The 23nd International Congress of the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, 23 – 29 July, 1986 in Zeist, the Netherlands:

The Twenty-Third International Congress of WILPF reaffirms its commitment to working for a new international economic order based on meeting the needs of the people and not on profit and privilege.

Events of recent years have brought into sharp focus the dangerous consequences for peace and justice of the unbridled quest for profit. This quest has led, among other things, to:

• the misuse of official development assistance to create markets, dependency and to generate income for the donor country at the expense of the peoples in the recipient country;
• concentration of power and means in the hands of a few transnational and national corporations as well as individuals and groups motivated by selfish interests severely affecting the conditions of the small farmer and urban poor in all parts of the world;
• the debt crisis which has resulted in a growing net flow of capital from the developing world to large banks and governments in the industrialized creditor countries;
• high military budgets and profits for the military-industrial complex leaving less and less capital for civilian investment and creation of employment.

These developments are indicative of a global trend in which the division between rich and poor within and between countries is getting larger.

WILPF therefore commits itself to working for the implementation of the Declaration on the Establishment of a New International Economic Order, adopted by consensus at the Sixth Special Session of the United Nations General Assembly in 1974, which seeks to establish economic relations among States on a more just and equitable basis.

WILPF further commits itself to pressure governments to live up to their commitments — as stated in the Nairobi Forward-Looking Strategies — to identify and support “organizational and other means of enabling women to bring their interests and preference into the evaluation and choice of alternative development strategies…” which would meet the needs of the people in each country equally.