The UNCTAD Secretariat after Two Decades of Groups

Abstract

This chapter isolates the impact of the group system of negotiations on the UNCTAD secretariat’s activities, on its ability to act and to produce results. We discuss only the international secretariat of UNCTAD, not its member governments. Observers have argued, although not effectively, that the failure of multilateral negotiations, and UNCTAD more generally, can be directly attributed to the lack of any desire by elites in these governments to effect change-those from the North because they wish to prevent change in general and protect their own standing in the international hierarchy, and those from the South whose privileged status within their own societies would be challenged by any significant success in constructing a NIEO.¹