UN General Assembly
1972

27. A second new element emerged at the third session of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development [UNCTAD], which met at Santiago in April and May and which projected a new vision of the world-wide interdependence between monetary problems and the problems of the economic development of the developing nations and of the structure of international trade. In this field, too, the International Development Strategy needs elaboration and adjustment. A most important new element in development is the deeply rooted problem of mass poverty in developing countries and its traditional attributes: unemployment, malnutrition, slums, lack of minimum hygiene, lack of education and glaring inequalities in standards of living. The Committee for Development Planning and, last week, Mr. de Seynes, the Under-Secretary-General for Economic and Social Affairs, and Mr. McNamara, the President of the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development, have brought this new conceptual context to the attention of the world. They have recommended that both developing and developed countries and international organizations take a bold approach in tackling this problem and they have thus replaced the traditional statistical approach of per capita growth by a new concept which places human well-being in all its aspects in the center of development policy. There is an urgent necessity to integrate the concept of mass poverty and unemployment into the Development Strategy and to try to set objectives and, if possible, targets for its elimination.