UNCTAD and the New International Economic Order*

I HAVE to speak today on UNCTAD-the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development-and the New International Economic Order.. You will remember that the call for a New International Economic Order emanated from the Sixth Special Session of the General Assembly that was held in April 1974, when a Declaration and Programme of Action for its establishment was adopted. At the time this call was made it was already evident that the International Development Strategy for the Second Development Decade, which had been launched but a few years earlier, had already lost much of its relevance. The multiple crises of that period-the monetary disorder, the escalating spiral of inflation in the industrialised countries, the world food shortage and finally the energy crisis, had all combined to wreak havoc on the developing countries and to jeopardise their prospects of attaining the goals and targets set forth in the International Development Strategy as well as in their own development plans. The immediate background for convening the General Assembly in special session was the dramatic rise in the price of petroleum which prompted a proposal for the summoning of a global conference on energy. This was not acted upon since the developing countries were strongly convinced that the energy crisis had to be set in the wider context of other development issues. It was not perhaps suTprising, given this background, that the issue of structural change was the dominant theme of the resolution finally adopted by the General Assembly. Although it was well recognised that the immediate response to the crisis facing the developing countries was emergency aid and financial accommodation of various kinds, this was only a short-term solution to a problem whose roots lay much deeper. Two concepts in particular provided the underpinning of the