UN Contributions to Development Thinking and Practice

4 The 1960s: The UN Development Decade— Mobilizing for Development

85 4 The 1960s: The UN Development Decade— Mobilizing for Development • The Proposals for Action: Growth Plus Change • Planning for Economic Development • The UN’s Role in Development Planning • Education and Economic Development • The Challenge of Science and Technology • The World Food Programme • The End of the “Golden Age” of ECLA • UNCTAD and the Emergence of a Unified South • Concluding Observations On 25 September 1961 the president of the United States,John F.Kennedy, addressed the UN General Assembly and launched a proposal for a Development Decade.1 If the United States could commit itself to put a man on the moon before the end of the decade, he said, it would certainly support the idea of improving the living standards of people in the poorest countries over the same period.Some nine months earlier,in his inaugural address,Kennedy had already acknowledged that developed countries, in particular the most advanced of them, the United States, should do something for developing countries. Kennedy developed the theme before the General Assembly: Political sovereignty is but a mockery without the means of meeting poverty and illiteracy and disease. Self-determination is but a slogan if the future holds no hope. That is why my Nation which has freely shared its capital and technology to help others help themselves, now proposes officially designating the decade of the s as the United Nations Decade of Development. Under the framework of that Resolution, the United Nations’ existing efforts in promoting economic growth can be expanded and co-ordinated.2 In spite of the heavy UN involvement in economic development policy and planning in the s, the idea of a development decade came from the 86 Ideas and Action U.S. administration of President Kennedy, not from within the UN. Hans Singer recalls that “when Kennedy uttered his magic words, they came as a complete surprise to me. My recollection is that we had no previous warning in the UN, at least I hadn’t.”3 Soon after Kennedy’s declaration, the General Assembly adopted the historic resolution  (XVI), which designated the s as the “United Nations Development Decade. . . . Member States and their peoples [would] intensify their efforts to mobilize and to sustain support for the measures required on the part of both developed and developing countries to accelerate progress towards self-sustaining growth of the economy of the individual nations and their social advancement.”4 The mood in the UN at the beginning of the s was optimistic. Many people expected that rapid results in terms of development would be achieved during the decade if appropriate measures were taken on the part of both developed and underdeveloped countries. What we refer to now as the First Development Decade was called at the time the Development Decade. Not that its supporters thought that all the problems of the developing countries would be solved within a decade. But ten years fit the strong expectation that the job was feasible in a limited period of time. The resolution on the Development Decade called for action to lessen the gap between developed and underdeveloped countries, to speed up the processes of modernization, and to release the majority of mankind from poverty . More particularly, it called for industrialization; the development of agriculture; effective national planning; the elimination of illiteracy, hunger, and disease; the promotion of education and vocational and technical training ; an increase in the flow of public and private capital to developing countries ; an increase in the export earnings of the underdeveloped countries; and the utilization of resources resulting from disarmament for the purpose of economic and social development. As a specific economic target, the General Assembly sought the attainment by the underdeveloped countries of a minimum annual growth rate of  percent in aggregate national income by .5 Though Kennedy had proposed the idea of the Development Decade, the  percent target growth rate and the proposals for action came from the UN Secretariat. This target was the result of a back-of-the-envelope calculation based on the Harrod-Domar model, including a rough assumption about the ratio of capital to output. Such a growth rate, it was estimated, would prevent a growing relative gap between developing and developed countries.Within the UN Secretariat, some debate occurred about whether the  percent target was too optimistic.Michal Kalecki, for example, was much more skeptical about the ability of developing coun- The 1960s 87 tries to...