It seems that the time is coming to start the conceptual preparations for the Strategy for the Third UN Development Decade, and to complete the discussions under way concerning restructuring of the UN development system. This is no small agenda. But further efforts could now build on the results of the conferences held this year. The immediate task ahead seems to include a detailed and systematic analysis of the declarations, recommendations and resolutions of the major UN conferences which have taken place since 1972 with a view to identifying and consolidating their common elements, assessing their compatibility or contradictions at the level of both the principles and the measures envisaged to give effect to them and to expose the gaps. Thus the Strategy for the Third Development Decade could build on the emerging international doctrine which, we believe, is that of another development seen as the national content of the new international order.
While negotiations on the most immediate international problems proceed at the intergovernmental level on the basis of the renewed determination of the non-aligned countries to rely on their collective strength and the commitment of a few coward-looking industrialised countries, this issue of Development Dialogue argues that work should start at the conceptual level to prepare a consolidated Strategy. As experience shows, the role of concerned citizens and committed non-governmental organisations can be of some importance in such an endeavour. It is our hope that more of them will now join those who have been the pioneers in this endeavour so that the Third Development Decade Strategy should really be the Charter of another development and that, through citizen involvement, the new international order may be given its full human dimension.