THE THIRD WORLD AND THE BASIC HUMAN NEEDS STRATEGY

The subject of economic development has received increasing attention since World War II, but for various reasons the conventional strategy of development has not resulted in a satisfactory standard of living for the majority of Third World states, and the gap between the rich and poor nations has in most cases been growing wider. There were numerous attempts by the Third World to place the issue of economic development of the global agenda, but very little was accomplished. In the 1970s the underdeveloped states increasingly called into question the reasoning, viability and fairness of accepted economic development strategies and made escalating demands for a radical restructuring of the entire international economic order. In 1974 the UN General Assembly held its first special session devoted to economic problems, and out of this came the Declaration and Action Programme on the Establishment of a New International Economic Order (NIEO). The NIEO demands do not call for minor adjustments in the international economic order; rather, they demand a complete overhaul and restructuring of the system in order to place an emphasis on development and to ensure that immediate steps will be taken to achieve more equitable economic relations between the have and the have-not nations. Recent trends in thinking in the developed states have begun to concentrate on the so-called basic human needs strategy as a possible solution to the problems of the poorest of the poor, i.e., those people within all developing countries who live in abject, chronic poverty and who have thus far been largely unaffected by development strategies. Basic needs are considered the minimum standard of living which a society should set for the poorest groups of its people. The basic human needs strategy would attempt a direct attack on poverty--as opposed to the traditional reliance on trickle-down. It would assign first priority to meeting certain minimum human requirements for jobs, food, shelter, and clothing, as well as to providing access to basic health, education and other services to all people. Basic needs would then consist of certain minimum requirements of a family for private consumption--adequate food, shelter, and clothing, as well as certain household equipment and furniture; and essential services provided by and for the community at large, such as safe drinking water, sanitation, public transport and health, educational and cultural facilities. While the views of the Third World toward the NIEO are well known, no one has yet attempted to systematically ascertain what the political leadership in the developing nations thinks of the basic need strategy. The purpose of this research is to document and measure the attitudes held by the political leadership in Third World states toward the basic needs strategy. The findings reveal that while the Third World states accept many of the individual aspects of the strategy, they have a fundamental suspicion and hostility toward the strategy as a whole. Southern leaders reject the strategy as a First World attempt to maintain the present international hierarchy of states, sidestep more fundamental reform and as a ruse for continued intervention in their economies. This seems to at least partially indicate that the Third World elites are more concerned with inequalities among states than within states. It also may well mean that the basic needs strategy is destined to fail