UN General Assembly
1988

Most developing countries have hitherto relied on the export of primary commodities for their income. But over the last 10 years prices of these products have continued to decline and have now almost collapsed. Yet the prices of imports of manufactured goods from industrialized countries, required as production inputs, continue to escalate. The net effect is a scandalous net outflow of resources from the impoverished South to the affluent North resulting in further balance-of-payments difficulties, unfavourable terms of trade and the inescapable resort to borrowing from the North. Those of us from the South should also take „ serious note of the fact that as long as the North continues to fix the prices of our products as well as the prices of their products the sea of poverty, hunger, disease and malnutrition is likely to continue to enlarge. It is therefore incumbent upon us to unite for existence. We can no longer tolerate a situation where the reward for the hard work of our people is hunger.