ABSTRACT
As the 1974 General Assembly vote indicates, the NIEO was something broader than a wish list of the world’s underprivileged. Many similar themes were taken up by the Reports of the Independent Commission on International Development Issues (Brandt Reports) of the late 1970s and early 1980s, a fairly conservative think-tank set up at the suggestion of the American President of the World Bank, Robert McNamara. The Brandt Reports upheld the virtues of liberalizing trade but advocated greater international cooperation to cushion LDCs from the insecurities of free trade and help them to help themselves. Specifically on the question of hunger the Brandt reports advocated greater food aid, the establishment of a global grain reserve, less agricultural protectionism (global trade liberalization had concentrated on industrial protectionism) and, more radically, land reform in LDCs to empower the poor (ICIDI 1980: 90-104).
