United Nations Conference on Trade and Development

Simon Carl O'Meally

The United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) was formed in 1964 as a forum for intergovernmental deliberations relating to the integrated treatment of trade and development. UNCTAD is often thought of as a pressure group that exerts influence on the international trade and development policy process. There are a number of interrelated features of the post–World War II political and economic climate that contributed to its creation. There was an explosion of developing country membership in the UN system following the process of decolonization. The subsequent emergence of a third-world coalition is one of the most striking features of the period. These countries were unified by the shared belief that the liberal international trading regime was not furthering their development. The coalition was heavily influenced by the work of Raul Prebisch, an economist associated with dependency theory, who became the first Secretary-General of UNCTAD. He posited that the ...

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