It was an epochal moment in the emerging North-South finance and trade order.
That was 60 years ago when an iconic Marxist revolutionary, Che Guevara, addressed the foundational meeting of an international organisation centred on trade and development for a better “World Order”, in Geneva. “It was an inspiring moment when I interviewed him in our press bar on several issues and Che looked like an ultimate expression of humility, tenacity, courage and vivacity,” the late Pierre Simonitsch, an Austrian journalist, told this writer.
At that meeting in Geneva, in 1964, 119 countries gathered to discuss the role of trade and development in “laying the foundations of a better world order”, one that could support developing countries’ efforts to break out of the commodity trap and accelerate industrialisation. On the margins of the meeting, Che enabled the formation of a new coalition of developing countries that is often referred to as the G77.
By the end of the conference, it was clear that developing countries would not be satisfied with a one-off event. Instead, they pushed for a forum of ongoing negotiations with a strong development mandate, established institutional procedures and a permanent secretariat. A General Assembly resolution to that effect was adopted in December 1964, establishing the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) as a regular conference tasked with formulating and implementing principles and policies on international trade and related economic development problems.
UNCTAD’s six-decade-long history broadly falls into three chapters. An initial series of soft reforms in the areas of trade and finance were pushed, notably to counter the adverse trends in the global financial order.
However, the limited development benefits from the Kennedy Round of trade negotiations launched in Geneva, during 1964-67, under the auspices of GATT (General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade) and the US unilateral decision to end the Bretton Woods arrangement in 1971 exposed the persistent asymmetries and biases in the existing global governance architecture.
A second chapter followed in pursuit of more systemic reforms with UNCTAD backstopping the developing countries’ call for a “new international economic order (NIEO)“. That chapter closed with Paul Volker’s ultra-aggressive interest rate hike and the resulting developing country debt crisis which helped open the floodgates for private capital flows and the reassertion of dollar hegemony.
The decade ended with the collapse of the Soviet Union and the triumph of neoliberalism. That opened the third chapter for UNCTAD as a vocal critic of the Washington Consensus and its free trade offshoot in the WTO, exposing the damage to developing countries and the hypocrisy of northern governments whose positions were often replete with double standards.
Ironic development
As the institution celebrates its 60th anniversary next week, the current leadership appears determined to bury its past achievements in an effort to “re-brand“ it as a “forward-looking” institution attuned to the “new complexities of the global economy”. Its staff have been instructed to stop using the UNCTAD acronym and refer instead to UN Trade and Development.
According to several developing country representatives in Geneva, this was not a request from them, nor were they consulted on the matter. They were only informed of the sudden change. Instead, the UNCTAD leadership outsourced the exercise to a marketing and communications firm, Havas, which claims to develop “meaningful brands“ with “authentic messages”. Surely, Guevara and other founders would be turning in their graves to hear this rather ugly development in which they invested so much political capital.
What this heralds for UNCTAD’s future is already apparent in the programme for the 60th anniversary which gives high-level billing to the head of the International Chamber of Commerce (a corporate lobby group that was vehemently opposed to the creation of UNCTAD) and the DG of the WTO (whose approach to trade policy is the opposite of that on which UNCTAD was founded).
In a move deeply disrespectful of the institution, there is no place in the programme for previous high-level staff of the organisation. In fact, a review of invited speakers suggests that none of the critical approaches that have made UNCTAD a distinct voice on trade and development matters will be part of the anniversary celebration.
Recolonising of UNCTAD
This appears less a rebranding exercise and more a recolonising of the organisation, with the aim of burying the principles on which it was established, and abandoning its willingness to call out the damaging policy actions, double standards and outright hypocrisy of governments in the north who then, as now, have adopted a “do as I say not as I do (or did)” approach to contemporary development policy challenges, especially in the area of international trade.
The timing of this makeover couldn’t be worse. Developing countries are under greater economic pressures than ever before with many already having gone through a lost decade and with worse to come; the WTO has been emasculated by advanced countries in their pursuit of “national security” and mercantilist ambitions; the technological divide is growing wider under stringent intellectual property rules and rapid digital advances; climate damage intensifies as debt distress increases in many developing countries alongside an ever more deeply entrenched position of financial subordination, perpetuated through the actions of the Bretton Woods institutions. Ironically, the commodity question, a key factor in UNCTAD’s foundation, is resurfacing around ownership and control of critical minerals with worries about “green” colonialism at the moment UNCTAD is turning away from its past.
Why is this effort to transform UNCTAD happening now and who benefits from it? The advanced economies never really warmed to the organisation, many didn’t even want a second conference and only agreed to it under the pressures of Cold War politics. The closer engagement of some European countries in the 1970s was the result of more social-democratically minded governments accepting that the rules of the global economy were not working for poorer countries while others had their own disputes with the United States.
But with neo-liberalism ascendant across the developed world, and becoming triumphant with the collapse of the Soviet Union, developed countries soon turned their sight on UNCTAD and along with some countries from Latin America tried to close it down in the early 1990s. Those efforts failed thanks to pushback from other developing countries in the G77 and, despite personnel cuts at the time, UNCTAD became one of the few institutions in the multilateral arena that was critical of free trade orthodoxy. But having failed to close it down advanced economies set about neutering the organisation from the inside. Silencing those criticisms now is very much to their liking.
Another winner appears to be the 38th floor in New York, never comfortable with UNCTAD’s bureaucratic independence or its more strident criticism of the Bretton Woods institutions, said a trade official familiar with the developments in the UN.
With its own enlarged development empire (financing for development, SDGs, etc) and a Summit for the Future looming, its under-resourced bureaucracy will no doubt welcome moves that take UNCTAD closer to New York. With the desire of UNCTAD’s current head to take over from Antonio Gutteres when he leaves the top job, an open secret in Geneva, repositioning the organisation offers a campaign opportunity, the trade official said.
As for developing countries, their gradual drift away from UNCTAD, whether because they bought ( or were forced) into the simple policy messages coming out of Washington or because (with constrained financial and human resources), they turned their attention to human rights and health issues in Geneva, and to negotiations in New York and Bonn.
The creation of the WTO no doubt complicated matters, particularly as the G77 and China don’t operate there. The Doha development round, which has proved nothing of the sort, launched in 2001 after the terrorist attacks in the US, further confused developing country missions in Geneva as to what they wanted from UNCTAD. This was not helped by a former WTO head assuming the leadership of the organisation in 2005. By the time it became obvious that the Round was going nowhere given the obtuse attitude and tactical delays of the advanced countries, UNCTAD’s work on trade issues had degenerated into a series of technical assistance projects funded by advanced economies.
So far the G77 and China, whose very existence is owed to the first Conference, seem indifferent to the latest course direction. This may be an honest recognition of its abandonment of the organisation but it’s a very long way from its founding document which recognised, the United Nations Conference on trade and development, as a significant step towards creating a new and just world economic order“ and their own creation as an event of „historic significance“.
If history is not to repeat itself as Marx warned, it might be worth recalling a similar episode in 2017 when the management of the Nairobi-based United Nations Environment Programme launched a rebrand and ditched its acronym (UNEP) in favour of UN Environment. The empty refrain of being forward-looking was heard but this attempt to hijack an intergovernmental body was overturned by member states who insisted that UNEP was “globally recognised” and with a mandate determined by them.
It remains to be seen whether developing countries in UNCTAD are willing to live up to the values and convictions of their forebears.