Assistance

Document II-48

Statement Made by the U.S. Representative (Williams) Before the Governing Council of the U.N. Special Fund, New York, January 12, 19651

United States Approval of the Current Program of the United Nations Special Fund

Document II-49

Note to Correspondents, Released by the U.S. Mission to the U.N., March 2, 1965 2

United States Pledge

of $60 Million to

the United Nations Expanded Program of Technical Assistance and the Special Fund for Calendar Year 1965

The United States on March 2 informed the Secretary-General that

1 Department of State Bulletin, Feb. 1, 1965, pp. 155-157. The 13th sess. of the Governing Council, Jan. 11-18, 1965, approved a $172.2 million development program, for 66 projects in 41 countries. Of this sum, the Special Fund planned to contribute $69.4 million with the remainder to be paid for by the 41 countries benefiting from the new projects. (See_UN Monthly Chronicle, vol. II, No. 2, Feb. 1965, pp. 7-9.)

At its 14th sess., June 1-8, 1965, the Governing Council of the U.N. Special Fund approved a $91.7 million development program for 45 projects in 37 countries and 4 regions. Of this sum the Special Fund planned to contribute $40.5 million with $51.2 million to be contributed by the benefiting countries. (See ibid., No. 7, July 1965, pp. 55-58. For a statement by the U.S. representative (Wil1:ams) before the Governing Council of the Special Fund. June 2, 1965, see U.S.U.N. press release No. 4573.)

2 Department of State Bulletin, Mar. 29, 1965, pp. 475-476. On the deferment of the U.S. pledge, see American Foreign Policy: Current Documents, 1964, p. 186.

Total pledges for 1965 of $53,998,046 to the U.N. Expanded Program of Technical

it will contribute up to $60 million for 1965 to the Expanded Program of Technical Assistance and Special Fund, the total U.S. contribution not to exceed 40 percent of the total contribution for 1965.5

The United States had deferred its pledge to the Expanded Program of Technical Assistance and the Special Fund, since a complex series of constitutional and financial discussions were underway at the time. It was our hope that the questions before the General Assembly would be quickly resolved. It now appears that a further period of time will be needed for more extended discussions looking toward a satisfactory solution to the financial problems of the organization. Since we would not wish this further delay to impair the orderly operations of the United Nations development program, which we believe is one of the most important activities carried on by the United Nations system, the United States is making its pledge for 1965 at this time.

Document II-50

Statement Made by the U.S. Representative (Trezise) to the UNCTAD Trade and Development Board, April 9, 1965 (Excerpt)*

"The Recommendations Adopted in the Framework of UNCTAD Institutions

Do Not Have

the Force of Law"

It is our task now, in this Board and in the constituent committees

Assistance and $91,559,748 to the Special Fund were made by 107 governments as of Apr. 15, 1965 (U.N. doc. A/CONF.29/2).

Estimated proportionate share, $22,674,000 (U.N. doc. A/CONF.29/2).

Estimated proportionate share, $37,326,000 (ibid.).

5 For the U.S. letter to the U.N. Secretary-General (Thant) on its pledge, Mar. 2, 1965, see p. 476 of the source text. U.S.-U.Ñ. press release 4524 (advance text). The Trade and Development Board

that we are establishing, to examine and to refine the thoughts and proposals that emerged from the lengthy deliberations at Geneva last year.

As Ambassador Lall said on Wednesday, the Final Act of the Conference includes ideas and recommendations which commanded the support of nearly all the governments represented.' It includes others which have less universal support and which did not have the acquiescence of the very governments that would be expected to give the recommendations substance. In still other cases, the final resolutions simply point to problems without indicating what might or could be done about them. In short, we do not have a single body of resolutions commanding unanimous support and uniformly ready for implementation. We shall have to do some sorting out and, I believe, we will have to gain some practice in the art of the possible. But there is nothing in human experience, and especially in the record of the very recent past, to suggest that we will not be able to find much that is both possible and useful.

In the view of my government, the basic guidance concerning our responsibilities for implementation of the Final Act has been supplied in paragraph 15 of the General Assembly Resolution 1995 (XIX), which tells our Board to "keep under review and take appropriate action within its competence for the implementation of the recommendations, declarations, resolutions, and other decisions of the Confer

of the U.N. Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), established by U.N. General Assembly Res. 1995 (XIX) of Dec. 30, 1964 (text in American Foreign Policy: Current Documents, 1964, pp. 187-196), held its first session at New York, Apr. 5-30, 1965. The Board carries out the functions of UNCTAD between sessions of the UNCTAD, held at intervals of no more than 3 years.

"The principal substantive issue at the session was the question of whether the UNCTAD machinery should be essentially a place to discuss and make recommendations on trade and development problems, or whether it should be an action agency. This question was at the heart of the major issues on which developed and developing countries differed at the session, e.g., the question of reporting procedures, mandates of the committees, UNCTAD's powers of coordination, and the program of work.

"It was to this point that the U.S. Representative to the Board's first session, Philip H. Trezise, addressed himself. (U.S. Participation in the UN, 1965, p. 148.)

Text in American Foreign Policy: Current Documents, 1964, pp. 149-170.

ence and to ensure the continuity of its work." All countries accepted this language at the Geneva Conference, in Annex A. I. 1, and again in the General Assembly's Resolution 1995.

But this is a general mandate. Its application will need to be shaped by practice. Experience in the Board and the committees will enable us to develop a pragmatic and more detailed interpretation.

For the part of the United States, we are clear about the basic character of the recommendations adopted in the framework of UNCTAD institutions. They do not have the force of law. The question of procedures to ensure compliance in the sense of compliance with legal obligations does not arise. Paragraph 15 of Resolution 1995 tells us that this Board should consider action within its competence for the implementation of UNCTAD resolutions; that it should ensure the continuity of its work. It does not, however, attempt to ascribe to these recommendations the force of legislative acts or the character of legally accepted and binding commitments.

I do not wish to labor this obvious constitutional principle. But before leaving this point, it may be appropriate to comment on the reference Monday by our distinguished Secretary General to the problem of duplication between the work of GATT and the UNCTAD.

In developing our program of work, we shall of course need to keep this matter before us, bearing in mind at the same time the injunction of the distinguished delegate from India that competition in ideas is itself a means to progress. We must avoid wasteful and needless duplication but we need not fear the application of several minds to problems that are, after all, of great complexity and difficulty.

There is, moreover, a necessary distinction to be drawn. The General Agreement has provided one of those means through which many of

the governments represented here today have undertaken binding commitments. The work of the GATT relating to trade problems of developing countries has been laid down by directive of the Contracting Parties and at the particular initia

At this meeting, the UNCTAD Trade and Development Board adopted resolutions and decisions entitled as follows: 1 (I) Rules of procedure of the Trade and Development Board, Apr. 27, 1965 (UNCTAD doc. TD/B/16); 2 (I) Question of the resumption of the U.N. Cocoa Conference, Apr. 27, 1965 (UNCTAD doc. TD/B/70; pp. 1-2); 3 (I) Establishment of an Ad Hoc Working Party of Government Experts on International Organization of Commodity Trade, Apr. 27, 1965 (ibid., p. 1); 4 (I) Calendar of UNCTAD meetings for the period May to Dec. 1965, Apr. 28, 1965 (ibid., p. 9); 5 (I) Location of the secretariate of the UNCTAD, Apr. 28, 1965 (ibid., p. 2); 6 (I) Transitional arrangements for observers from nongovernmental organizations at public meetings of the Trade and Development Board and its subsidiary organs, Apr. 29, 1965 (ibid., p. 2); 7 (I) Terms of reference of the Committee on Commodities, Apr. 29, 1965 (ibid., pp. 3-4); 8 (I) Terms of reference of the Advisory Committee to the Board and to the Committee on Commodities, Apr. 29, 1965 (ibid., p. 4); 9 (I) Terms of reference of the Committee on Manufactures, Apr. 29, 1965 (ibid., pp. 4-5); 10 (I) Terms of reference of the Committee on Invisibles and Financing related to Trade, Apr. 29, 1965 (ibid., p. 5); 11 (I) Establishment of a Committee on Shipping, Apr. 29, 1965 (ibid., p. 1); 12 (I) Terms of reference of the Committee on Shipping, Apr. 29, 1965 (ibid., pp. 5-6); 13 (I) Program of work of the Trade and Development Board, Apr. 29, 1965 (ibid., pp. 6-8). The United States was elected by the Trade and Development Board to serve on the 55-member Committee on Commodities, the 45-member Committee on Invisibles and Financing related to Trade, the 45-member Committee on Shipping, Apr. 29, 1965, and the 45-member Committee on Manufactures, Apr. 30, 1965.

U.N. doc. E/4071 and Corr.1.

but with complete irreversibility, the whole human race is adapting to its use the modern instruments of science and technology. This process involves all mankind-from the commuter in modern Megalopolis to the herdsmen on the Saharan fringe. The United Nations Development Decade seeks to stimulate our imagination so that we may become aware of the increasing interdependence of the whole process-the growth, underneath the vicissitudes of day-to-day politics, of a substratum of economic and social experience which is more or less common to all the nations of the earth. Above all, it tries to dramatize the stark fact that the gap in resources between the fully modernized nations and their still developing neighbors is tending to widen, leaving some two-thirds of humanity below the poverty line, turning the developed societies, whether or not they realize it, into a privileged elite.

The concept of the Decade is. however, not primarily descriptive and explanatory. It is essentially a focus for action, action to lessen the gap, to speed up the processes of modernization, to release the majority of mankind from crippling poverty, to mitigate the tensions and hostilities which must flow from the world's vast inequalities in wealth, to restore solidarity and hope.

The specific objectives of the Development Decade are modest in relation to the magnitude of the task.10 In its resolution on the subject, the General Assembly set as its goal the attainment by the developing countries of "a minimum annual rate of growth of aggregate national income of 5 per cent at the end of the Decade." To this end Member States and their peoples were called on to intensify their efforts to mobilize resources and to support the measures required on the part of both developed and developing countries to attain the necessary acceleration of economic growth. The resolution called upon Member States to pursue policies designed to enable developing countries to sell more of their export

10 See The United Nations Development Decade: Proposals for Action, United Nations publication, Sales No.: 62.II B.2. [Footnote in source text.]

11 Text in American Foreign Policy: Current Documents, 1961, pp. 153-156.

products at stable and remunerative prices; it also encouraged them to adopt measures which would increase the flow of public and private development resources on terms acceptable to both capital exporting and capital importing countries. The General Assembly further emphasized the need for increasing the transfer of resources to developing countries by expressing the hope that the "flow of international assistance and capital should be increased substantially SO that it might reach as soon as possible approximately one per cent of the combined national incomes of the economically advanced countries." "

The launching of the Development Decade represents a new departure in international economic relations. By agreeing to co-ordinate action with a view to attaining a 5 per cent growth rate in developing countries, Governments in fact extended the concept of sustained and expanding demand from the domestic economy to the world at large. Furthermore, the adoption of a target for the transfers of resources to developing countries in terms of a proportion of the national incomes of developed countries showed that the concept of shared resources is beginning to enter the philosophy of States in relation not simply to their own citizens but to other States as well.

Today, halfway through the Development Decade, how has the General Assembly's initiative fared? Many of the basic facts remain as tough as ever. The harsh fact persists that many of the poorest economies have continued to grow most slowly. The growth in developing countries as a whole slowed down from an average annual rate of 4.5 per cent in 1955-1960 to 4 per cent in 19601963. At the same time the growth rate in the economically advanced market economies has accelerated from 3.4 per cent in the earlier period to 4.4 per cent in 1960-1963.1 The gap between the per capita incomes of the developing countries and

12 UN. General Assembly Res. 1711 (XVI), Dec. 19, 1961; text in U.N. doc. A/5100, pp. 18-19.

See UN. doc. E/4059 on trends in world production and trade. This document also contains some of the other figures cited in the present report. [Footnote in source text.]

14 This is largely due to the acceleration of economic activity in the United States. [Footnote in source text.]

those of the developed countries has also widened during the 1960's; between 1960 and 1962 the average annual per capita income in the developed market economies increased by almost $100 while that in the developing countries increased by barely $5.

The annual flow of international assistance and capital to developing countries was substantially larger in the early years of the Development Decade than in the second half of the 1950's. However, more recently the net flow has virtually ceased to increase and, given the substantial growth in the national incomes of developed countries, progress towards the 1 per cent goal for resource transfer to developing countries was halted. While the net flow of long-term funds from the economically advanced market economies to the developing countries and multilateral agencies increased from 0.6 per cent of the advanced economies' combined gross domestic product in 1956-1959 to 0.7 in 19601961, that level was barely maintained in 1962-1963.

Two-thirds of the world's population living in the less developed regions of the world still share less than one-sixth of the world's income. In 1962 annual per capita income in these regions averaged $136 while that of the population of the economically advanced market economies in North America and Western Europe averaged $2,845 and $1,033, respectively.

These abstract figures do little to convey the realities which underlie the gaps in income. In spite of dramatic improvements in the prevention of disease which over the last decade have added ten to twenty years to the expectation of life in the developing countries, their average still falls by as much again behind life expectancy round the North Atlantic. In particular, the tragic

death of small children weighs far more heavily upon the developing lands. In the most highly developed countries, the mortality rate of children up to five years of age varies from 4.5 to 6.3 per 1,000. Yet in Latin America, the rates are five to ten times higher and in Africa, higher still.

One reason for the contrast in mortality rates lies in the disparities in medical services-in medical per

sonnel, hospital beds, drugs and preventive medicine, for instance, in North America, Western Europe and the USSR there is generally one doctor for fewer than 1,000 inhabitants compared with one for 6,000 in India, 32,000 in Afghanistan, 39,000 in Mali and approximately 96,000 in Ethiopia. Failure to invest adequately in the control of disease and the promotion of health, together with a lack of coverage by health services of large segments of the population where disease is endemic, has led in many parts of the world to a deterioration of standards of health and sanitation.

Another reason for the difference in mortality rates certainly lies in disparities in diet. Men and women in North America and Western Europe eat on the average about 3,000 calories and 80 to 90 grammes of protein a day. In Latin America, outside Argentina, the average falls to 2,400 calories and some 70 grammes of protein; in Asia to 2,100 calories and 50 grammes-a level still below pre-war standards; in Africa the protein consumption is lower still. But these abstractions give no true sense of the gap between the steaks and chocolate, the salads and fruit of diets in the developed countries and the bowl of rice, with little variety beyond a change of sauce, which makes up, day in, day out, the food of most Asians.

These inadequacies in diet and medical care are made more intolerable for about 1,000 million people by the desperate standards of housing which they are forced to endure. The major cities of the developing continents all have their densely crowded shanty towns in which 20 to 30 per cent of the city's inhabitants may be living-without water, without sewers, without roads. And out in the countryside the shacks of day labourers, landless men, untouchables and rural unemployed only seem a little less miserable because of their larger ration of light and air.

The misery of much of the developing world is a progressive misery. It threatens to grow worse in the second half of the Decade. On present showing the numbers of unemployed and men and women suffering from hunger and malnutrition will be markedly greater in 1970 than today. It is in the poorer countries that the highest growth rate of population is found. In most of Asia and

Africa it is over 2 per cent and rapidly approaching the 3 per cent level. In some of the Latin American countries it has surpassed that level. On present showing there simply is not in prospect a growth in agricultural production sufficient to accommodate this rising flood of people. The world's agricultural production is growing by under 3 per cent per year, and the growth rate is much lower in some critical areas. The continuance of traditional methods in farming has often been the main obstacle to any significant increase in food production. Rapid migration to the cities has further complicated the problem. The rate at which this migration has taken place has often far exceeded the rate at which urban employment opportunities have been increasing, with the result that unemployment has been rising in many of the developing countries. To give one striking example: in 1955 the Indian estimate of unemployment was some 5 million. By 1961 it had grown to 8 millions. Even if the planned production targets for 1966 and 1971 are fulfilled, the Indian authorities estimate that unemployment will still rise to 12 million and 14 million in these two years respectively. A particularly disturbing feature in these situations is the degree to which unemployment will fall most heavily on young people. In Indonesia, 50 per cent of the urban unemployed and in Ceylon 80 per cent are under 25 years of age.

This phenomenon of urban unemployment may not, in theory, be worse than the semi-employment and under-nourishment of the villagers. But in the countryside family and clan give some support. There is a little more spare food; in some regions, there may be hunting and fishing on the side. The city reduces the new migrants to the rawest struggle for survival. Yet it is to the cities they come in a flood which far surpasses in speed the general growth of population. Cities grow, the world over, by about 4 per cent a year. Some of the greatest cities grow at twice that rate. About 5,000 newcomers a week move into Rio de Janeiro. The capital cities of tropical Africa have doubled in little more than a decade.

The problems that spring from the dynamism of growth in population, coupled with the added dynamism of urban expansion, are propelled forward by yet another dimension of dynamic change-the change in