It was in May, 1974, at the Sixth Special Session of the United Nations, that a majority of the nations of the world, overriding Western objections, passed a resolution that called for the establishment of a New International Economic Order. This resolution put on a new plane the issues raised in 1964 at the first session of the U.N. Conference on Trade and Development when Raul Prebisch, the UNCTAD secretary general, had called in his opening speech for a new international order.

Since 1974 a number of conferences and discussions have been held about how to implement the new order. In 1975, in the wake of a memorable speech read by then U.N. Ambassador Daniel Patrick Moynihan that reflected a more conciliatory posture by Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, the U.N. Seventh Special Session passed a revised declaration.