Léo Matarasso
in Peuples/Popoli/Peoples/Pueblos, n.ro 1, Milano, mai 1983
The Congress was concluded without voting resolutions on the various questions on the agenda and leaving to the newly appointed International Council the task of defining the international actions of the League.
The International Council and its Executive Committee discussed this issue and considered that the League, which has always fought for the implementation of the rights of peoples, could not be unconcerned about the growing dangers of war, being war the most serious injury to the rights of peoples according to the Universal Declaration of Algiers in 1976: right to existence, right to self-determination, etc.
The period when the League was created and the Algiers Declaration was conceived was marked by the ideas of detente and peaceful coexistence.
Afterwards war threats significantly increased, the armament race reached unprecedented levels, and the antagonism between the two superpowers became more acute. At the same time, in Europe, wide popular movements expressed their growing opposition against this situation and they are now very active in support of a true disarmament.
A war, and particularly a nuclear war, would obviously provoke massacres and destruction without any precedent in human history. Moreover, everybody knows that for the survivors, wars end with territorial divisions without considering the will of the peoples living there.
But what the League means to point out is that already now the preparations for war are causing damage to the interests of the peoples and more precisely of the peoples of Third world. In fact they lead to:
• location and installation of bases in foreign lands;
• extension, through direct or disguised actions, of the boundary of certain countries, in contempt of the sovereignty of other countries and of the rights of the people living in these countries;
• payment of incredible sums of money for more sophisticated but quickly obsolete armaments (Experts estimate in one million dollars a minute the money spent on earth for armaments. Others experts say that world stocks represent four tons of explosive power per inhabitant);
This super-armament situation creates a new contest for the fight of the peoples of the Third world. East-West challenge is a real danger for North-South dialogue, and it is a danger for Non-alignment, because it often obliges liberation movements to choose between the two factions.
The scandal persists: 50 millions of human beings starve or die every year for malnutrition, while billions and billions are invested in preparations for war.
We have to reject categorically the theory which says that peace is maintained by the balance of armaments between the two blocs. This theory, which reminds too much the one on “armed peace” before World War I, can only lead to a terrible armament race. Each of the two blocs thinks that its security needs to be a bit superior compared to the other side. It is a dreadful spiral which puts human fate to the mercy of an accident.
Our League cannot but join all actions undertaken by governments, international institutions, national and international non-governmental organizations in favour of disarmament.
But what is important above all today is to stop the armament race. In Europe, the expected installation of Pershing and Cruise missiles increases the risk of a war instead of reducing it. It is for this reason that the League Executive Committee decided that the League will take part to the large international meeting which will take place in Berlin in the month of May.
In the same way the League is ready to join in the future – always preserving its independence and respecting its own specificity – all the actions which it will consider useful for peace in conformity with the rights of peoples.
in: Peuples/Popoli/Peoples/Pueblos, n.ro 1, Milano, mai 1983