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May 2014, No. 1 Vol. LI, The 50th Anniversary of the Group of 77 at the UN

In December 1961, the United Nations General Assembly designated the 1960s as the "United Nations Development Decade".[1] At the same time, it also adopted a resolution on "International Trade as the Primary Instrument for Economic Development",[2] in which the United Nations Secretary-General was asked to consult governments on the advisability of holding an international conference on international trade problems. ?These resolutions led to the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD). ?Their underlying developmental model¡ªtrade as the motor of development¡ªshaped the outlook and approach of the new institution.

After obtaining favourable reactions from most governments and strong support from a developing countries' "Conference on the Problems of Economic Development" held in Cairo in July 1962,[3] the United Nations General Assembly decided to convene the first session of UNCTAD.[4]? A Preparatory Committee was established to consider the agenda of the Conference and to prepare the necessary documentation.

?During the deliberations of the Preparatory Committee¡ªin identifying the relevant issues and problems, endeavouring to list proposals for action, and indicating lines along which solutions might be sought¡ªthe divergence of the interests of the developing countries from those of the developed countries began to emerge sharply.? The distinctive interests of the Third World manifested themselves at the closing of the second session of the Preparatory Committee (21 May to 29 June 1963), when the representatives of the developing countries submitted a "Joint Statement" to the Committee in which they summarized the views, needs and aspirations of the Third World with regard to the impending UNCTAD session.[5] Later that year, this Statement was submitted to the General Assembly as a "Joint Declaration" on behalf of 75 developing countries that were members of the United Nations at that time.[6]? This Declaration was the prelude to the establishment of the Group of 77.

UNCTAD I met in Geneva from 23 March to 16 June 1964. It was the first major North-South conference on development questions. ?During the negotiations at that conference, economic interests clearly crystallized along geopolitical group lines, and the developing countries emerged as a group that was beginning to find its own. ?The "Joint Declaration of the Seventy-Seven", adopted on 15 June 1964, referred to UNCTAD I as "an event of historic significance"; it continued:

¡°The developing countries regard their own unity, the unity of the seventy-five, as the outstanding feature of this Conference. This unity has sprung out of the fact that facing the basic problems of development they have a common interest in a new policy for international trade and development.? They believe that it is this unity that has given clarity and coherence to the discussions of this Conference. Their solidarity has been tested in the course of the Conference and they have emerged from it with even greater unity and strength.

The developing countries have a strong conviction that there is a vital need to maintain, and further strengthen, this unity in the years ahead. It is an indispensable instrument for securing the adoption of new attitudes and new approaches in the international economic field. This unity is also an instrument?? for enlarging?? the area of co-operative endeavour in the international field and for securing mutually beneficent relationships with the rest of the world. Finally, it is a necessary means for co-operation amongst the developing countries themselves.

The seventy-five developing countries, on the occasion of this declaration, pledge themselves to maintain, foster and strengthen this unity in the future. Towards this end they shall adopt all possible means to increase the contacts and consultations amongst themselves so as to determine common objectives and formulate joint programmes of action in international economic co-operation. They consider that measures for consolidating the unity achieved by the seventy-five countries during the Conference and the specific arrangements for contacts and consultations should be studied by government representatives during the nineteenth session of the United Nations General Assembly.¡±[7]

Although the recommendations adopted by UNCTAD I were, to a large extent, inspired by the conceptual work undertaken in the preceding decade by the Economic Commission for Latin America¡ªwhose Executive Secretary, Raul Prebisch, became the Secretary ?General of UNCTAD I and stayed in that post as one of the principal promoters of Third World unity until 1969[8]¡ªthe conference was nonetheless a new departure: for the first time, the Third World as a whole had participated in the elaboration of a comprehensive set of measures.[9]? Accordingly, "new" was the theme of the "Joint Declaration of the Seventy-Seven":? UNCTAD I was recognized as a significant step towards "creating a new and just world economic order"; the basic premises of the "new order" were seen to involve "a new international division of labour" and "a new framework of international trade"; and the adoption of "a new and dynamic international policy for trade and development" was expected to facilitate the formulation of "new policies by the governments of both developed and developing countries in the context of a new awareness of the needs of developing countries". Finally, a "new machinery" was considered necessary to serve as an institutional focal point for the continuation of the work initiated by the conference.

This machinery was established later that year, when the General Assembly decided to institutionalize UNCTAD as an organ of the General Assembly.[10] UNCTAD became the main forum for global development discussions, and¡ªguided by the expectations voiced in 1964¡ªit became the focal point of the activities of the Group of 77, which, by April 2014, counted 133 members[11] (United Nations membership totaled 193). ?During that period, the Group of 77 became an integral part of UNCTAD, was one of the most important agents for the socialization of the developing countries in matters relating to international political economy, and established itself firmly in all major relevant parts of the United Nations system as the Third World's principal organ for the articulation and aggregation of its collective economic interest and for its representation in the negotiations with the developed countries.[12]

No one has formulated the political point of departure of the Third World more succinctly than Julius K. Nyerere when he said in his address to the Fourth Ministerial Meeting of the Group of 77 in Arusha, in February 1979:

What we have in common is that we are all, in relation to the developed world, dependent¡ªnot interdependent¡ªnations.? Each of our economies has developed as a by-product and a subsidiary of development in the industrialized North, and it is externally oriented. ?We are not the prime movers of our own destiny. ?We are ashamed to admit it, but economically we are dependencies¡ªsemi-colonies at best¡ªnot sovereign States.[13]

The objective is, therefore, quite naturally, "to complete the liberation of the Third World countries from external domination".[14]

Until the early 1970s, the Group of 77 thought to achieve this objective through improvements of the system, the high-points being UNCTAD II (New Delhi, 1968) and UNCTAD III (Santiago, 1972) and the preparatory First (Algiers, 1967) and Second (Lima, 1971) Ministerial Meetings of the Group of 77, as well as UNIDO I (Vienna, 1971) and the adoption of the international development strategy for the Second United? Nations Development Decade (1970). ?A number of changes were, in fact, made (witness, for instance, the Generalized System of Preferences), but many other negotiations (for instance in the commodity sector) hardly made any progress, and no drastic improvements took place. ?On the contrary, the gap between the North and South widened, especially for the least developed among the developing countries.

The limitations of this approach naturally took time to become apparent. ?In addition, until the end of the 1960s, neither developed nor developing countries had fully realized the importance of economic development as a necessary complement to political independence. ?The development issue was regarded as "low politics", left to the technical ministries of planning, economics, commerce, finance, and development. ?Attempts to politicize the issue therefore failed. ?The most prominent among these was the "Charter of Algiers", adopted by the First Ministerial Meeting of the Group of 77 in October 1967 in preparation of UNCTAD II. ?The intention of this first comprehensive declaration and programme of action of the Group of 77 was to give a new impetus to the North?South negotiations. ?For this purpose, the Ministerial Meeting even decided to send high-level "goodwill missions" to a number of developed countries (both those with centrally-planned and those with market economies) to inform key governments about the conclusions of the meeting and to persuade them of the need for accelerated progress.[15]

At the beginning of the 1970s, however, several¡¤developments converged to produce a change in attitudes: the political decolonization process had largely run its course and the political independence of most of the new states had been consolidated; the political-military pressures of the cold war were subsiding somewhat; the regional and international development efforts had shown disappointing results; and doubts had begun to be voiced about the prevailing development model.[16] ?As a result, more attention could be given to other important matters. ?For the developing countries, this meant that questions of economic development began to receive greater attention, and these countries became increasingly aware that the institutions of the international economic system had been established by the developed market economies to serve primarily their own purposes.[17]? Since, in the process, it was felt that the interests, needs and special conditions of the developing countries had largely been ignored, they remained in poverty and dependency.? Hence, fundamental changes in the international economic system were required to establish a framework conducive to development and to create the economic basis of independence. ?In fact, the system itself had come under serious strain with the breakdown of the Bretton Woods system, the food and oil crises, payment imbalances, a general surge of inflation, world recessions, increasing protectionism, rising environmental concerns, and the spectre of the scarcity of raw materials. ?When the economic tranquility of the 1960s gave way to the turbulence of the 1970s, international economic matters could no longer be ignored.

The non-aligned movement offered the framework for this recognition to grow. Within a few years, development questions became "high politics": they were elevated to the level of heads of state or government and were made a priority item on their agenda. ?Between 1970 and 1973, the non-aligned movement evolved into a pressure group for the reorganization of the international economic system.[18]? Since the Non-Aligned Countries considered themselves to be playing a catalytic role within the Group of 77,[19] the politicization of the development issue had an important effect on the manner in which this issue was perceived, presented and pursued within North-South negotiations. ?Thus, the political clout and pressure of the Non-Aligned Countries, coupled with the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries¡¯ (OPEC) forceful actions, led to the Sixth Special Session of the United Nations General Assembly which adopted, on 1 May 1974, the "Declaration and Programme of Action on the Establishment of a New International Economic Order".[20]

Hence, almost exactly one decade after the first session of UNCTAD, and after years of debates about improving the international economic system, the call for a new beginning was again taken up¡ªthis time, however, with a view towards a structural re-organization of the world economy. ?The establishment of a New International Economic Order (NIEO) became the main objective of the Third World. ?The concrete changes that the Group of 77 proposed in order to achieve this objective were spelled out in detail in the "Arusha Programme for Collective Self-Reliance and Framework for Negotiations," adopted by the Fourth Ministerial Meeting of the Group of 77 in Arusha, in February 1979.

While the Non-Aligned Countries played a key role in making the development issue a priority item on the international agenda, the Group of 77 became the principal organ of the Third World through which the concrete actions required for changing the international conditions for promoting development became to be negotiated within the framework of the United Nations system.? This objective dominated UNCTAD IV (Nairobi, 1976) and UNCTAD V (Manila, 1979) and the preparatory Third (Manila, 1976) and Fourth (Arusha, 1979) Ministerial Meetings of the Group of 77; UNIDO II (Lima, 1975) and UNIDO III (New Delhi, 1980) and the preparatory meetings of the Group of 77 in Vienna (1974), Algiers (1975) and Havana (1979); the regional preparatory meetings convened for each of these? UNCTAD and UNIDO conferences by the African, Arab (for UNIDO only), Asian, and Latin American members of the Group of 77; the 1976 Mexico City Conference on Economic Co-operation among Developing Countries; the 1975-1977 Paris Conference on International Economic Co-operation, in which the Group of 77 acted through the Group of 19; and a series of ministerial-level meetings of the Group of 77 (including meetings of ministers for foreign affairs) in preparation for sessions of the United Nations General Assembly. ?It also entered into the discussions in the IMF and the World Bank, where the Group of 77 had been acting through the Group of 24 since 1972.

There continued to be a considerable gap between the declaration of a new order and the action programmes formulated to establish it in the major areas of North-South interactions: commodities and trade, money and finance, research and development and technology, industrialization and transnational enterprises, and food and agriculture.? In fact, an analysis of the contents of the NIEO programme showed that, although a number of additional problems had been identified, many of the concrete proposals under discussion remained the same since 1964¡ªeven if the emphasis on some of them (e.g., proposals concerning technology) had grown.? This was an indication of the slow progress made in the past.? The new proposals were aimed at creating new economic structures. And, to a greater extent than in the past, it became recognized that the various dimensions of North-South interactions are interrelated and hence have to be approached in a comprehensive and integrated manner. Over time, the gap between objectives and concrete proposals could have been closed through the elaboration of new policies or possibly even through changes in the underlying development model.? At the time of the beginning of the Group of 77, however, the model continued to assume that development is best served by a close association of the developing with the developed countries.

A conceptual change, though, was in the offing with the concept of individual and collective self-reliance. ?In contradistinction to the prevailing associative development strategy with its orientation towards the world market and its heavy reliance on linkages with the developed countries for stimulating industrialization, the self-reliance concept sought greater selectivity in traditional linkages, accompanied by a greater mobilization of domestic and Third World resources and a greater reliance on domestic and Third World markets. ?It is these markets, rather than those in the developed world, which were expected to provide the principal stimulus for economic development.

The concept of self-reliance was introduced into the international development discussion by the Non-Aligned Countries in 1970, which were also responsible for most of the practical follow-up that was undertaken in the subsequent years.[21]? Although self-reliance can be strengthened by international measures,[22] it requires primarily a strengthening of linkages among developing countries.? For this reason, the Group of 77 which, as pointed out above, concentrates almost exclusively on North-South negotiations within the system of the United Nations had been slow in incorporating self?reliance into its own programme.

The first effort to do so was made at the 1976 Third Ministerial Meeting of the Group of 77, during which a resolution on economic co-operation among developing countries was adopted.[23] Through this resolution, which linked the work of the Group of 77 with that of the Non-Aligned Countries (whose pioneering work in this area was recognized in the resolution), it was decided to convene a meeting in Mexico City during the month of September 1976 to prepare a detailed programme on economic co-operation. Originally, it was planned to hold this meeting at the level of an intergovernmental working group; but at the subsequent UNCTAD IV session it was decided to hold it at the highest possible level.[24]? Hence, the Conference on Economic Co-operation among Developing Countries was convened in Mexico City from 13 to 22 September 1976. ?Until the early 1980s, the only major conference of the Group of 77 that was not closely and directly related to an important impending activity within the United Nations system.

The full integration of this approach into the Group's conceptual mainstream came, however, only during the 1979 Arusha Fourth Ministerial Meeting in preparation of UNCTAD V, an event signaled by the very title of the final declaration of that meeting, the "Arusha Programme for Collective Self-Reliance and Framework for Negotiations".? As this title indicates, the declaration consisted of two parts: a programme for self-reliance (even if this was formulated only in terms of economic co-operation among developing countries) and a programme for North-South negotiations. Thus, a shift in the United Nations orientation of the Group seemed to be taking place, and the Group of 77 (together with, or in addition to, the Non-Aligned Countries) was poised to make greater efforts towards stronger South-South co-operation.

Accordingly, the Arusha Ministerial Meeting ?strongly endorsed the recommendations of the Mexico City Conference regarding an institutional follow-up for economic co?operation among developing countries. As a consequence, a regionally prepared first meeting of Governmental Experts of Developing Countries on Economic Co-operation among Developing Countries was convened for March-April 1980. ?This inter-regional gathering, in turn, was fully supported by a March 1980 Ministerial Meeting of the Group of 77 in New York, during which economic co-operation among developing countries was a special item on the agenda and which decided to set up an open-ended ad hoc group "with the task of elaborating appropriate action-oriented recommendations for the early and effective implementation of the objectives of economic co?operation among developing countries".[25]? This task was begun by the "Ad-hoc Intergovernmental Group of the Group of 77 on Economic Co-operation among Developing Countries in Continuation of the Ministerial Meeting of the Group of 77 Held in New York in March 1980 in a session in Vienna in June 1980. ?Its conclusions and recommendations were considered a useful basis for further discussions by the 1980 Meeting of Ministers for Foreign Affairs of the Group of 77.? Deliberating shortly after the 1980 Eleventh Special Session of the General Assembly, the failure of that Session led the Ministers to stress that economic co-operation among developing countries is "an indispensable element both of the accelerated development of developing countries and of strengthening their negotiating power in their relations with the rest of the world".[26] ?The Ministers decided, therefore, to convene a high-level conference on economic co?operation among developing countries for 1981, to expedite the implementation of various programmes and decisions relating to this subject matter.

The effort towards greater South-South co-operation was encouraged by the slow pace of progress in North-South negotiations and the frustrations created thereby, as well as the recognition of the limits of the prevailing associative development model. ?It was also facilitated by the bi-dimensional nature¡ªrecognized explicitly in the statement quoted in the preceding paragraph¡ªof the self-reliance approach. One dimension, as described above, was seen as involving to bring about changes in the patterns of interaction between North and South that would allow for a more equitable sharing of the benefits of, and control over, international economic activities by developed and developing countries.

Besides being a part of the necessary structural change, self?-reliance was also seen as an instrument for achieving it: self-reliance increases the individual and collective bargaining strength of the developing countries and, especially where it allows joint action, creates the countervailing power that is needed to negotiate the desired changes in the international system. In this respect, self-reliance meant strengthening the joint action capacity of the Third World.

In the end, however, developing countries returned to the associative development model. While economic co-operation among developing countries remained an important goal, the objective of self-reliance gave way in the following years to an export-oriented development strategy, partly driven by the spreading 1982 Mexican debt crisis and the quickening pace of globalization.

But the awareness of the weakness of each individual developing country in isolation was the genesis of the Group of 77 and remained its raison d¡¯¨ºtre. ?In this sense, then, the Group of 77 "is a kind of trade union of the poor", which is kept together by "a unity of nationalisms" and "a unity of opposition"¡ªnot by "the ideals of human brotherhood, or human equality, or love for each other" or, for that matter, a common ideology.[27] ?The unity of the Group of 77 is based on a shared historical experience, a shared continuing economic dependence, and a shared set of needs and aspirations.

Still, since the Group is by no means homogeneous, group cohesiveness is not an easy matter to maintain.? The immediate interests and specific negotiating priorities of many of its many members¡ªthe great number in itself makes it difficult to achieve consensus¡ªare different from those of the others.? The individual countries differ vastly from one another with respect to their cultural, ideological, political, and economic systems. ?No strong unifying institutional force existed: the Group of 77 had no long-term leadership, regular staff, headquarters, secretariat or, for that matter, any other permanent institution. ?In fact, the office of the coordinator rotated on an annual basis in New York and Vienna and on a three-monthly basis in Geneva.? And although countries like Algeria, Argentina, Brazil, Egypt, India, Indonesia, Jamaica, Mexico, Nigeria, Pakistan, the Philippines, Sri Lanka, Venezuela, and Yugoslavia often played an important role on many issues, none of them dominated the Group. ?Very important also were and are great differences in the level of economic development, especially between the Latin American Group on the one hand and the African Group on the other.? This cleavage was accentuated further by the exclusion of most Latin American countries from the preferential schemes of the Lom¨¦ Convention. ?The individual weight of some countries could also complicate matters, especially when these countries were specially cultivated by developed countries and when occasions for separate bilateral deals arose. ?Similar complications could be created by the continuation of strong traditional links of some developing with some developed countries, e.g., of some Central American countries with the United States or some African countries with France. ?Some of the special interests of the members of the Group also led to the formation of informal sub-groups of, for example, the most seriously affected, the least developed, the newly industrialized, and, of course, the oil producing countries.[28]? While the success of OPEC was welcomed by most developing countries, especially since it strengthened the bargaining power? of the Third World as a whole, the balance of payments burden of the increased oil price introduced considerable strains? into the Group of 77 (and, for that matter,? into the non-aligned movement). But since there existed no alternative for the oil importing developing countries, this experience, however painful, did not end the unity of the Group of 77.[29]

In the face of these factors it is a formidable task indeed to maintain the cohesiveness of the Group. ?But the strength of the basic common interests, the capacity to maintain consensus through acceptable trade-offs among the developing countries themselves, the recognition that separate deals bring only marginal and temporary concessions, and the resistance of the developed countries to enter into a broad range of detailed negotiations succeeded in overriding the pressures towards disunity. ?The maintenance and strengthening of the unity of the Group of 77 was and therefore remains a precondition for achieving the desired changes in the international economic system. To return to Nyerere's analogy and his evaluation of OPEC's "historic action" in 1973:

But since then OPEC has learned, and we have learned once again, that however powerful it is, a single trade union which only covers one section of a total enterprise cannot change the fundamental relationship between employers and employees....For the reality is that the unity of even the most powerful of the subgroups within the Third World is not sufficient to allow its members to become full actors, rather than reactors, in the world economic system. ?The unity of the entire Third World is necessary for the achievement of the fundamental change in the present world economic arrangements.[30]

These words spoken in 1979 encapsulate the challenge the Group of 77 faced throughout its existence, and continues to face today.

References

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[1] General Assembly resolution 1710 (XVI) of 19 December 1961.

[2] General Assembly resolution 1707 (XVI) of 19 December 1961.

[3] For the text of the "Cairo Declaration of Developing Countries", see Odette Jankowitsch and Karl P. Sauvant, eds., The Third World without? Superpowers: The Collected Documents of the Non-Aligned Countries (Dobbs Ferry, N.Y.: Oceana (now: Oxford University Press), 1978), vol. I, pp. 72-75, hereinafter cited as Jankowitsch and Sauvant. This meeting was the first attempt of the developing countries to co-ordinate their international development policies in the United Nations.

[4] See Economic and Social Council resolution 917 (XXXIV) of 3 August 1962 and General Assembly resolution 1785 (XVII) of 8 December 1962.

[5] Of the 32 members of the Preparatory Committee, 19 were developing countries (including Yugoslavia which, at that time, played a key role in the Group of 77). Seventeen of the nineteen supported the "Joint Statement". ?The other two, El Salvador and Uruguay, did so only when the "Joint Statement" became the "Joint Declaration".

[6] Contained in Karl P. Sauvant, ed., The Third World without Superpowers, 2nd Ser., The Collected Documents of the Group of 77 (Dobbs Ferry, N.Y.: Oceana (now: Oxford University Press), 1981), 20 vols., hereinafter cited as Sauvant. (The documents of the Group of 77 referred to below, as well as those of the United Nations meetings for which they were an input, are contained in these volumes; no specific reference is, therefore, made to them each time they are mentioned.)? In 1963, 76 developing countries were members of the United Nations.? Except for Cuba and the Ivory Coast, all developing countries, along with New Zealand, co-sponsored the Joint Declaration. ?Cuba was ostracized by the Latin American Group at that time and hence was not accepted as a co-sponsor of the resolution.? (The principle of co-sponsorship requires that every sponsor of a given resolution has to accept any new co-sponsor.)

[7] Ibid., document I.C.I.a. ?At the time of UNCTAD I, 77 developing countries were members of the United Nations. ?Of these, the Ivory Coast again did not join at that time and Cuba remained excluded until the 1971 Second Ministerial Meeting. Two others, the Republic of Korea and the Republic of Vietnam (which were not members of the United Nations but were the only other developing countries at UNCTAD I), did join after being accepted for membership by the Asian Group, so that 77 countries supported the ¡°Joint Declaration of the Seventy-Seven¡±. ?Since, however, the original membership of the group was 75¡ªsee the 1963 ¡°Joint Declaration¡±¡ª the resolution continued to refer to seventy-five countries. It was only with UNCTAD I, that the Group acquired its present name.

[8] Prebisch actively encouraged the developing countries during the preparations for UNCTAD I, the session itself, and the subsequent years to co-operate and to strengthen their unity in the framework of the Group of 77. His successor, Manuel Perez-Guerrero, continued this policy.

[9] The resolution on the First United Nations Development Decade did not spell out a strategy.

[10] Through resolution 1995 (XIX), contained in Sauvant.? For the membership, principal functions, organization, etc. of UNCTAD, see that resolution.

[11] Including the Palestine Liberation Organization, the only non-state member of the Group of 77.

[12] The literature on the Group of 77 is scarce. One of the best analyses at that time was Branislav Gosovic, UNCTAD: Conflict and Compromise. The Third World's Quest for an Equitable World Economic Order through the United Nations (Leiden: Sijthoff, 1972). For another analysis of the Group of 77 and the non-aligned movement and their role in the main international economic conferences dealing with the New International Economic Order, see Robert A. Mortimer, the Third World Coalition in International Politics (New York: Praeger, 1980).

[13] Infra, p. 133.

[14] Ibid., p. 134.

[15] See, Co-ordinating Committee, ¡°Ministerial Mission¡± and First Ministerial Meeting of the Group of 77, "Charter of Algiers", Part III, in Sauvant, documents II.B.3 and II.D.7, respectively.

[16] For an elaboration, see Karl P. Sauvant, "The Origins of the NIEO Discussions", in Karl P. Sauvant, ed., Changing Priorities on the International Agenda: the New International Economic Order (Elmsford, N.Y.: Pergamon, 1981).

[17] Apart from the Latin American states, only the following developing countries took part in the Bretton Woods Conference: Egypt, Ethiopia, India, Iran, Iraq, Liberia, and the Philippines.

[18] See Odette Jankowitsch and Karl P. Sauvant, "The Initiating Role of the Non?Aligned Countries", in ibid. This observation should not be taken to slight the political purpose and function of the non-aligned movement; it is intended only to point out that the movement had also acquired an equally important economic function and that this change proved to be of crucial importance for making the development issue a priority item on the international agenda.

[19] See, e.g., the "Final Communique" adopted at the 1978 Havana meeting of the Co-ordinating Bureau of the Non-Aligned Countries at the Ministerial Level, reprinted in Jankowitsch and Sauvant, vol. V.

[20] General Assembly resolutions 3201 (S-VI) and 3202 (S-VI). ?Together with the "Charter of Economic Rights and Duties of States", adopted 12 December 1974 by the Twenty-Ninth Regular Session of the General Assembly as resolution 3281 (XXIX), and resolution 3362 (S-VII), entitled "Development and International Economic Co?operation", adopted on 16 September 1975 by the Seventh Special Session of the General Assembly, these resolutions (which are contained in Sauvant) laid the foundations of the programme for a New International Economic Order.

[21] Especially in the framework of the "Action Programme for Economic Co?operation", adopted by the 1972 Georgetown Third Conference of Ministers of Foreign Affairs of Non-Aligned Countries, as a consequence of which Coordinator Countries were designated for 18 fields of activity. ?Important also were a number of the follow-up activities to the Conference of Developing Countries on Raw Materials, which was held in Dakar from 4 to 8 February 1975; although the Dakar Conference was convened by the Non-Aligned Countries, it was explicitly designed to include all developing countries.? For the relevant documents, see Jankowitsch and Sauvant.

[22] The establishment, within UNCTAD and in pursuance of a resolution adopted at UNCTAD IV, of a Committee on Economic Co-operation among Developing Countries in 1976 and the increased emphasis given since UNCTAD V to this approach were efforts in this direction.

[23] See Sauvant, document IV.D.7.

[24] See, Main Documents of the Group of 77 at UNCTAD IV, "Statement Regarding the Forthcoming Conference on Economic Co-operation among the Developing Countries", ibid., document IV.E.l.

[25] See, Ministerial Meeting of the Group of 77, "Communiqu¨¦", ibid., document X.C.l.a.

[26] Ministers for Foreign Affairs of the Group of 77, Fourth Meeting, "Declaration", ibid., document X.B.4.a.

[27] Nyerere, infra, pp. 123, 122.

[28] Producers' associations other than OPEC had not acquired a political significance of their own.

[29] In other words, the oil-importing developing countries had nothing to gain from turning against OPEC since this would not have affected the price of oil. Maintaining solidarity, on the other hand, combined with some pressure, could have led to some concessions by the OPEC countries (be it in the form of aid, special price arrangements, or both), and it strengthened the bargaining power of the oil-importing developing countries in their negotiations with the North.

[30] Nyerere, infra,? p. 133.