Development experts address need for a strong UNCTAD and probe what lies ahead for economic development and multilateralism at round table honouring the organization’s founding Secretary-General, Raúl Prebisch.
A Prebisch Round Table, held in Assembly Hall at the Palais des Nations, Geneva on 16 June, considered future directions for UNCTAD in a lively discussion moderated by Jayati Ghosh, Professor of the Centre for Economic Studies and Planning, Jawaharlal Nehru University.
Kicking off the debate, Ms. Ghosh asked panellists whether they thought Raúl Prebisch had been right in his assessment that UNCTAD I in 1964 had been a failure.
Jan Pronk, Visiting Professor at the United Nations University for Peace, former UNCTAD Deputy Secretary-General and a former Dutch development minister, said that he had always been "amazed" at Prebsich's gloomy assessment. In fact, the establishment of a permanent, ongoing negotiations body for global development issues had been a significant breakthrough.
Current UNCTAD Secretary-General Mukhisa Kituyi heartily agreed, adding that "50 years on, a large amount of what Prebisch aspired to has been achieved". At issue was the disappointment that newly independent nations and developing States felt as the creation of UNCTAD had not been followed by the wholesale creation of a new global trading system.
José Antonio Ocampo, Professor at Columbia University, former United Nations Under-Secretary-General for Economic and Social Affairs and a former Colombian finance minister, said that while global like the rest of the United Nations, UNCTAD was unique in that it was expected to defend the views of developing countries.
But Ms. Ghosh asked how relevant the global "North-South divide" was today, given how much the world had changed in 50 years.
 From left to right: Mr. Jan Pronk, Ms. Jayati Ghosh, Mr. Mukhisa Kituyi and Mr. José Antonio Ocampo |
Dr. Kituyi responded that while substantial changes had occurred, the core question of how to build an inclusive and sustainable system of trade for development remained. Furthermore, inequality - not only between nations but within them - was in many senses growing. Mr. Ocampo invoked the principle of "common but differentiated responsibilities" to describe the fact that developing countries had always been diverse. Yet three asymmetries remained in the global system: technological innovation continued to take place in the global North; the global trading currencies all belonged to the global North; and capital remained mobile while mobility of labour remained restricted - an asymmetry which continued to hurt the developing world.
Turning to questions of the multilateral negotiating system, Mr. Pronk said frankly that after a promising start in the 1960s and 1970s, "we messed it up - let's face it". The structural fault in the system which produced global inequality had actually become worse through globalization and as dichotomies in the global economy had widened - particularly after 1989, when the ideological triumph of Western capitalism made the North-South divide more difficult to narrow than ever.
Dr. Kituyi maintained that multilateralism remained vital in the face of a plethora of free trade agreements that threatened to sideline the interests of developing nations, while Mr. Ocampo said that bilateral trade agreements had killed multilateralism in trade talks.
How then, asked Ms. Ghosh, could UNCTAD thrive in a world without multilateralism? Dr. Kituyi cited the Group of 77 and China bloc of developing countries, which was formed at UNCTAD I, as the "custodian" of multilateralism.
Addressing the role of UNCTAD, Mr. Ocampo said the organization had many strengths, its analytical work in trade and commodities among them. It should make more use of synergies within the United Nations system and work with United Nations regional commissions. As far as its work on investment for development, Mr. Ocampo confidently dubbed UNCTAD the world's "number 1" institution. Perhaps an issue to which UNCTAD could turn was the so-called middle-income trap faced by countries such has his native Colombia, Mr. Ocampo suggested.
Responding to reactions from the floor that the 2013 Agreement on Trade Facilitation of the World Trade Organization in Bali, Indonesia, had been too little, too late, Mr. Pronk replied that Bali showed that it was still possible to reach an agreement in a multilateral setting, and this was a hopeful sign that UNCTAD's multilateral approach remained worth pursuing. He reminded the meeting that growth in trade was not an end itself and that human welfare was the ultimate goal.
