North-South Issues: A Path to Global Solutions

Abstract

I want to present a personal perspective based on my unique experience over the past three and a half decades, in both the United Nations (UN) and the OECD. In the UN, I have been involved in major North-South negotiations in the past and have witnessed the ups and downs of these, including the contentious New International Economic Order and the proposed Global Negotiations. Reflecting on what we accomplished in the UN North-South negotiations, I feel that they started losing their momentum from the early 1980s and then became bogged down completely at the end of the decade. While we were deeply involved in political and ideological debates on such issues as the New International Economic Order and the proposed Global Negotiations, the UN could not effectively address serious global issues which were affecting deeply the foundations of the world economy — aggravation of poverty, the population explosion, deterioration of the environment, the energy crisis, accumulated debt and so on. It is fair to say that the UN is making an effort to improve the effectiveness of its economic and social systems, tackling these global issues more squarely, as seen in UNCED, held in Rio in June 1992, and in its follow-up.KeywordsForeign Direct InvestmentCapita IncomeGlobal IssuePopulation ExplosionOfficial Development AssistanceThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.