World Food Problem
No excessive sacrifice is expected or needed from any one nation, and if each nation does the best it can, the burden of all will be lightened. Our common and immediate effect should be to neutralize the rise in import costs so that no developing country is starved of essential development inputs, or is obliged to add to its unbearably heavy debt burden.
The World Food Conference held in Rome last year was a welcome attempt to view the food problem in all its aspects — production, trade, inputs, long-term investment and security. Several initiatives have emerged from, the Conference. It should be our endeavour to follow these up with energy and speed, and implement the commitments undertaken in Rome. Without rapid and effective measures to increase food production in developing countries, the world food problem will continue to nullify a great deal of our developmental efforts in other sectors.
I shall now turn to one other issue which my Government deems of utmost importance and which we consider an essential part of the new international economic order. If, indeed, there is to be a diffusion of economic well-being through the entire world, there is need for the developing countries themselves to co-operate with each other, and to break away from the old colonial pattern of dealing with each other through a developed partner. I am not for one moment suggesting the exclusion of the developed world, but I am advocating a serious effort on the part of all developing countries to remove barriers of attitude and ignorance about each other so that they may participate in each other's development process, thereby helping each other to become economically stronger.
Among the developing countries we have today resources, expertise, know-how, skilled labour, etc., and it should not be an impossible task for them to share these to their mutual benefit. The first step in this direction was taken at a meeting sponsored by the non-aligned countries, held in Dakar, Senegal. Years of colonial history have connected developing countries, sometimes of the same region, through a "developed centre". This trend has to be reversed, so that the goals we set for ourselves can be reached, with the developed countries, if possible, but without them, if necessary.
The Foreign Ministers of non-aligned countries at Lima agreed to examine and implement comprehensive and specific measures of co-operation among developing countries in the fields of trade, finance and technology, among others. Even while the international community as a whole deliberates on globally agreed solutions, developing countries must accelerate their efforts at mutual assistance and co-operation. Within the existing reservoir and potential of natural resources, technology and human skills, there is a vast area of complementarity, and we would want the active assistance and support of the developed countries and international organisations in forging new links between the developing and developed countries, and the United Nations system.
