UN General Assembly
1985

At the same time, the economies of the developing countries remain under heavy pressure. Their overall growth rates remain well below levels which would offset population growth, let alone secure development gains. Combined with the severities of the adjustment process which marked the first three years of this decade, this decline in growth rates has brought into sharp focus the constraints on their economies, threatening wider social and political strife. The developing countries have been making adjustments without any parallel improvement in the world economic environment and in the face of serious resource constraints, the growing menace of an increasingly intolerable debt burden, reverse transfer of financial resources and intensifying protectionist barriers against their exports to developed countries. Against this background, the weakening of the commitment to the spirit of international economic co-operation and an erosion of the multilateral system is a deeply disturbing trend. It is paradoxical that this should be happening when there is an increasingly wider recognition that the world economy has become more interdependent, calling for a greater need to sustain and further the international consensus in favor of development.