Among the many missions of the United Nations, peace, stability and development are at the top of the agenda. Fair trade and commerce among nations is one of the keys to success in all of these areas. For this reason, soon after the formation of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank under the auspices of the UN at Bretton Woods in 1944, another agency was founded in 1948 to deal with matters of international trade. It is known as GATT, which stands for General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade. Its role was to help bring stability and equity to world trade.
While GATT was successful for the first twenty or so years of its existence, it has lost favor in recent years and been more or less replaced by UNCTAD, the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, founded in 1964. More recently, in 1995, a new agency, the World Trade Organization (WTO) was created to replace some of the specific roles of GATT in stabilizing commodity prices and the like throughout the world. Between the actions of the WTO and the UNCTAD, we now have mechanisms in place that can help regulate and stimulate greater trade among nations.
What is required are stable prices, low tariffs and access to world markets for the goods and the services of developing countries. The so called G-7 nations, or richest economies of the world, are trying to cooperate with the WTO and UNCTAD to help all the nations benefit from greater economic growth and prosperity as a result of participation in a global economy.
The United Nations has played a key role and continues to play a key role in fostering fair trade among nations. The agencies of UNCTAD, as part of the United Nations, stand ready to assist all countries to join in and participate in world trade at prices and under regulated conditions equitable to all. UNCTAD and the WTO are the flip side of development assistance to developing countries via the banking efforts of the World Bank and the IMF. After all, it is trade that ultimately leads to prosperity for many countries. Together, all of these international agencies, working closely with the UN, help to bring prosperity to the people of the world.
