15th meeting 

Friday, 5 May 1978, at 4:10 p.m. 
President: Mr. Donald O. MILLS (Jamaica). 

E/1978/SR.15

AGENDA ITEM 10 

Non-governmental organizations (E/1978/13) 

REPORT OF THE SECOND (SOCIAL) COMMITTEE
(E/1978/60 AND CORR.1) 

1. The PRESIDENT invited the Council to take action on the two draft decisions recommended for adoption in the report of the Second (Social) Committee on agenda item 10 (E/1978/60 and Corr.1). He drew attention to a number of corrections that should be made in draft decision II in order to bring the information contained in it up to date. 

Draft decisions I and II were adopted without a vote (decisions 1978/15 and 1978/16). 

AGENDA ITEM 12 

Social development questions (A/32/205, E/1978/15 and Corr.1 and 2, E/1978/19, E/1978/29) 

REPORT OF THE SECOND (SOCIAL) COMMITTEE (E/1978/61 AND CORR.1)

2. The PRESIDENT invited the Council to take action on the draft resolution and the three draft decisions recommended in the Second (Social) Committee's report on agenda item 12 (E/1978/61 and Corr.1). 

The draft resolution was adopted without a vote (resolution 1978/8). 

Draft decisions I, II and III were adopted without a vote (decisions 1978/17, 1978/18 and 1978/19). 

AGENDA ITEM 13 

Narcotic drugs (E/1978/16, E/1978/35) 
REPORT OF THE SECOND (SOCIAL) COMMITTEE (E/1978/62) 

3. The PRESIDENT invited the Council to take action on the five draft resolutions and one draft decision recommended in the Second (Social) Committee's report on agenda item 13 (E/1978/62). 
Draft resolutions I to IV were adopted without a vote (resolutions 1978/9 to 1978/12). 
Draft resolution V was adopted by 42 votes to none, with 4 abstentions (resolution 1978/13). 
The draft decision was adopted without a vote (decision 1978/30). 

AGENDA ITEM II 

Human rights questions (E/1978/14 and Add.1-6, E/1978/21, E/1978/34, E/1978/45, E/1978/L.23) 
REPORT OF THE SECOND (SOCIAL) COMMITTEE (E/1978/63) 

4. The PRESIDENT invited the Council to take action on the 11 draft resolutions and 10 draft decisions recommended in the report of the Second (Social) Committee on agenda 11 (E/1978/63). 
Draft resolution I was adopted without a vote (resolution 1978/14). 
Draft resolution II was adopted by 39 votes to 2, with 6 abstentions (resolution 1978/15). 
Draft resolutions III to X were adopted without a vote (resolutions 1978/16 to 1978/23). 
At the request of the representative of Iraq, a vote was taken by roll-call on draft resolution XI. 
The Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, having been drawn by lot by the President, was called upon to vote first. 
In favour: Algeria, Argentina, Bangladesh, Bolivia, Brazil, China, Colombia, Cuba, Dominican Republic, Greece, Hungary, India, Iran, Iraq, Jamaica, Lesotho, Malaysia, Mauritania, Mexico, Nigeria, Philippines, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Rwanda, Somalia, Sudan, Syrian Arab Republic, Togo, Trinidad and Tobago, Uganda, Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, United Arab Emirates, United Republic of Cameroon, United Republic of Tanzania, Upper Volta, Venezuela, Yugoslavia 
Against: United States of America 
Abstaining: Austria, Finland, France, Germany, Federal Republic of, Italy, Japan, Netherlands, New Zealand, Sweden, United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland 

Draft resolution XI was adopted by 39 votes to 1, with 10 abstentions (resolution 1978/24). 

Draft decisions I to X were adopted without a vote (decisions 1978/20 to 1978/29). 

5. Mr. FAURIS (France, speaking in explanation of vote, said that his delegation had voted in favour of draft resolution II, as it had in the Second (Social) Committee. He wished, however, to restate the reservations formulated at the 23rd meeting of the Committee. His delegation would have preferred the Council to recommend the establishment of a fund for all refugees and not only for those from Chile. Account should also be taken of the amnesty measures recently adopted by the Chilean Government, which might alter the conditions on which assistance was to be given. 

6. Miss RICHTER (Argentina) said that, if a vote had been taken on draft decision IV, her delegation would have voted against it. 

7. Mr. ABDALLAH (Tunisia) said that his delegation had been absent during the roll-call vote on draft resolution XI. Had it been present, it would have voted in favour. 

8. Mr. DE FARIA (Portugal) said that his delegation had voted in favour of draft resolution XI because it was the duty of the Commission on Human Rights to concern itself with violations of human rights, wherever they occurred. Portugal had voted in the same way won Council resolution 2085 (LXII). However, the wording used in the resolution just adopted could raise questions extraneous to the main point, and he wished to stress that Portugal's affirmative vote should not be construed as implying total agreement with every word or with the precise title of the resolution. 

9. Mr. DE LA PEDRAJA Y MUÑOZ (Mexico) said that, as in the Committee, his delegation had voted in favour of draft resolution XI because of its concern over violations of human rights, wherever they occurred. However, it considered that questions of frontiers should not be brought into a resolution on human rights and reiterated its reservations regarding the use of the term "Palestine". 

10. Mr. TERADA (Japan) said that if a vote had been taken on draft resolution II, his delegation would have abstained for the reasons explained in detail at the 19th meeting of the Committee. 

11. Mr. EMAM (Malaysia) said that his delegation had been unable to be present in the Second (Social) Committee when draft resolution XI was first considered. If it had been, it would have asked to join the sponsors of the draft resolution. 

12. Ms. MARTINEZ (Jamaica) said that her delegation had voted in favour of draft resolution XI for the reasons stated in detail at the 20th meeting of the Committee. 

13. Mr. GAGLIARDI (Brazil) said that, if a vote had been taken on draft decision IV, his delegation would have voted against it. 

14. Mr. BYKOV (Union of Soviet Socialist Republics) said that he wished to comment on draft resolutions I, IV and VI and draft decision VII, which the Council had adopted without a vote. 

15. Some of the provisions of draft resolution I gave rise to serious doubts, in the light of the Secretary-General's recent statements on budgetary questions. The resolution should be regarded merely as expressing a wish, to be complied with only if resources could be found without any increase in the budget, through the abolition of obsolete programmes or in other ways. The matter would of course go before the Committee for Programme and Co-ordination, which would be able to determine whether resources were available. 

16. With regard to draft resolutions IV, his delegation felt that the Sub-Commission on Prevention of Discrimination and Protection of Minorities could itself consider the question of a body of principles and that it was not necessary to set up a working group. 

17. In connexion with draft resolution VI, he noted that the General Assembly had already decided that budgetary allocations in any field should be increased only if the need was most pressing and if the increase could be financed through the abolition of obsolete programmes. 

18. With respect to draft decision VII, he reaffirmed the statement of principle made by his delegation at the thirty-fourth session of the Commission on Human Rights. 

19. Mr. CAMILLERI (Malta) said that, if his delegation had been present during the roll-call vote on draft resolution XI, it would have voted in favour. 

20. Mr. MOHAMMED (Bangladesh) said that he had voted in favour of draft decision II for the reasons given in the statement made by his delegation on behalf of the Asian members of the Council at the 23rd meeting of the Second (Social) Committee. 

21. Mr. LAMDAN (Observer for Israel) said that draft resolution XI, singling out Israel from all the countries discussed by the Commission on Human Rights, indicated the length to which some States would go to mask their own contempt for human rights and to turn that forum into yet another platform for anti-Israeli propaganda. In considering that draft resolution, the Council was disregarding and in fact virtually endorsing by omission the summary executions, the brutal suppression of minorities and the arrest and torture of dissidents taking place throughout the world and was forgoing yet another opportunity to adopt a universal approach to human rights questions. 

22. Nothing could better illustrate the absurdity of the situation than the list of sponsors of the draft resolution. It was headed by Afghanistan, whose credentials for evaluating democratic rights were illustrated by the recent coup d'état which had left countless civilians dead. Another critic of Israel was Iraq, which had been described by Amnesty International as one of the most serious violators of human rights in the Middle East and which systematically discriminated against every racial and religious minority within its borders. Also on the list were the Syrian Arab Republic, where hundreds of political prisoners were being held without trial; Bangladesh, whose short political history was matched only by its long history of human rights violations; the Sudan, whose racist war against the black southern Sudanese had been described in the United States Congressional Record as one of the most cruel wars of extermination of the century, and Yugoslavia, where there were severe restrictions on freedom of speech, the press and expression. His delegation had noted with particular sorrow the continued active participation of Egypt in the sterile campaign of political warfare against Israel. That unfortunate attitude might help to explain Israel's legitimate concern for its long-term security needs and the sad realization that all differences could not be solved overnight. 

23. As for the draft resolution itself, it was well known that the human rights situation in the territories administered by Israel could stand comparison with that of any society represented in the Council. The Arabs in those territories had held free elections, were free to express their views, had access to open courts and lawyers of their choice, worshipped freely, crossed freely into neighbouring Arab States to visit relatives and to pursue trade, and educated their children in schools according to their own curricula. Israel had a special arrangement with the International Red Cross permitting visits without witnesses to security detainees within 14 days of their arrest and the President of the International League for Human Rights had been allowed in the last year to inspect conditions in Israel's prisons. Furthermore, with regard to prisoners, although the Geneva Convention permitted capital punishment, Israel had never imposed it in the territories, despite the atrocity of some of the crimes committed there. In the name of the principle of universality, he challenged the sponsors of the hypocritical resolution to extend the same invitation for international inspection of their own prisons and to forswear capital punishment. 

24. Israel was an open society and, as such, was not afraid of criticism. How many of the supporters of the resolution could make the same claim? Any representative in the Council who wished to do so might inspect the situation in the territories for himself. Indeed, hundreds of thousands of tourists, including approximately 200,000 Arab citizens from all over the Middle East, visited the territories every year. 

25. The addition in the operative part of the resolution of the words "including Palestine", as if "Palestine" were a so-called occupied Arab territory, marked a substantive change from the previous year and revealed the sinister intention underlying the sponsors' propaganda effort. There was a country in that region by the name of Israel. If the human rights situation in Israel as well as in the territories was cause for concern, then the sponsors should say so openly. Eliminating Israel on paper had nothing to do with human rights; it did not help in the search for a solution for the Palestinian Arabs; and it merely reinforced Israel's determination to safeguard its own security. What his delegation found distressing was that some democratic countries which respected human rights within their own territories should have allowed such a resolution, possibly referring to human rights in Israel itself, to pass unopposed. Only one member of the Council had had the courage to reject that travesty. Until Israel's neighbours in the Middle East abandoned their political warfare and envisaged real peace and coexistence with Israel, the United Nations would remain a plaything in their hands and the lofty ideals of human rights would remain subverted to their invidious ends. 

26. Mr. HUSSAIN (Iraq), speaking in exercise of the right of reply, said that it was a joke to hear a former director of Israeli intelligence and former military governor of occupied Jerusalem lecturing the Council on human rights. He wondered who was responsible for the deaths of 2,000 innocent people in southern Lebanon and for the use of cluster bombs and napalm. The allegations of the Zionist representative against Iraq were groundless. As his delegation had stated in the Second (Social) Committee, the Arab nations were faced with a growing cancer in the Middle East. That cancer was called Israel, and so long as it was not eliminated the world would be in danger. 

27. Mr. MATELJAK (Yugoslavia), speaking in exercise of the right of reply, said that the angry words directed by the representative of Israel against Yugoslavia and other countries could not nullify the criminal killings of Israel of innocent people in Lebanon and in the occupied Arab territories, including the territory of Palestine. 

28. Mr. TERZI (Observer, Palestine Liberation Organization) said that, although the Council had heard attacks on Member States, it had not heard any denial of the racist practices to which his people were subjected. The representative of Tel Aviv had spoken of freedom to practise religion. However, it was common knowledge that the Knesset had recently passed a law imposing a penalty of five years' imprisonment on anyone who tried to convert others to Christianity. He recalled that the report of the Special Committee to Investigate Israeli Practices Affecting the Human Rights of the Population of the Occupied Territories had been endorsed by the General Assembly. The Special Committee had been denied entry to the occupied territories in an attempt to cover up the heinous acts that were being committed by the Zionists in his country. Hundreds of thousands had passed through detention camps and prisons in the occupied territories; yet the Council was being told of the happy lives those people led under Israeli rule. 

29. As for the "tourists" who visited Israel, they were in fact Palestinians who were denied the right to return home but were allowed to pay a brief visit to the place where they had been born and raised. 

30. With regard to the claim that the statements by Arab delegations and by sponsors of the resolution undermined the search for a solution to the Palestine question, he said that the ones undermining that search were those who defied the International will and whose admission to the United nations had been contingent upon their permitting Palestinian refugees to return to their homeland. In that connexion, he drew attention to General Assembly resolutions 194 (III) and 273 (III).  Far from allowing the refugees to return, the Zionists were committing heinous deeds in order to increase the number of displaced persons. It was not surprising that only one State had had the "courage" to stand up for Israel. That State had also had the "courage" to send cluster bombs to Israel and to pour billions of dollars into the racist base in the Middle East. 

31. Finally, he noted that the United Nations had been dealing with the question of Palestine and Palestinian refugees since 1947. Now, the Council was being told that the name had changed. He for one was not aware that the name "Palestine" had been eliminated by any save the racist Zionists in Tel Aviv. 

32. Mr. AL-HUSSAMY (Syrian Arab Republic) said that the attack levelled [sic] by the observer for Israel was in effect an attack on the Council as a whole and an insult to all its members. At the same time, of course, in a manner consistent with the Zionist attitude towards human rights, the observer for Israel conspicuously ignored United Nations resolutions dealing with Israel's crimes, of which draft resolution XI was only the latest. 

33. Mr. RAHAMTALLA (Sudan) said that, in attacking the Council for adopting draft resolution XI, the observer for Israel had also attacked the sponsors, including the Sudan. The Government and people of the Sudan would continue to give every possible support to their brothers in the occupied territories as long as the Israeli occupation lasted. 

34. Mr. MOHAMMED (Bangladesh) said that the observer for Israel had made uncalled-for references to Bangladesh and other countries. Insults could not obscure the reality of the situation in the occupied territories or affect his country's support for the victims. 

35. Mr. STIBRAVY (United States of America) said that his Government rejected the motives and responsibility imputed to it in connexion with recent events in Lebanon and in connexion with its vote on draft resolution XI. 

36. Mr. SOBHY (Observer for Egypt) said that the observer for Israel had slandered the States Members of the United Nations in order to divert attention from Israel's violations of human rights. He could not, however, change the facts. The international press, the reports of international human rights organizations and even the testimony of Israelis themselves showed how Israel behaved in the occupied territories. Egypt, on the other hand, was fully committed to a peaceful settlement in the Middle East and had taken steps in that direction. However, that commitment did not imply that it would ever surrender either its own rights and interests or those of the Arab people. The observer for Israel had asked Egypt to show an interest in real peace. What more concrete way could there have been to show Egypt's interest in peace than the visit of President Sadat to Jerusalem? 

37. Mr. TERZI (Observer, Palestine Liberation Organization) said that, while he recognized the right of the United States to reject the motives of his organization, such a rejection did not negate the fact that the United States had supplied cluster bombs as well as vast subsidies to Israel. 

AGENDA ITEM 9

Activities for the advancement of women: United Nations Decade for Women: Equality, Development and Peace (E/1978/23, E/1978/30, E/1978/31, E/1978/32, E/1978/NGO/1) 

REPORT OF THE SECOND (SOCIAL) COMMITTEE 
(E/1978/64 AND ADD.1) 

38. The PRESIDENT invited the Council to take action on the 10 draft resolutions and five draft decisions recommended for adoption in the report of the Second (Social) Committee on agenda item 9 (E/1978/4). He drew attention to the note by the Secretary-General concerning draft resolution X (E/1978/46/Add.1). 

39. Miss ST. CLAIRE (Assistant Secretary of the Council) read out a correction to paragraph 9 of the Committee's report. 

40. Miss SHAHKAR (Iran) pointed out that the date in the first preambular paragraph of draft resolution X should read 12 May 1976. She proposed that operative paragraph 4 should be amended to read: "Decides that, as soon as the Director and the members of the Board of Trustees are appointed, the Institute should start functioning as an autonomous body under the auspices of the United Nations and [financed] from voluntary contributions". 

Draft resolution X, as amended, was adopted without a vote (resolution 1978/25). 
Draft resolution I was adopted without a vote (resolution 1978/26). 
Draft resolution II was adopted by 37 votes to none, with 11 abstentions (resolution 1978/27). 
Draft resolutions III to VII were adopted without a vote (resolutions 1978/28 to 1978/32). 
Draft resolution VIII was adopted by 39 votes to none, with 11 abstentions (resolution 1978/33). 
Draft resolution IX was adopted without a vote (resolution 1978/34). 
41. Mr. BYKOV (Union of Soviet Socialist Republics) said that his delegation had abstained from voting on draft resolution II because paragraphs 1 and 3 meant unwarranted changes in established financial procedures and were inconsistent with United Nations decisions on the subject. If separate votes had been taken on those paragraphs, his delegation would have voted against them. 
42. Miss RICHTER (Argentina) said that her delegation had reservations with respect to draft resolution IX, paragraph 1 (b), and draft decision II. 

The meeting rose at 6 p.m.