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Houari Boumediene (President of Algeria; Non-Aligned / Third-World leader) — UN General Assembly Sixth Special Session, 10 Apr 1974 (official UN record A/PV.2208): his landmark New International Economic Order address condemning the world economic order as "as unjust and as outdated as the colonial order… which continually impoverishes the poor and enriches the rich."

English DZ flag Algeria 1974-04-10 Tier 1 — direct MENA-language primary 96 words

Politician: Houari Boumediene

Original source: https://documents.un.org/doc/undoc/gen/nl7/404/44/pdf/nl740444.pdf

Content

verbatim · English
That is the basis of the economic order of the world in which we live today. In the eyes of the vast majority of humanity it is an order as unjust and as outdated as the colonial order to which it owes its origin and substance. Inasmuch as it is maintained and consolidated and therefore thrives by virtue of a process which continually impoverishes the poor and enriches the rich, this economic order constitutes the major obstacle standing in the way of any hope of development and progress for all the countries of the third world.

English translation

translation
[Source is English — the OFFICIAL UNITED NATIONS verbatim record (A/PV.2208) of the General Assembly's Sixth Special Session, 2208th plenary meeting, 10 April 1974; tier-1, extracted from the UN documents PDF and confirmed verbatim against it. Boumediene delivered the speech in ARABIC (the first-ever speech in Arabic at the UN); the text here is the UN's own official English interpretation as entered in the meeting record ("interpretation from Arabic"). NOTE: this is the AUTHENTIC speech — NOT the widely-circulated "wombs of our women" demographic quote, which is a documented misattribution/myth and is deliberately excluded.] Declared position of Houari Boumediene (1932–1978) — President of Algeria (1965–1978) and a leading figure of THIRD-WORLDISM, the NON-ALIGNED MOVEMENT (he hosted its 1973 Algiers summit) and Arab/African revolutionary socialism. As the initiator of the UN's Sixth Special Session, he delivered the landmark call for a NEW INTERNATIONAL ECONOMIC ORDER (NIEO) — the Global South's demand for economic justice. Here he condemns the existing world economic order as "as unjust and as outdated as the colonial order to which it owes its origin and substance," a system that "continually impoverishes the poor and enriches the rich" and is "the major obstacle standing in the way of any hope of development and progress for all the countries of the third world." His programme: permanent sovereignty over natural resources, fair raw-material prices, reform of the monetary and trade systems, and redistribution of global wealth. This is the ALGERIAN / THIRD-WORLDIST REVOLUTIONARY-SOCIALIST / ANTI-IMPERIALIST pole — the foundational Global-South critique of neo-colonial economic domination and a demand for a just international order — a historic anchor distinct from the market-liberal (Mostafa Madbouly), sovereign-wealth (Yasir Al-Rumayyan) and monarchical economic models in the dataset. [Axes: economic (anti-imperialist redistribution; sovereignty over natural resources; NIEO; against neo-colonial trade/monetary structures), foreign-alignment (non-alignment; Third-World solidarity; against Western economic hegemony), regime-type (revolutionary socialism; state-led development), North-South / decolonization (the Global South vs the rich-country economic order).]

How to cite this document

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In-text (Boumediene, 1974)
APA 7
Boumediene, H.. (1974). Houari Boumediene (President of Algeria; Non-Aligned / Third-World leader) — UN General Assembly Sixth Special Session, 10 Apr 1974 (official UN record A/PV.2208): his landmark New International Economic Order address condemning the world economic order as "as unjust and as outdated as the colonial order… which continually impoverishes the poor and enriches the rich.". documents.un.org. Retrieved July 28, 2026, from https://documents.un.org/doc/undoc/gen/nl7/404/44/pdf/nl740444.pdf
Chicago (author-date)
Boumediene, Houari. 1974. "Houari Boumediene (President of Algeria; Non-Aligned / Third-World leader) — UN General Assembly Sixth Special Session, 10 Apr 1974 (official UN record A/PV.2208): his landmark New International Economic Order address condemning the world economic order as "as unjust and as outdated as the colonial order… which continually impoverishes the poor and enriches the rich."." documents.un.org. Accessed July 28, 2026. https://documents.un.org/doc/undoc/gen/nl7/404/44/pdf/nl740444.pdf.
BibTeX
@misc{doc-document-0f675a54-c015-4b3a-8369-e30f93567cdd,
  author       = {Boumediene, Houari},
  title        = {Houari Boumediene (President of Algeria; Non-Aligned / Third-World leader) — UN General Assembly Sixth Special Session, 10 Apr 1974 (official UN record A/PV.2208): his landmark New International Economic Order address condemning the world economic order as "as unjust and as outdated as the colonial order… which continually impoverishes the poor and enriches the rich."},
  year         = {1974},
  date         = {1974-04-10},
  howpublished = {Online; hosted at documents.un.org},
  url          = {https://documents.un.org/doc/undoc/gen/nl7/404/44/pdf/nl740444.pdf},
  urldate      = {2026-07-28},
  note         = {Retrieved via Tayyar at https://tarekgara.com/tayyar/documents/0f675a54-c015-4b3a-8369-e30f93567cdd},
}

Retrieved via Tayyar: https://tarekgara.com/tayyar/documents/0f675a54-c015-4b3a-8369-e30f93567cdd on July 28, 2026. Tayyar is a research host for primary sources, not the author of this document.