UN General Assembly
1983

31. Despite the depth and extent of the crisis, precious opportunities have recently been lost to halt the process of deterioration, which is now accelerating. Ever since the International Meeting on Co-operation and Development, held at Cancun in 1981, the North-South dialogue has been losing ground. The crisis has followed its painful path from the commercial to the financial, bearing living witness to the interaction among the many aspects of the world economic system and to the fragility of the mechanisms of multilateral co-operation. 32. The total foreign debt of the developing countries is quickly approaching the trillion-dollar mark. The rates of growth of such debt, pushed upwards by absurdly high levels of interest, are far higher than the growth rates of any country in the world. They are even higher than the most outstanding rates of growth achieved during the most favorable periods by the countries which developed most rapidly. What is unbearable today will be considerably worse tomorrow.