The NIEO: Then and Now, A Conversation with Vijay Prashad

On 1 May 1974, the New International Economic Order (NIEO), expressed as a Declaration and Programme of Action, was passed without a vote at the Sixth Special Session of the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA). On 12 December 1974, the UNGA adopted the Charter on the Economic Rights and Duties of States (CERDS). The New International Economic Order, in the terms of the Declaration, was to be “based on equity, sovereign equality, interdependence, common interest, and cooperation among all states, irrespective of their economic and social systems which shall correct inequalities and redress existing injustices, make it possible to eliminate the widening gap between developed and developing countries, and ensure steadily accelerating economic and social development and peace and justice for present and future generations”.

The NIEO represented the apex of the advocacy efforts of the countries of the Global South, many newly independent following the defeat of colonialism, united through intense discussions within the Non-Aligned Movement, the G77, and UNCTAD, and seeking to challenge economic neo-colonial relations. Combined with significant leverage resulting from OPEC actions in relation to oil price and supply, the NIEO and CERDS articulated a holistic set of demands relating to trade, commodities, debt relief, technology transfer, sovereignty over natural resources and institutional reform.

What can, perhaps, be seen as a defeat of NIEO and CERDS by what has been termed “The Real New International Economic Order” of roll out neoliberalism and brutal structural adjustment in the 1980s, meant that for several decades there was little attention to them, either by activists or researchers. Summary judgements of the NIEO as, either, far too radical a challenge to Northern hegemony to have stood any real chance of success or, paradoxically, not much more than a recalibration of a liberal order have, more recently, given way to a more nuanced approach as part of a renewed interest in “the long 1970s” as a conjuncture of tangible global counter-hegemonic possibilities. Radical critics of global capitalism are increasingly referring to the need for a “New New International Economic Order” as an important component of a more just and safer world.

Vijay Prashad is an Indian historian and journalist. He is the author of forty books, including Washington Bullets, Red Star Over the Third World, The Darker Nations: A People’s History of the Third World, The Poorer Nations: A Possible History of the Global South, The Withdrawal: Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan, and the Fragility of U.S. Power, written with Noam Chomsky. He is the Executive Director of Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research, the chief correspondent for Globetrotter and the chief editor of LeftWord Books (New Delhi).