On December 18, 1978, the United Nations General Assembly adopted Decision 33/426, the formal outcome of Grenada's campaign to place unidentified flying objects and related phenomena on the UN agenda.123
Origin
Grenada's initiative came from Prime Minister Sir Eric M. Gairy, whose government asked the Secretary-General to include an item on the thirty-third General Assembly agenda about creating a UN agency or department to undertake, coordinate, and disseminate UFO research.4
Gairy told the Special Political Committee that Grenada had raised UFOs at the thirtieth, thirty-first, thirty-second, and thirty-third General Assembly sessions, and the UN library later summarized that the item was included in the 1977 and 1978 agendas at Grenada's request.56
The 1978 agenda request was accompanied by a Secretary-General report collecting replies from Member States and specialized agencies, including a supportive reply from Seychelles and no-comment replies from organizations such as ICAO and UNESCO.7
Who
The central political sponsor was Gairy, who personally led Grenada's presentation before the Special Political Committee on November 27, 1978, with Wellington Friday serving as minister for education and deputy chairman of the Grenada delegation.6
Grenada also brought outside UFO researchers and witnesses into the UN record. Friday introduced J. Allen Hynek of the Center for UFO Studies, Jacques Vallee, and Lt. Col. Larry Coyne, whose 1973 Mansfield helicopter encounter was presented as an example of an aviation-safety case needing international procedures.6
What Grenada proposed
Grenada's draft resolution asked the United Nations to initiate, conduct, and coordinate research into the nature and origin of unidentified flying objects and related phenomena, then invite governments, agencies, and NGOs to send information and proposals by May 31, 1979.68
The draft also sought a three-member expert group under the Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space to define study guidelines, review submissions, report through that committee, and place a follow-up item on the thirty-fourth General Assembly agenda.68
What the UN adopted
After consultations, the Special Political Committee replaced Grenada's agency proposal with a narrower consensus draft decision, and the committee approved that text at its forty-seventh meeting on December 8, 1978.910
Decision 33/426 did not establish a UFO office. It took note of Grenada's statements and draft resolutions, invited interested Member States to coordinate national scientific research into extraterrestrial life including UFOs, asked them to inform the Secretary-General of observations and evaluations, and sent Grenada's material to the Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space for possible 1979 consideration.1103
The General Assembly then adopted the Special Political Committee's recommendation without a vote at its eighty-seventh plenary meeting on December 18, 1978.123
How evolved
The outcome was a procedural compromise rather than the UN UFO agency Grenada had first sought. UN library guidance states that Grenada's draft resolutions in the thirty-second and thirty-third sessions were not pressed to a vote and were not adopted, while decisions 32/424 and 33/426 were the formal actions actually taken.5
That distinction explains why later retellings often overstate the event. The official symbol is A/DEC/33/426, the UN Digital Library classifies it as a decision, and the adopted text points research responsibility toward interested national governments and the existing outer-space committee rather than a new investigative department.153