The UN and Development: From Aid to Cooperation

6. The Second Development Decade

six The Second Development Decade n Main Features of the Development Strategy for the Second Development Decade n Review and Appraisal of Objectives and Policies n The Second Development Decade: A Bird’s-Eye View n Toward the Third Development Decade On 24 October 1970, the General Assembly proclaimed the Second UN Development Decade (DD2) and adopted an international development strategy for the decade.1 The Committee for Development Planning, an eighteen-member group of experts appointed by the Secretary-General in 1966, played an important role in planning the decade, together with the UN Secretariat and ECOSOC. At the intergovernmental level, the Economic Committee of ECOSOC played a central role. Its membership was doubled in order to accommodate demands for placing the political responsibility for the decade’s preparation with UNCTAD, and it served as the preparatory committee for the General Assembly.2 At an early stage in this process, the UN recognized the importance of mobilizing public opinion in developed as well as developing countries to support DD2. This meant disseminating the decade’s targets, objectives , principles, and guidelines as widely as possible. People and decisionmakers alike would need to be involved and feel a sense of participation. ECOSOC felt that this involvement would “contribute in large measure to the success” of the decade.3 Main Features of the Development Strategy for the Second Development Decade Although the process had started early, the Preparatory Committee and ECOSOC were not able to agree on all issues before the draft strategy was presented to the General Assembly. It was left to the General Assembly’s Second Committee to reach agreement on the most controversial issues.4 This turned the Second Committee into a negotiations 158 n The Formative Years committee. A draft proposal submitted by eighty-eight developing countries and Yugoslavia constituted the basis for these discussions. After extensive negotiations in the Second Committee and in a working group of the committee, a revised text was approved without a vote. The committee took into consideration the statements made by member governments and groups of governments both before and after it approved the text. The same procedure was followed when the General Assembly adopted the recommended draft resolution. This had serious implications for the strategy: when it came to actual commitments, particularly those involving more industrialized countries, reservations were many and strong. This weakened the spine of the strategy, the availability of resources. As ECOSOC rightly pointed out, commitments with a fixed time schedule are all-important for implementing objectives. The Preamble Ultimate aspirations are expressed more clearly in the preamble of an international agreement than in its operative paragraphs, as it is generally the preamble that explains the over-arching motives and aims of the more binding commitments of a treaty. In the resolution establishing the Second Development Decade and the development strategy for the 1970s, UN member governments dedicated themselves anew “to the fundamental objectives enshrined in the Charter of the United Nations twenty-five years ago to create conditions of stability and well-being and to ensure a minimum standard of living consistent with human dignity through economic and social progress and development.”5 The ultimate objective of development “must be to bring about sustained improvement in the well-being of the individual and bestow benefits on all.” The preamble repeated that the “primary responsibility for the development of developing countries rests upon themselves,” but this time it added: “however great their own efforts, these will not be sufficient to enable them to achieve the desired development goals as expeditiously as they must unless they are assisted through increased financial resources and more favourable economic and commercial policies on the part of developed countries.” And governments pledged themselves, individually and collectively, “to pursue policies designed to create a more just and rational world economic and social order in which equality of opportunities should be as much a prerogative of nations as of individuals within The Second Development Decade n 159 a nation. They subscribe to the goals and objectives of the Decade and resolve to take measures to translate them into reality.”6 Major Goals and Objectives Although the targets set for economic growth for DD1 had not been fully met, the ambitions of DD2 were even higher: on average, at least 6 percent annual growth in the gross national product of developing countries during the first half of the 1970s and possibly an even higher...