UN General Assembly
1973

105. We propose, and we pledge ourselves, to support that positive action. In this connexion I should like to refer to the Conference of the International Monetary Fund held last month in Nairobi, at which Robert McNamara, President of the World Bank, laid emphasis on the economic situation of the developing countries and went on to say: "Despite a decade of unprecedented increase in the gross national product of the developing countries, the poorest segments of their populations have received relatively little benefit." "Nearly 800 million individuals — 40 per cent, out of a total of 2 billion — survive on incomes estimated at 30 cents per day in conditions of malnutrition, illiteracy and squalor. They are suffering poverty in the absolute sense. That absolute is no abstraction here."