a strong feeling of filial respect mingled with manly and honourable gratitude; apart from the fact that the Dominican Republic, as the first-born, wished by its action to express a desire rooted deep down in the national instinct of some twenty sister countries; apart from all this, the Dominican Republic was guided by two more immediate and realistic considerations, more timely and practical, when it asked the General Assembly first to consider and later to approve the resumption of normal and traditional relations between Member States of the United Nations and Spain. 12.”
1950-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 5 (1950)
“The Dominican Republic takes this opportunity to reaffirm its intention to offer its full co-operation and, as far as its resources permit, to assume its full share of the sacrifices necessary for the complete triumph of this just United Nations undertaking. This is not the first time — let us hope it may be the last — that my country, though not one of the greatest or most powerful, has calmly and bravely faced an unequal fight for the right, resolute and conscientious in the performance of its duty. 10. Before leaving this rostrum I should like to refer to a different matter connected with the United Nations. The question of the relations between Member States of the United Nations and Spain was placed on the agenda of the fifth session of the General Assembly at the initiative of the Dominican Republic [A/1310]. 11.”
1950-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 5 (1950)
“By its energetic, resolute, unequivocal and united action, the United Nations has saved the faith of mankind in the principles of peace, and has taught the aggressors an eloquent lesson. 8. The blood now being shed by the American soldiers is redeeming the ideal of the United Nations — the ideal of peaceful possession and enjoyment of security. For the first time in history the community of nations has taken the decisive step of waging a victorious war on war. Never has such a tribute been rendered to peace, for never before has the conscience of mankind been so united in the face of brutal aggression. Let this object- lesson serve as a formal warning to aggressors everywhere, whether they be violators of the national rights of others or merely ideological aggressors; for any moral aggressor is potentially a military aggressor. 9.”
1950-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 5 (1950)
“I belong to a country whose deepest and most prolonged historical afflictions have been painfully rooted in the most varied types of intervention. The Dominican Republic, with its experience of the martyrdom of intervention, is in a position to appreciate to the full the tragedy which the people of South Korea is suffering. 6. But what democratic people, even if it has itself never been the victim of treacherous aggression, can fail to have repudiated and condemn such an unprecedented and criminal outrage? The United Nations, composed of peoples which wish to be peoples, of men who strive to be men in the highest sense of the word, has taken on behalf of its Members the stand dictated in all of us by the deep-rooted instinct of self-preservation and the supreme and universally felt desire not to let foul aggression go unpunished. 7.”
1950-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 5 (1950)
“It is a crime to use it as an instrument of war in times of peace. It is a crime not to render it due honour. 4. “We the peoples of the United Nations, determined to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war…” Thus reads the opening sentence of the Preamble of the United Nations Charter. Yet, today one of these nations, “determined to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war” is violated and invaded by violent and brutal forces bent on extermination — the extermination of a people and of a nationality. I need hardly say that I am referring to the democratic Republic of South Korea. 5. In the degrading scale of interventions, unjust and injurious interventions by armed force marks the nadir below the zero of international politics.”
1950-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 5 (1950)
“The recent wars, with their unparalleled violence and enormous destructive power, engendered in the peoples a boundless desire for peace, concord and agreement. That is why the United Nations (united for agreement, concord and peace) neither can nor should be regarded as one of those familiar panaceas created for interested motives in international political laboratories with the object of providing temporary compromise solutions for more or less selfish problems; it must be recognized for what it is, a sacred idea conceived by the peoples at a time of grave and legitimate struggle for the permanent protection of their democratic existence, autonomy, dignity, peace and security. 3. For these reasons it is a crime to obstruct it in its sacred mission. It is a crime to try to reduce it to a tool of selfish ideologies.”
1950-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 5 (1950)
“Had the United Nations not been faced in its five years of existence with countless obstacles, had it not been called upon to deal with so many alarming symptoms in the historical development of a convalescent world, it would be difficult to justify its creation, to welcome its birth and to hang on it, as men hoist a banner to a masthead, the hopes of peace and security of a profoundly disturbed epoch. The fact is that the struggle which this young yet already sorely tried Organization has waged, and is still waging, is the best proof of the timeliness of its conception and creation, and of the urgent and imperious need for the work it is doing today. 2. Certainly this has not been merely another episode in the political history of the peoples.”
1950-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 5 (1950)