UN General Assembly
1975

97. If the economic events and the debate of the last few years have revealed anything about the international economic order, it is surely the need for changes to be made to it. Our debates and negotiations, as the Secretary-General of the United Nations stated so succinctly in his closing address to the seventh special session, "... is about change; it is not about a smoother management of the status quo'".2 The reasons for changes to be made have been rehearsed so often, most notably at the sixth special session of the General Assembly, and I need not repeat them here. The kind of changes that need to be made have been fully articulated for many years by the developing countries and are fairly contained in the Declaration and the Program of Action on the Establishment of a New International Economic Order [resolution 3201 (S-VI) and 3202 (S-VJ)] and the Charter of Economic Rights and Duties of States [resolution 328/ (XXIX)]. These documents and the cry for a new economic order are not slogans. They embody the directions and the measures that the developing countries believe the community of nations must take if the development of the developing countries is to be accelerated, and a more just and rational world economic and social order is to be realized.