[Congressional Record Volume 142, Number 95 (Tuesday, June 25, 1996)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E1165-E1166]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




              U.N. CHARTER DAY--51 YEARS OF ACCOMPLISHMENT

                                 ______
                                 

                         HON. RONALD V. DELLUMS

                             of california

                    in the house of representatives

                         Tuesday, June 25, 1996

  Mr. DELLUMS. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to recognize the 51st 
anniversary of the signing of the United Nations' Charter. The United 
Nations [UN] was created over World War II to meet a number of 
supranational objectives. It was tasked to maintain international peace 
and security, to promote recognition of fundamental human rights, to 
promote respect for international law, and to promote social progress 
and better standards of life worldwide.
  There are some who feel that the United Nations has outlived its 
usefulness. Some see it as an irrelevant bureaucratically bloated 
organization, where diplomatic talk continues endlessly. There are 
unquestionably aspects of the United Nations that merit reform. But 
while friends of the United Nations recognize its problems to be a 
reason for reform, its enemies use those same problems as a basis to 
call for its destruction.
  It is too easy to overlook the United Nation's many accomplishments, 
because many of them we now take for granted. For example, the United 
Nations helped to peacefully bring down the racist government in South 
Africa.

[[Page E1166]]

U.N. peacekeeping in Namibia helped to create a civil administration of 
government. The United Nations has helped to end civil contract and 
hold elections in Cambodia, El Salvador, and Nicaragua. Some look of 
the efforts gone awry in Somalia and the former Yugoslavia as 
indicative of its uselessness. Yet, while the United Nations did not 
accomplish all that was intended or hoped, neither were those total 
failures either. The United Nations was able to ensure that food and 
other humanitarian air reached civilians caught in the conflict. As bad 
as the situation was in Somalia and the former Yugoslavia, it would 
have been far worse without the United Nation's intervention.
  The United Nations has also been fairly successful in fostering the 
recognition of human rights throughout the world. In 1948, the U.N. 
General Assembly adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. 
This declaration has subsequently been recognized by many legal 
scholars as constituting customary international law. The United 
Nations followed this up in 1966 with the International Covenant on 
Civil and Political Rights and the International Covenant on Economic, 
Social, and Cultural Rights. In addition, the United Nations has been 
instrumental in developing treaties focused on eradicating racial 
discrimination, gender discrimination, and torture. The U.N. Human 
Rights Commission in Geneva helps to monitor and enforce these 
international human rights.
  The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees [UNHCR] has also 
been very successful in aiding and resettling refugees, who are 
displaced by conflict or natural disasters. UNHCR was even awarded the 
Nobel Prize for this work in Europe in 1954 and in Asia in 1981.
  The United Nations has many successes in health care. Everyone has 
benefited from its efforts. In 1980, the World Health Organization 
[WHO] eradicated smallpox worldwide. In 1991, it eradicated 
poliomyelitis form the Western hemisphere. The U.N. Children's Fund 
[UNICEF] works with mothers and children to reduce maternal and infant 
mortality rates. UNICEF provides maternal health care and vaccinations 
against childhood diseases in developing countries. UNICEF was awarded 
the 1965 Nobel Peace Prize for these efforts.
  The United Nations has also been successful in aiding the development 
of Third World countries. The U.N. Development Programme [UNDP] has 
helped aid developing countries to become economically self sufficient. 
It has aided over 170 countries to grow their own food and to 
participate in the global economy. The International Labour 
Organization [ILO], an independent U.N. agency, has been working to 
establish worker's rights worldwide. It includes in its membership 
governmental officials and representatives of both labor and 
management. It has drafted numerous treaties that have helped to 
establish minimum health and safety standards and prohibit forced labor 
and child labor.
  The United Nations has many environmental accomplishments, 
particularly relating to pollution of the ocean and the atmosphere. It 
was through the United Nations that the Law of the Sea Conventions of 
1956 and 1982 were drafted. These conventions reflect existing 
customary law as well as developing law, and are designed to protect 
freedom of the seas, prevent ocean pollution, and recognize the valid 
interests of coastal states. The International Maritime Organization 
[IMO] has also been instrumental in reducing pollution in the oceans--
by as much as 60 percent.
  It was the 1972 Stockholm Conference on the Environment that brought 
focus to international environmental issues. Out of this came the U.N. 
Environmental Programme [UNEP], which helped to clean up the 
Mediterranean Sea, and helped to develop a number of international 
treaties. These treaties include: the Convention on Long-Range 
Transboundary Air Pollution, the Vienna Convention for the Protection 
of the Ozone Layer, the Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete 
the Ozone Layer, and the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change. 
In 1992, the United Nations convened the Rio Conference on the 
Environment and Development, which helped to focus on the need for 
sustainable development.
  The United Nations has also been important in the effort to control 
nuclear weapons. The International Atomic Energy Association [IAEA] is 
an independent agency of the United Nations that enforces the Nuclear 
Non-Proliferation Treaty. The IAEA was formed in order to help nations 
develop peaceful uses of nuclear energy and to prevent proliferation of 
nuclear weapons. The IAEA monitors nuclear energy plants to ensure they 
are not being used for non-peaceful purposes. The IAEA, working with 
the U.N. Special Commission on Iraq, has been inspecting Iraq's nuclear 
plants to make sure that they are not used to develop nuclear weapons.
  The United Nations is an invaluable institution. It has been 
particularly important to those living in Third World countries, but 
even those of us in the United States have benefited from the United 
Nation's many-focused agencies. We have more peace, more justice, 
better health, more self-sufficiency, cleaner air, cleaner water, and a 
consciousness of the interdependence of all nations in one global 
village.

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