ABSTRACT
This chapter explores a history of the UN development system which begins with a brief discussion of how the system grew out of the work of the League of Nations and the wartime United Nations. The UN Charter refers to development only once. During its existence, the League of Nations had experimented with giving people in colonies and in the less industrialized countries a stake in the world economic order. The continuing problem of providing humanitarian services to those displaced by war led to the creation of two other organizations, the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees (UNRWA). In 1949 the UN's program was given a new name, the Expanded Programme for Technical Assistance (EPTA), and a new system of central coordination. The logic that led the Human Development Office in New York to include democratization, gender inequality, and cultural rights as issues central to development.
