Going Beyond The New International Economic Order
Much has been made of the New International Economic Order (NIEO) since its formal announcement in the UN General Assembly on May Day nearly fifty years ago. As the most sustained attempt to reconfigure international relations since the establishment of the United Nations and Bretton Woods systems after the Second World War, the project served as a lodestone for a remarkably wide range of debates about the law, politics, and political economy of decolonization during the 1970s and into the 1980s. At its core lay a series of demands for greater aid, debt-relief and technology transfer, as well as a desire to facilitate rapid industrialization, secure strong rights to nationalize assets of foreign investors, normalize preferential treatment in international trade for developing countries, institute mechanisms to regulate the activities of multinational corporations, and provide restitution for resources depleted through colonialism and occupation.