United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD)
The United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) is an intergovernmental organization established in 1964 as part of the United Nations framework, with its headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland. Its primary mission is to support developing countries in integrating into international trade markets, thereby enhancing their economies. UNCTAD serves as a platform for dialogue among member states to address economic challenges faced by developing nations, including issues related to debt, trade efficiency, and sustainable development.
The organization convenes every four years for ministerial conferences to assess progress and set future agendas, focusing on critical themes like clean energy and climate change. Over the decades, UNCTAD has contributed to significant initiatives, such as the Generalized System of Preferences, which facilitates exports from developing to developed countries. By the 2010s, it had expanded its membership to represent nearly all nations, playing a pivotal role in helping millions escape poverty and promoting economic growth aligned with sustainable practices. UNCTAD’s efforts continue to evolve, addressing the complexities of global trade and its impact on both the environment and economic inequality.
United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD)
The United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) is an intergovernmental organization of the United Nations (UN) that works to integrate developing countries into international trade markets. It was founded in 1964 as a venue for representatives from all world nations to discuss how they could collaborate to bolster one another's economies. Throughout the late twentieth century and into the twenty-first century, UNCTAD has helped developing countries diversify their economies, avoid accumulating debt, foster entrepreneurship, use natural resources wisely, and increase the sale and movement of products across national borders.
UNCTAD updates its delegates on developing agendas at ministerial conferences held in different world cities every four years. The first such conference took place in 1964 in Geneva, Switzerland, where UNCTAD is headquartered. Successive conferences in the twenty-first century focused heavily on promoting sustainable development and clean energy sources that would reduce countries' contributions to climate change.
Background
The United Nations Conference on Trade and Development was founded in 1964 as a body of the larger United Nations. The UN is an international alliance of countries created in 1945 to promote collective security and foster social and economic development around the world in the aftermath of World War II. Representatives from fifty nations met in San Francisco, California, that year to sign the United Nations Charter, which committed UN member states to help maintain international peace, build intergovernmental relations, nurture social and economic progress for all people, and promote human rights everywhere. The UN expanded over the ensuing decades until it had acquired 193 member states by the 2010s. This accounted for almost every country in the world.
By the early 1960s, UN delegates, particularly those from developing countries, had begun to worry that their nations were falling behind the rapid economic growth of larger, wealthier countries. UN representatives from these developing countries therefore requested that a special UN conference be called for discussing the continuing economic plight of their nations and possible international responses to alleviate it.
In 1964, the UN General Assembly, one of the principal bodies of the United Nations, created the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, also referred to as UNCTAD, to help developing countries reinforce their economies. The conference would be a permanent body of the UN, headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland, but with offices in New York City and Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. The organization is part of the UN Secretariat, the UN's administrative branch, although it reports to the General Assembly and the UN Economic and Social Council. Despite this hierarchy of authority, UNCTAD is an autonomous body that features its own members and leaders and receives its own working budget.
Overview
The members of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development realized the enormity of their objectives; they were tasked with identifying economic areas in which developing countries needed assistance and then devising methods of helping those countries integrate themselves more fully into international trade to build their economies. UNCTAD declared that it would convene every four years at ministerial conferences to keep itself on track to meet its ambitious goals. Smaller intergovernmental bodies within UNCTAD could meet between these conferences for additional discussions.
UNCTAD held its first ministerial conference in Geneva from March to June of 1964. The new organization acquired international respect over the next decade and a half for its statistics-backed research and policy recommendations on matters of economic development, as well as for its facilitation of dialogue among representatives of member states.
UNCTAD supported its research and discussion in the 1960s and 1970s with material results, such as the Generalized System of Preferences of 1968. This agreement removed restrictions on economically developed countries purchasing the exports of developing countries, thereby allowing poorer nations to generate income more easily. Various international commodity agreements, meanwhile, stabilized the prices of developing countries' exports, which helped these nations' economic markets from becoming volatile.
The 1980s saw several developing countries around the world, but especially in Latin America, fall into deep debt. Their sensitive economies struggled to recover even with the help of financial restructuring plans from the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. In response to these debt crises, UNCTAD expanded its activities to include increasing trade efficiency—easing customs protocols for goods being shipped across national boundaries and facilitating multiple modes of transportation of these goods—and helping heavily indebted developing countries to reschedule their repayment dates with their creditors.
Throughout the 1990s, UNCTAD developed market analyses explaining to developing countries the dangers of financial crises to economic development. The organization also worked to integrate poorer nations into an increasingly globalized world—one in which countries depend heavily on international cooperation for economic prosperity. This involved helping developing countries understand international investments and multilateral trade deals.
Clean energy and climate change became important issues in international trade in the early to mid-2000s. Around this time, UNCTAD started helping developing countries draft trade plans that would expand their economies while simultaneously reducing their contributions to climate change. These plans applied chiefly to countries that relied on environmentally hazardous materials such as biofuels for economic growth.
By the 2010s, UNCTAD had helped millions of people around the world escape poverty. Its membership had also expanded to comprise representatives from 194 countries, almost every nation in the world. Clean energy and climate change remained vital issues in the conference's discussions in this period. In 2015, the UN General Assembly created the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, a document outlining how developing countries could grow their economies while reducing their harmful carbon emissions. UNCTAD planned to set goals complying with these stipulations at its fourteenth ministerial conference in Nairobi, Kenya, in the summer of 2016.
That conference focused on economic inequality, trade, investments, and technology. It also addressed various issues related directly to Kenya and Africa as a whole, including intellectual property rights and Kenya's growing entrepreneurial innovation. Other results of UNCTAD's fourteenth ministerial conference included the creation of a trust fund for trade and productive capacity, a new electronic trading program, and the commitments of more than ninety countries to subsidize their respective fishing industries.
Bibliography
"About UNCTAD." United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, unctad.org/en/Pages/aboutus.aspx. Accessed 15 Nov. 2016.
"History." United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, unctad.org/en/Pages/About%20UNCTAD/A-Brief-History-of-UNCTAD.aspx. Accessed 15 Nov. 2016.
James, Deborah. "Over Intransigence of Rich Countries, Developing Countries Win Mandate on Trade for Development." World Post, 22 July 2016, www.huffingtonpost.com/deborah-james/over-intransigence-of-ric‗b‗11146218.html. Accessed 15 Nov. 2016.
"Negotiators at UNCTAD14 Reach Consensus, Strengthen UNCTAD Work Programme." United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, 22 July 2016, unctad.org/en/pages/newsdetails.aspx?OriginalVersionID=1301. Accessed 15 Nov. 2016.
Nzwili, Fredrick. "UNCTAD Conference Opens with High-Level Calls for Action on Trade and Development." Intellectual Property Watch, 18 July 2016, www.ip-watch.org/2016/07/18/unctad-conference-opens-with-high-level-calls-for-action-on-trade-and-development/. Accessed 15 Nov. 2016.
Onyango, Conrad, and James Momanyi. "What Unctad 14 Meeting Portends for Host Kenya." Mediamax, 18 July 2016, www.mediamaxnetwork.co.ke/news/236369/unctad-14-meeting-portends-hosts-kenya/. Accessed 15 Nov. 2016.
"President Kenyatta Calls for Greater Global Partnership with Africa." Coastweek, 19 July 2016, www.coastweek.com/3929-President-Uhuru-Kenyatta-calls-for-greater-global-partnership-with-Africa.htm. Accessed 15 Nov. 2016.
"Short History of the UN." United Nations Association of Australia, www.unaa.org.au/learn/about-the-un/history-of-the-un/. Accessed 15 Nov. 2016.
"UNCTAD Conferences." United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, unctad.org/en/Pages/Meetings/UNCTAD-Conferences.aspx. Accessed 15 Nov. 2016.
"United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD)." Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation, www.italiarappginevra.esteri.it/rappginevra/en/italia‗e‗onu/omc/conferenza-nu-per-il-commercio.html. Accessed 15 Nov. 2016.
"United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD)." UN-Energy, www.un-energy.org/members/unctad. Accessed 15 Nov. 2016.