Amendments to the official UNCTAD XI

We, the member States of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, gathered at São Paulo, Brazil, between 13 and 18 June 2004, for the eleventh session of the Conference, agree on the following Declaration:

1. UNCTAD was created in 1964 as an expression of the belief that a cooperative effort of the international community was required to integrate developing countries successfully into the world economy. Since then, UNCTAD has made a substantial contribution to the efforts of developing countries to participate more fully and to adapt to changes in the world economy through the development of a number of instruments, agreements and programmes - to stabilize commodity prices, for example - aimed at achieving this objective. UNCTAD has also provided an invaluable forum for advancing the relationship between trade and development, both from a national and an international perspective, across the three pillars of its mandate. Reinforcing the traditional UNCTAD mandate is more crucial than ever.

2. The UN Conferences of the 1990s, (and outcomes such as the Beijing Platform for Action), the Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women, other international Conventions, the Millennium Declaration, the Monterrey Consensus, the Programme of Action for the LDCs, the Almaty Programme of Action, the Barbados Programme of Action, the Johannesburg Declaration on Sustainable Development and the Plan of Implementation agreed at the World Summit on Sustainable Development and the Declaration of Principles and the Plane of Action of the World Summit on the Information Society, as well as initiatives for UN reform, strengthen multilateralism and establish a roadmap to guide international actions in the process of mobilising resources for development and of providing an international environment supportive of development, although these have been criticised by some who see them as insufficient. We are committed to joining all our efforts and in creasing the resources from the developed countries in the achievement of the goals established in those texts in the agreed timeframes. The United Nations system should actively pursue agreed development goals between now and 2015, as identified in the Millennium Declaration, and a reinvigorated UNCTAD has an important role to play in efforts towards the accomplishment of these common objectives.

3. In spite of all the efforts at the national and international level to promote growth, development and intensifying equity at both these levels remain the central issues in the global agenda. The contrasts between developed and developing countries and within both kinds of societies that marked the world in the early 1960s have intensified. While globalisation has posed important challenges and opened up new opportunities for many countries, its consequences have been highly unequal between countries and within countries. Some have reaped the benefits from trade, investment and technology flows and seem to be winning the struggle for development and for poverty alleviation: sometimes by following independent policies.

4. Most developing countries, however, especially African countries and LDCs, have remained neglected and sometimes have suffered as a result of the globalisation process. They still face major challenges for the realisation of their economic potential and the incorporation of large masses of the unemployed, informal male and female workers and the working poor into the productive sectors. There is a need to rethink the linkage between international trade and poverty elimination. There is a need to address the instability in world commodity prices.

5. For all countries, it is important that, at the international level, efforts will be deployed and policies implemented in order to facilitate reforms and to remove external constraints to put the developing world on a firm and sustainable development path. We can rightly say that, 40 years after the foundation of UNCTAD, the relationship between trade and development, which is the cornerstone of its mandate, has become even more important to analyse critically and to act on.

6. We are committed to the struggle for the eradication of poverty and hunger. Policy instruments and measures, such as the Global Fund Against Hunger, at the national and international levels, should be adopted, in particular by practising policies in the areas of trade, investment and finance (including through new financial initiatives), to encourage the creation of opportunities for the poor women and men of the world to have access to decent, stable jobs and adequate negotiated wages. This is the sustainable road to democracy, reforms, stability and growth. The Millennium Development Goals are an important but insufficient milestone. Special attention should be paid to the implementation of the Beijing Platform for Action in order that gender power relations are rearranged, so that women are empowered to participate equally with men in sustainable development.

7. The plight of the least developed countries should receive the utmost attention from the international community. We are committed to generating and better utilizing additional international resources, market access and development assistance for the LDCs in order to enable them to establish, in the context of effective domestically-owned national policies, a solid political, social and economic base for their development processes.

8. Multilateral trade negotiations, under the Doha Work Programme, should be conducted with a view to addressing developmental concerns of countries, with a special focus on LDCs, in a manner that fully reflects the level of ambition agreed to at Doha. The Doha Work Programme should place development at the centre of the multilateral trade negotiations and then should reinforce the mandate of UNCTAD. UNCTAD can play a useful role in safeguarding the development dimensions of the Doha Work Programme and contributing to assessing and evaluating the balances and outcomes of negotiations and promoting mechanisms, including regulatory measures, to establish more balanced and equitable trade relations. We also positively consider the facilitation of accession of developing countries, especially LDC´s, to the WTO. UNCTAD should also assist developed countries in gender mainstreaming and engendering their national and regional economic and trade policies to ensure gender equity and women's empowerment.

9. We recognise that improved coherence between national and international policies and practices and between the international monetary, financial and trading systems and the Norms of the UN system is fundamental for democratic and participatory sound global economic governance. We are committed to reforming in a comprehensive manner the existing inadequacies and insufficiencies of those systems in order to enhance their capacities to better respond to the needs of development, especially in the case of LDCs. The institutional dimension in terms of improved global governance is central here. We should also continue working on the creation of positive and development-centred synergies amongst trade, finance and investment and on how to link these efforts to development and eliminating inequities at the national and international levels. As recommended by the World Commission on the Social Dimensions of Globalisation, an inter-agency Globalisation Forum should be established. UNCTAD should play a key role in this Forum. In particular, attention should be devoted to improving international non-speculative capital flows for development, through the provision of automatic, assured and predictable sources of development finance, as well as dealing with the volatility of international capital markets. Measures to ensure long-term debt eradication of developing countries and countries in transition should be implemented. As a first step in this direction, we commit to unconditional cancellation of LDC debt.

10. We should also focus on future challenge and opportunities. In addition to national resources, capital accumulation and availability of labour, new factors such as information, innovation, creativity and diversity constitute the dynamic forces of today's world economy. We are committed to bridging the digital divide and ensuring harmonious, fair, equitable and sustainable development for all women and men and to building an inclusive information society, which will require genuine equal partnership and cooperation among Governments and other stakeholders, i.e. the private sector, civil society and international organisations, in which rights and responsibilities of all parties are reciprocal.

11. A more positive integration of developing countries and those developing countries with economies in transition into the international economy and the multilateral trading system depends also on the adoption of internal policies to move up the ladder towards sectors that incorporate innovation and that expand more dynamically. To achieve these results, countries must have the policy space to pursue diverse policy options in order to arrive at the best possible balance between different approaches in their national development strategies.

12. The process of sustainable development requires increased and equitable participation of all social and political forces in the creation of consensus for the adoption of effective national policies, which, in turn, requires democratic policies and institutions. We acknowledge the importance of all stakeholders, i.e. governments, the private sector, civil society and international organisations and the contribution all can make, in every country, to good governance. While development is the primary responsibility of each country, domestic efforts should be facilitated and complemented by an enabling international environment. Development policies should take cognisance of market forces in the promotion of growth, through trade, investment and innovation. They should also acknowledge the central role of the State in conferring political and economic stability, developing the required regulatory frameworks, channelling the resources for infrastructure and social projects, promoting social inclusion and reducing inequalities. We are committed to supporting national efforts dedicated to institution building in developing countries and countries in transition.

13. Although still limited to a small number of countries, there are encouraging signs that a significant source of global growth is being generated in the South. This new development could contribute to creating to a new geography of world trade. We underscore the importance of initiatives to facilitate the emergence of new dynamic centres of growth in the South through additional steps for the integration of these emerging economies with other developing ones. This can be achieved, inter alia, by means of amore comprehensive Global System of Trade Preferences among Developing Countries, which should also address the problems of the LDCs and economies in transition.

14. Given the growing importance of regional and interregional initiatives, we encourage UNCTAD to further develop capabilities designed to assist countries to participate effectively in these initiatives, while ensuring functional and coherent linkages with the multilateral system.

15. The decisions we have adopted at this UNCTAD XI, in addition to the Bangkok Plan of Action form a solid basis and are essential instruments in our continued commitment to support UNCTAD in fulfilling and strengthening its mandate as the focal point internationally for the integrated treatment of trade and development, on the road to its Twelfth Session in 2008.