Need for Change (PDF)

Need for Change: Towards the New International Economic Order represents a selection of speeches given during the period 1974 to early 1980. The speeches are grouped in terms of broad phases or periods in the development of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development's (UNCTAD) work. In most cases they are transcripts from oral presentations and are reproduced more or less as delivered.
The volume is organized into five parts. Part I discusses the background against which the specific activities of UNCTAD were being fashioned. Part II presents a diagnosis of the weaknesses besetting the world economic system from the point of view of the developing countries. Part III sets out and explains specific proposals put forward by the UNCTAD secretariat as suitable curative measures. Part IV covers the case for comprehensive, interrelated reform of trading relations; details of the proposed new mechanisms tabled by the secretariat from time to time; and discussion of the characteristics of various individual commodities and their particular importance in the trade of the developing countries. Part V focuses on the role of UNCTAD in the UN system, which entails discussion of the structure of the system as a whole and examination of the nature of international economic negotiations, in both their substantive and procedural aspects.