Fifty years ago today, Mexican president Luis Echeverría addressed the audience of the third session of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) in Santiago, Chile. There, he outlined his vision for a new economic relationship between rich and poor nations:

A just order and a stable world are not possible unless obligations and rights are created to protect weak states. Let us detach economic cooperation from the field of goodwill to crystallize it in the field of law. Let us transfer the consecrated principles of solidarity among men to the sphere of relations between countries.

Within a month, the conference had adopted Echeverría’s proposal to draft a Charter of Economic Rights and Duties of States, and on December 12, 1974, after two years of planning and deliberation, the UN General Assembly adopted the charter by a vote of 115 to 6. The United States and its allies opposed.