A/42/427
English
Page 294
I have here listened to people speaking about financial crises, famine, pollution, and social injustice at various levels. As an ecologist, I cannot see any of these questions without linking them to the armaments question and to the nuclear issue.
Poverty generates tensions and conflicts, urban and rural violence. The indigenous people are still awaiting solutions for their problems. All this depends on money and nevertheless we are spending money on our nuclear programmes. They say that this has peaceful objectives. This is not true because precious money is being spent on this.
The greatest crime: the death of hope, the death of all of the rights we all have, especially that of the young of believing in a future, the hope for a normal life, a difficult life but something that appears as a challenge to live it the best we can. We have a right to this chance.
Cacilda Lanuza
Brazilian Ecological Movement
WCED Public Hearing
Sao Paulo, 28-29 Oct 1985
governments to seek security through acquisition of arms and by a burgeoning world arms trade.
32. Since the early 1960s, military spending in developing countries as a whole has increased fivefold. Their share of total spending increased from under one-tenth to almost a quarter of a far larger total.[1] Some developing countries, such as the Republic of Korea, have achieved a high level of development in spite of military spending. But systematic analysis suggests that increases in military spending have had negative effects on economic performance.[2]
33. Moreover, defence expenditure is one of the most import-intensive of activities, usually creating a large secondary demand for imported spares, ammunition, servicing, training, and fuel. It has been estimated that 20 per cent of the external debt acquired by non-oil developing countries in the decade to 1982 could be attributed to arms imports.[3] And high levels of arms spending motivated by a variety of reasons have undoubtedly contributed to the severity of the crises of development in Africa, where military spending rose, in real terms, by 7.8 per cent per annum between 1971 and 1982, and arms imports rose by 18.5 per cent.[4] It should be noted in this connection that in the case of the Frontline States they have been compelled to expand their armed forces because of the threat from South Africa.
34. The development of an 'arms culture' in many developing countries presents particular dangers in the context of environmental and poverty-induced stresses. There are already numerous simmering disputes in the Third World—over 40 unresolved—many arising from boundaries defined in colonial times.
- ↑ Over 1960-81, Third World military expenditures grew by some 7 per cent per year, as compared with 3.7 per cent in the industrial world. In 1960, Third World military expenditures accounted for less than one-tenth of the global total, but in 1981 for more than one-fifth of a far larger total. R.L. Sivard, World Military and Social Expenditures (Washington, DC: World Priorities, Inc., 1985).
- ↑ L. Taylor, 'Military Economics in the Third World', prepared for The Independent Commission on Disarmament and Security Issues, 1981.
- ↑ R. Tullberg, 'Military Related Debt in Non-Oil Developing Countries', SIPRI Yearbook, op. cit.
- ↑ R. Luckham, 'Militarization in Africa', SIPRI Yearbook, op. cit.
