Cancun to new delhi

If the East and West are never to meet, the twain of North and South apparently have a long distance separating them too. This view has been expressed at various international conferences whose delegates have looked at issues hindering economic cooperation between the rich developed countries in the northern hemisphere and the poor developing countries in the southern hemisphere.

Some of the causes for the current stalemate in the United Nations, which called or global negotiations originated in 981 from the North South conflict about the New International Economic Order (NIEO) and institutional issues concerning changes in structural inequalities.

To break the impasse, Robert McNamara, the then President of the World Bank asked Willy Brandt to organise a study of flaws in the world's Post-war economic institutions. In early 1980, the Brandt Commission issued its "Programme for survival", calling for a massive new flow of credit aid to the South, reform of the International Monetary Fund and a North-South summit meeting designed to provide a new impetus for direct negotiations. The Cancun Summit sought ways to launch these global negatiations.

The New Delhi Consultations were in a way the follow-up of the Cancun Summit and as such must be considered a further step in strengthening multinational cooperations and should be remembered as a landmark in providing the much needed South South cooperation and development.