U.N. Cares for People, Rossel Says In First of Hammarskjold Lectures

Human beings are the world's most important natural resource, and the United Nations is trying to see that this resource is used to its fullest extent, said Mme. Agda Rossel, Swedish ambassador to the U.N., last night at the first annual Dag Hammarskjold lecture.

Speaking in Sanders Theatre, Mme. Rossel emphasized that although major crises such as Cuba, Berlin, and disarmament are the U.N.'s most important topics of discussion, they are not the only ones. She said that the U.N. is presently considering many problems concerning the living standards and basic freedoms of the underdeveloped and captive peoples of the world.

Discussions of economic difficulties are becoming almost as common in the U.N. as those about political troubles, Mme. Rossel explained. She said that the economic consequences of disarmament must be settled before there can be any hope of reaching an agreement on that issue.

She explained that if the great powers suddenly halted production of weapons, numerous individuals would be left jobless. It is the problems of individuals in these and other areas that the U.N. is spending extensive time and funds to solve. Mme. Rossel described various U.N. activities which are designed to work with human beings instead of statistics, and outlined the recent emphasis on understanding the human growing pains" of the new countries of Africa. We should offer these countries trade and education, she said, but they must request it it is wrong and harmful for the U.N. to try force it on them.

Mme. Rossel then told of the efforts of the Committee on Human Rights, formed in 1951. The purpose of the committee is to promote the "freedoms of opinion, expression, movement, assembly and life" for all the peoples of the world. She read from a committee statement proposing limitations on capital punishment: "Everyone's right to life would be protected by law. No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his life."

A Commission on the Status of Women was also active in the U.N., according to Mme. Rossel. In many countries women are treated as legal inferiors to men, and women in countries in which females have obtained equal legal rights, custom restricts them to the position of "the weaker sex." The commission is attempting to remedy this situation.

Mme. Rossel concluded by stating that a world full of "well-fed, well-educated people should be the U.N.'s goal."

Radcliffe and the Harvard-Radcliffe World Federalists established the lecture series to promote examinations of the problems of world order.