Perhaps the most significant...
Perhaps the most significant development that occurred since the World
Employment Conference was the increasing stress laid on the need for parallel
changes, in favour of poorer people but also poorer countries, and the relation
between the two in the world economic order.
This was apparent in the conclusions adopted by the conference of ministers of labour of non-aligned and other
developing countries in Tunis, Tunisia in April 1978. The conference, while stating
as a first objective in a programme of co-operation among developing countries
the need 'to accelerate the formulation and implementation of policies for
full, productive and remunerative employment in the interest of better satisfaction
of national basic needs', emphasized that employment and basic-needs
policies, among various objectives of development, would be facilitated by the
fundamental changes that were urgently needed in the international economic
order to create favourable conditions for rapid economic growth of developing
nations.
In 1977, the secretary-general of UNCTAD stressed the link between
international and domestic reforms when he said:
A new international economic order can have little meaning if it is not matched
by, and does not promote, a new order within the societies of developing
countries through new strategies, new styles of development that pay
attention to social problems and equitable distribution of the benefits of
growth, and which make a frontal attack on mass poverty and unemployment.
(UNCTAD, 1977). A similar preoccupation was reflected in the development charter adopted by
the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU) in May 1978. The
charter endorsed the need for a new economic order in the interests of the people
of both developing and developed countries in order, in particular, to check those
trends that had led to a continuing impoverishment of developing countries. It
also stressed that the creation of 'fair shares between nations' was 'the achievement
of fair shares within nations, so that the mass of the people benefited from
economic and social development' (ICFTU, 1978).
Nevertheless, the growing opposition to the basic-needs approach was testimony
to the fact that even with sound economic arguments, and the best of
intentions, the views and aspirations of developing countries needed to be fully
taking into consideration when launching any new initiative. The basic needs
concept continues today under a number of names and guises, including 'participation
strategies', 'employment-oriented strategies' and a 'people-oriented strategy
for development'. Its legacy can be found in the 'human development' concept
postulated in the UNDP annual Human Development Reports that began in 1990
and have continued to this day.
Its legacy can also be seen in the resurgence of the fight against poverty, without the economic framework, however, that the
basic needs concept provided, and in the continuing work on income distribution
and the quest for food security. And it was not until the 1990s that it was fully
recognized that:
Today, understanding the labour market is as important for addressing the
food security problems of the rural and urban poor in developing countries as
understanding the food market. It is now widely accepted that food security is
at least as much a matter of poverty - limited access to food - as it is a matter
of supply - limited availability of food. (Dreze and Sen, 1989; von Braun, 1995)
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