UNCTAD is celebrating this year the 20th anniversary of its foundation, but the atmosphere is not entirely congratulatory. In the anti-internationalist mood current in important sectors within the industrialised countries, notably in the United States and Britain, the fundamental ideas of the United Nations organisation as a whole are being questioned. The governments of these countries, furthermore, are strongly antiinterventionist in outlook; UNCTAD, as the UN agency mandated to negotiate and oversee changes in international economic arrangements, is, not surprisingly, a particular focus of criticism. The prolonged recession undergone by the OECD countries over the past five years has helped encourage nationalist economic tendencies and bolstered opposition to reforms of a redistributive character in the international economy.