The United Nations Looks Inward

...Though the long-term effects of these reports are difficult to measure, there are already indications that the top officials of the U.N...

...The United Nations Looks Inward by JAN MAYOR To lessen the perils of impending middle age, the United Nations, which is barely twenty-five years old, has recently been placed on the psychiatrist's couch where Doctors Lester Pearson, Jan Tinbergen, Gunnar Myr-dal, and the knighted practitioner Sir Robert Jackson, accompanied by a host of other specialists, have subjected it to a period of painful analysis...

...The reports list the strengths and weaknesses of the present total U.N...

...Today the danger of growing social stratification within developing countries and the widening gap between the "have" and "have-not" nations have become the major concerns of the more enlightened U.N...

...foreign assistance be eventually "internationalized" by channeling it through the various aid-giving agencies of the United Nations...

...The four analysts advocate a sharp reversal of these policies by lowering or abolishing tariffs and import quotas aimed at curbing shipments from developing countries, the end of dumping of surplus foods and fibers on the market by the donors except in cases of proven need in the Third World, the liberalization of commercial loan terms, the decrease of interest rates, and other measures aimed at improving trade conditions for developing countries...

...agency channels...

...In contrast, the Expert Group on Social Policy and Planning for National Development, headed by Gunnar Myrdal, maintains that more research is needed to determine a "profile of indicators" regarding the comparative levels of social development in countries of the Third World, since most members of the Expert Group believed that a profile of indicators in determining allocation criteria was far more meaningful than a single index for such determination...

...aid-giving agencies...

...The peoples of the more affluent nations, if judged by the actions of their governments, appear to be little moved by the Secretary General's words...

...agencies which lend assistance to the emerging nations of Asia, Africa, and Latin America...

...military adventures in the Third World...

...This is the opening sentence of the Pearson Report...

...JAN MAYOR is the pseudonym of an American official who has served with various agencies of the United Nations at home and abroad...

...In accordance with the Jackson Report recommendations, the U.N...

...Lester Pearson is a former prime minister of Canada...

...Pearson is particularly insistent that governments of developing countries establish laws and institutions more conducive to private investment from both domestic and foreign sources...

...Four—Does the nation give high priority to the development of human potentialities, especially those of children, by preventing malnutrition during critical stages of mental and body growth, and by providing health services and equal education opportunities according to gifts and talents...

...Committee on Development Planning...

...These new attitudes have come about partly because Jackson, Pearson, Tinbergen, and Myrdal by their very bluntness have forced the U.N...

...The facts speak for themselves: f The annual growth of the gross national product (GNP) in the developed countries exceeds the total gross GNP of the developing countries today...

...Secretary General U Thant: "At the end of the 1960s there are more sick, more undernourished, and more uneducated children in the world than there were ten years ago...

...and matters relating to consumption involving nutrition, housing, and social services...

...f Between 1960 and 1965, the per capita GNP of the developed countries increased by $59 per annum, to a total of $1,725, while the poor countries averaged over this same five-year period a per capita GNP increase of only $3, to a total of $157...

...Economic and Social Commission (ECO-SOC) is now studying ways to streamline and coordinate the functions of the U.N...

...Sir Robert Jackson—who is married to Barbara Ward, an authority on international economic development—has been the senior consultant for many years to the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) administrator, Paul Hoffman, after a distinguished career in the British overseas administrative development service, both in government and in private enterprises...

...Congress certain multilateral alternatives which they can support in good conscience...

...increased emphasis upon export development...

...Three—Does the nation aim at social equality as being morally important as well as an important element in increasing the long-run efficiency of the nation...

...This rash of reports about aid to the developing countries—Sir Robert Jackson's Capacity Report on the U.N...

...and the regional bureaus of UNDP...

...Congress in recent years, a working alliance has emerged between the traditional opponents of foreign aid and the disillusioned liberals, led by Senator J. W. Fulbright, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, who now oppose bilateral assistance, claiming that it leads inevitably to U.S...

...He recommends the creation of more "joint enterprises," with government sharing ownership with private capital, guarantees against nationalization of foreign enterprises for an agreed number of years, and adequate compensation to foreign-owned enterprises should nationalization take place...

...Within the United Nations there is a new awareness of these problems, a fresh realization that true economic and social development are inseparably interrelated, and a willingness to make needed structural changes within the whole U.N...

...Such measures, he argues, will improve the economic condition of the receiving countries and induce donor countries and the multilateral agencies that place a high premium on the efficiency of the receiving governments to give more liberally...

...Borrowing liberally from MyrdaPs facts and concepts in his three-volume Asian Drama, the analyzers describe how traditional forms of society in the Third World resist needed social changes...

...agencies have given more administrative and decision-making power to the agencies' regional offices and in some cases to their country representatives...

...11 The developing countries must currently use fifty per cent of their new loans to pay off the interest and capital on old obligations...

...For example, following the proposals of the Jackson Report, two U.N...

...matters relating to human development—health, education, and children...

...agencies, despite the fact that each agency is now operating under its own independent governing board, and each has tended at times to approach the recipient countries with little apparent knowledge of, or concern about, the relationships between its agency's potential contributions of capital or technical assistance and the development plans and the established priorities of these countries...

...The widening gap between developed and developing countries has become the central crisis of our time.9 " The reports of Jackson, Pearson, Tinbergen, and Myrdal have, moreover, already put flesh and bones on the rather amorphous concept of the "internationalization" of foreign assistance through U.N...

...Two—Does the nation make it a principal objective to activate wide sectors of the population to ensure their participation in the development process...

...Similar is the story in the bursting cities of the developing world where a few industrialists and businessmen prosper while thousands of poor families, forced to migrate from the countryside, are now crowded into filthy slums...

...The Senator and his supporters agree with Lester Pearson's assertion that too often bilateral assistance has been misused by the donors "to achieve short-term political objectives, to gain strategic advantage, to support large foreign armies, and to promote the donors' own exports...

...Development Cycle" under the general direction of UNDP, at both the international and the individual country level...

...agencies ruled over by thirty separate governing bodies, but also from alarm about the ever-widening economic chasm between the seventy-seven or more developing countries and the thirty-three or more developed countries...

...and they may provide to critics of bilateral assistance in the U.S...

...agencies instead of ten per cent, which is currently the international average...

...The recommendations of Pearson, Jackson, Tinbergen, and Myrdal deal specifically with the current maladies of the developing countries resulting from the structure of the traditional feudalistic societies and from the inequalities within these societies caused in part by the massive injection of capital and technical skills from the donor countries...

...But in the words of MyrdaFs Expert Group, they too often neglect "matters relating to differences in income and levels of living—between classes, regions, sectors, age groups, town and country...

...Time after time, in an emerging nation, they have seen how the already prosperous farmers are the chief beneficiaries of new dams, canals, power stations, and fertilizer factories...

...Yet the most important causes for the growing inequalities between the affluent nations and the poor nations lie not in New Delhi or Kampala or Brasilia...

...In contrast to the vagueness of these critics, analysts Jackson, Pearson, Myr-dal, and Tinbergen have set forth clear proposals about all types of foreign assistance and the role of the U.N...

...The Jackson Report states that the criteria should be three-fold: greater aid should go to countries with low per capita GNP, with a high absorptive capacity for capital and technical assistance, and with a proven "will" to develop...

...political involvement in these countries, and, finally, U.S...

...and how often the absence of an equitable tax system and the presence of corruption and inefficient government administration are spreading dissatisfaction among the masses and piling up the dynamite for violent resolutions in the future...

...leaders...

...As remedies they advocate the imposition of drastic land reform so that the benefits of the continuing "green revolution" can be more equitably distributed...

...Sir Robert proposed, in brief, that U.N...

...Such questions have seldom been asked in recent years by conventional economists and officials dominating many U.N...

...Finally, after months of work and the consumption of tons of paper, the analysts presented their reports late last year for the consideration of the U.N...

...General Assembly...

...and during this period their chance of dying will be twenty to forty times higher than if they lived in Europe or North America...

...The four practitioners advocate that by 1975 all developed countries of the world contribute at least one per cent of their respective GNPs to the developing world...

...how in contrast the already poverty-stricken farmers and day laborers seldom have enough land, enough education, enough skills, and enough capital to benefit from modernization...

...By 1975, argues Pearson, the developed countries should channel at least twenty per cent of their total foreign aid through U.N...

...agency programs and their many projects be coordinated into a five-year "U.N...

...establishment to analyze itself...

...Though all four analysts are in agreement about the need for greater U.N...

...Twenty will die within a year...

...Jan Tinbergen is a professor at the Netherlands Institute of Economics and heads the U.N...

...Gunnar Myrdal recently completed a ten-year study of economic and social development in Asia, entitled Asian Drama...

...Development Program of examining its capacity to assist needy countries at its present financial level and of recommending how this system should function ideally, if by 1975 its financial resources were doubled...

...Of those who live to school age, only a little more than half will ever set foot in a classroom, and less than four out of ten of those who enter will complete the elementary grades...

...Though not unmindful of the need for economic growth, the Group advocated that in future allocation of funds from international sources each recipient nation should be judged on the following bases: One—Does the nation aim to leave no important section of the population outside of the scope of change and development, and to integrate into the development process the so-called traditional, subsistence, and marginal sectors or regions, both rural and urban, which presently remain untouched by development or are left behind without benefit from it...

...They stem mainly from the donors' trade policies which have proved injurious to the interests of the recipient nations...

...how the lack of land reform in the developing world tends to funnel to only the privileged few the benefits of the "green revolution," which has resulted from high yielding rice and grains and from improved fertilizers and pesticides...

...Rather, in the Western world in general, and in the United States in particular, there is growing opposition to, and seeming disillusionment with, the meager economic growth and political instability of the many aided countries of Asia, Africa, and Latin America...

...assistance throughout the world, they differ on criteria for allocation of these limited international funds to the recipient countries...

...Of the eighty who survive, sixty will have no access to modern medical care during their childhood...

...regional commissions—the Economic Commission for Asia and the Far East (ECAFE), for Latin America (ECLA), and for Africa (ECA) ; the regional offices of the U.N...

...Most affected by this widening gap between the "have" and "have-not" nations, as documented by the facts cited above, are the one billion children under fifteen years of age now living in the developing countries...

...Second Development Decade, and the report of Myrdal's group of experts on social policy and planning for national development—arose not only from concern about the acknowledged lack of coordination among aid-giving U.N...

...The focus of the practitioners' attention was on the U.N...

...and that a substantial portion of this assistance should be in the form of grants rather than loans...

...An equal number will suffer from malnutrition during the crucial weaning and toddler age— with the possibility of irreversible physical and mental damage...

...The serious consideration given the recommendations of the various reports has revealed a fresh willingness on the part of the U.N...

...However, none of the four men believes that the developing countries can be saved by the liberalization of trade alone...

...f The developed countries, which are members of the Development Assistance Committee (DAC), are spending twenty times more on their own armaments than they now lend or give to the more needy nations...

...are seeking ways to bring more order and coordination among the collection of U.N...

...that three-fourths of their contributions should be earmarked to finance essentially public enterprises...

...The widening gap between developed and developing countries has become the central crisis of our time...

...the creation of "hard" administrative structures by leaders of the Third World who are willing to curb corruption, to impose measures increasing capital accumulation, and to enact and to enforce more equitable taxation measures which place the chief burden upon the middle and upper economic classes in both urban and rural areas...

...The Tinbergen Report puts emphasis upon the recipient nation's success at social reform, the strength of its administrative structure, and its past performance in the proper use of external resources...

...As a way to avoid future bilateral catastrophes, the Senator and his colleagues have proposed that U.S...

...Such self-analysis should be followed by reform which will make the United Nations an organization better able to serve the people of the developing nations—and the developed nations— of our troubled world...

...f Interest rates on loans to the Third World are increasing, the terms of loans are becoming harder, and the requirement of eighty-four per cent of these loans is that the recipient country must use the proceeds to purchase services and capital goods from only the respective donor country...

...Seldom, however, have the Senator and his supporters defined the word "internationalization" or examined the actual capacity of the U.N...

...economic domination of the recipient countries, U.S...

...development agencies in the Third World...

...Development System, the Pearson Commission for International Development's findings about the future role of foreign assistance, the Tinbergen Report on the U.N...

...Each specialist completed his own set of recommendations, and each was highly qualified for the assignment...

...specialized agencies...

...Sir Robert Jackson was given the specific task by the U.N...

...In the U.S...

...They have also forgotten that modernization often "creates large areas of stagnation and actual exclusion from economic and social progress" for millions of the poorer citizens...

...Second Development Decade...

...The present fate of these children has recently been described by U.N...

...Every half minute, 100 children are born in the developing countries...

...Such economists are inclined to measure progress in the Third World on the basis of quantifiable variables such as GNP, capital investment, exports and imports...

...development system...

...Programs now are often hampered by long administrative delays and by lack of enough qualified personnel...

...The Pearson Report, possibly influenced by the conventional loan criteria of the World Bank, advocates that allocations for foreign assistance, both bilateral and multilateral, "should be related to the performance" of the recipient countries rather than to "political, humanitarian, or cultural considerations...

...They give equal attention to the sins of commission and omission by the donor countries and to the faults of the recipient countries where there are a growing "development consciousness" on the part of national leaders and rising expectations among the masses that somehow a new day has dawned, coupled with their mounting frustrations aggravated by increases in population and the consequent threats of food shortages...

...development system and prescribe therapies designed to reform, to revive, and, above all, to invigorate the United Nations for the 1970s, popularly named and heralded as "the U.N...

...agencies' officialdom to put their own houses in order...

...agencies, acting in concert, to assist effectively the nations of the Third World...