Jun 9, 2026 · 42 min · 10 segments
In 1994, United Nations Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali proposed a radical, new vision to reform the global financial infrastructure. He called it An Agenda for Development. But his proposal…
Jasmin BaoumyHostHomi KharasGuest
Mark Malloch BrownHost
Carlos LopesGuest
Attiya WarisGuest
David Stephen
So right from the beginning, the international system had this split between the core UN and what's known as the Bretton Woods institutions, so the World Bank and the IMF.
Institutions like the World Bank and the IMF, they're called the international financial institutions, or IFIs, and they all have different purposes and different governing structures.
But back in the '90s, they had a shared philosophy about how economies should be managed.
You need to focus on one number, which is GDP, and get that to go up as quickly as possible.
You need to take down barriers to trade and to the flow of money, and you really shouldn't spend too much on government and on public services.
So it's the kind of classic balance the economy, balance your books before you spend money on people.
And unlike the UN's General Assembly, where it's one country, one vote, these institutions have a different governance structure.
So Boutros Boutros-Ghali was really trying to challenge that sense that these organizations knew what the global economy needed, knew what national economies needed, and to get a different vision of economic development out there, and by doing that, to wrest some control over the global economy away from the IFIs.
And so the Secretary-General spent more than a year drafting a more radical vision that he called an Agenda for Development.
Classic UN, the General Assembly says, "We're gonna set up a group to consider it," and it's called the Ad Hoc Open-Ended Working Group of the General Assembly on an Agenda for Development.
So right from the beginning, the international system had this split between the core UN and what's known as the Bretton Woods institutions, so the World Bank and the IMF.
Institutions like the World Bank and the IMF, they're called the international financial institutions, or IFIs, and they all have different purposes and different governing structures.
But back in the '90s, they had a shared philosophy about how economies should be managed.
You need to focus on one number, which is GDP, and get that to go up as quickly as possible.
You need to take down barriers to trade and to the flow of money, and you really shouldn't spend too much on government and on public services.
So it's the kind of classic balance the economy, balance your books before you spend money on people.
And unlike the UN's General Assembly, where it's one country, one vote, these institutions have a different governance structure.
So Boutros Boutros-Ghali was really trying to challenge that sense that these organizations knew what the global economy needed, knew what national economies needed, and to get a different vision of economic development out there, and by doing that, to wrest some control over the global economy away from the IFIs.
And so the Secretary-General spent more than a year drafting a more radical vision that he called an Agenda for Development.
Classic UN, the General Assembly says, "We're gonna set up a group to consider it," and it's called the Ad Hoc Open-Ended Working Group of the General Assembly on an Agenda for Development.
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