ABSTRACT
It is not without significance that we have assembled here today at this seat of a distinguished Swiss university at a Symposium, which is being held with support from a number of leading Swiss banks, to discuss the problem of foreign debt in the present and a New International Economic Order. For us, who in the International Law Association have been engaged in a study of the legal aspects of a New International Economic Order for the last eight years, it is particularly gratifying that this concern about the functioning - or rather the malfunctioning - of the international economic system which led us to embark on the study might be shared with members of the Swiss banking community. The need for a New International Economic Order - or at least for order where there is at present disorder - can thus no longer be dismissed as Third World rhetoric, or a contentious North-South issue. It must be seen as a matter of legitimate global concern. The debt crisis is an aspect of a larger global economic crisis, which can rightly be characterized, as was done by the second report of the Brandt Commission, The Common Crisis, one which vitally affects not only the developing countries of the South but, everyone in the North, the East, the South, and the West.
