International Development Perspectives for the 90s (TheDistinguishedl Lecture)

Chairman, Professor Naqvi, Professor Klein, Dr Kemal,Distinguished Participants, First let me express my deep gratitude tothe Pakistan Society of Development Economists for having invited me tobe present on this occasion to take part in this Seventh Annual GeneralMeeting. I feel privileged indeed to be here. It is not the firstoccasion I ha~e had to visit Islamabad; but on this occasion, more thanon previous ones, I have had the opportunity – thanks to this meeting -of making contact with so many economists and research workers inPakistan. I have been given a subject which seems to be a little bitremoved from the issues that have been discussed, and will be discussed,over the period of this session. I have been asked to talk aboutinternational development perspectives for the 90s. No doubt the reasonwhich prompted Professor Naqvi to suggest this title, and to invite mein fact, was that I had the honour of being Chairman of the UN GeneralAssembly’s exercise on the preparation of a Strategy for the 90s, thesocalled Fourth United Nations Development Decade. The General Assemblyestablished, as was its practice on previous occasions, what is called a”Committee of the Whole” charged with the function of formulating andnegotiating the text of what might be a Strategy for the 90s. Thisexercise was launched in the middle of 1989 and was concluded – I amhappy to be able to say – on the 21st of December 1990, just a few weeksago, when the Strategy was adopted by consensus by the Plenary of theGeneral Assembly. The Strategy designates the Fourth Development Decade,the decade of the 90s, as starting on the 1st January of 1991 and endingon the 31st of December of the year 2000. So, today we are in the ninthday of the development decade of the United Nations.