UN General Assembly
1988

We approach the end of the third United Nations Development Decade with many of the developing countries poorer now than they were 10 years ago. International political gains cannot be sustained without concomitant international economic development. With decreasing per capita gross national product in many countries, deteriorating terms of trade in others, and still others staggering under Tolstoyan debt burdens, the developing countries face an uncertain future. These problems are compounded by an alarmingly high level of net transfers of resources from the developing to the developed countries, and a sharp fall in resource flows to the developing countries. In Latin America and the Caribbean, chronic poverty still plagues more than 130 million people, or over one third of the aggregate population. And the debt burden hovers at $400 billion.