United Nations Development Decade; a Programme for International Economic Cooperation

A/RES/1710(XVI)View PDF

Who adopted this document and its mandates?

A Resolution of the General Assembly, published in 1962.

What subjects does this mandate have?

6 subjects

Economic Cooperation Economic Development International Decades Programmes of Action Social Development Sustainable Development

What’s in this document?

14 operative paragraphs

Designa_tes the current decade as the United Nations Development Decade, in which Member States and their peoples will intensify their efforts to mobilize and to sustain support for the measures required on the part of both developed and developing countries to accelerate progress towards self-sustaining growth of the economy of the individual nations and their social advancement so as to attain in each under-developed country a substantial increase in the rate of growth, with each country setting its own target, taking as the objective a minimum annual rate of growth of aggregate national income of 5 per cent at the·end of the Decade;

Calls upon States Members of the United Nations and members of the specialized agencies:

To pursue policies designed to enable the less developed countries and those dependent on the export of a small range of primary commodities to sell more of their: products at stable and remunerative prices in ex~andmg markets, and thus to finance increasingly their own economic development from their earnings of foreign exchange and domestic savings;

1• See also resolution 1715 (XVI) of 19 December 1961.

( b) To pursue policies designed to ensure to the developing countries an equitable share of earnings from the extraction and marketing of their natural resources by foreign capital, in accordance with the generally accepted reasonable earnings on invested capital;

( c) To pursue policies that will lead to an increase in the flow of development resources, public and private, to developing countries on mutually acceptable terms;

To adopt measures which will stimulate the flow of private investment capital for the economic development of the developing countries, on terms that are satisfactory both to the capital-exporting countries and the capital-importing countries;

Requests the Secretary-General to communicate to the Governments of Member States any documentation useful for the study and application of the present resolution and to invite them to make proposals, if possible, concerning the contents of a United Nations programme for the Decade and the application of such measures in their respective plans;

Requests the Secretary-General, taking account of the views of Governments and in consultation, as appropriate, with the heads of international agencies with responsibilities in the financial, economic and social fields, the Managing Director of the Special Fund, the Executive Chairman of the Technical Assistance Board and the regional economic commi~sions, to develop proposals for the intensification of action in the fields of economic and social development by the United Nations system of organizations, with particular reference, inter alia, to the following approaches and measures designed to further the objectives of paragraph 1 above:

The achievement and acceleration of sound selfsustaining economic development in the less developed countries through industrialization, diversification and the development of a highly productive agricultural sector;

( b) Measures for assisting the developing countries, at their request, to establish well-conceived and integrated country plans-including, where appropriate, land reform-which will serve to mobilize internal resources and to utilize resources offered by foreign sources on both a bilateral and a multilateral basis for progress towards self-sustained growth ;

( c) Measures to improve the use of international institutions and instrumentalities for furthering economic and social development ;

( d) Measures to accelerate the elimination of illiteracy, hunger and disease, which seriously affect the productivity of the people of the less developed countries;

( e) The need to adopt new measures, and to improve existing measures, for further promoting education in general and vocational and technical training in the developing countries with the co-operation, where appropriate, of the specialized agencies and States which can provide assistance in these fields, and for training competent national personnel in the fields of public administration, education, engineering, health and agronomy;

The intensification of research and demonstration as well as other efforts to exploit scientific and technological potentialities of high promise for accelerating economic and social development ;

\Vays and means of finding and furthering effective solutions in the field of trade in manufactures as well as in primary commodities, bearing in mind, in particular, the need to increase the foreign exchange earnings of the under-developed countries ;

( h) The need to review facilities for the collection, collation, analysis and dissemination of statistical and other information required for charting economic and social development and for providing a constant measurement of progress towards the objectives of the Decade;

( i) The utilization of resources released by disarmament for the purpose of economic and social development, in particular of the under-developed countries;

The ways in which the United Nations can stimulate and support realization of the objectives of the Decade through the combined efforts of national and international institutions, both public and private;

Further requests the Secretary-General to consult Member States, at their request, on the application of such measures in their respective development plans;

Invites the Economic and Social Council to accelerate its examination of, and decision on, principles of international economic co-operation directed towards the improvement of world economic relations and the stimulation of international co-operation;

Requests the Secretary-General to present his proposals for such a programme to the Economic and Social Council at its thirty-fourth session for its consideration and appropriate action;

I m:ites the Economic and Social Council to transmit the Secretary-General's recommendations, together with its views and its report on actions undertaken thereon, to States Members of the United Nations and members of the specialized agencies and to the General Assembly at its seventeenth session.

19 December 1961.

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Who adopted this document and its mandates?

What subjects does this mandate have?

What’s in this document?

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