The seeds of development aid.

Under a deceptively bland name -Expanded Programme of Technical Assistance (EPTA)-the United Nations started planting worldwide, in 1949, the seeds for an aggressive development aid-without-strings effort. The first decade of what was then called "technical assistance" to the developing world was difficult, exciting and successful-so successful that by 1959 calls for help from poor countries were racing ahead of available funding.

The General Assembly's answer was to set up the United Nations Special Fund. The new institution took off on I January 1959, with United States Marshall Plan veteran Paul Hoffman at the helm. While the EPTA continued to concentrate on sending experts to developing countries and training local people, the complementary Special Fund tackled large pre-investment projects over a much longer period and costing more money.

"Investment, public or private, will not venture into the unknown", Hoffman said. The task of the Special Fund was to make the unknown more known. It had to take risks that others would not take and execute extensive surveys and feasibility studies that would reassure investors and attract capital to developing countries.

During its first five years, the Special Fund sent more than 1,500 experts to the field, gave advanced training to 56,000 people under 124 projects, carried out 31 national and physical resource surveys, established two applied research institutes and completed two long-term training projects. And its feasibility studies generated some $800 million in follow-up investments.

Technical assistance involves

people, projects.

In Guatemala, it developed a 15year hydroelectric programme while paving the way, in Thailand, for a $22.5 million dam on the Nam Pong River. In Egypt, it financed soil surveys and irrigation and land reclamation studies which helped open to cultivation more than a million acres. In Nigeria, it was instrumental in establishing a national and four regional teachers' colleges.

In 1959, Governments promised the Special Fund $25.8 million. But before the end of that first year, 164 project requests had already been received, estimated to cost nearly $160 million. Strict priorities were set and 44 projects in 26 countries were chosen.

From the very beginning, the Special Fund forged close working relations with its executing agencies, particularly the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), the International Labour Organisation (ILO), and the World Meteoro- logical Organization (WMO). Even tighter were the links with EPTA, the older but smaller sister institution.

By 1964, the process of decolonization was in full swing. More and more Special Fund and EPTA specialists were filling gaps left by departing senior colonial officers. There was an explosive growth in the demand for development aid. Pressure mounted at the United Nations, and after much debate and speculation, the Organization ordered a study from Syracuse University in the United States: it confirmed that EPTA and the Special Fund should merge. The General Assembly approved the merger in 1965: the United Nations Develop- ment Programme (UNDP) was born. It started operating on I January 1966 under Administrator Paul Hoffman with EPTA director David Owen, Co-Administrator.

From its modest "technical aid" and "feasibility study" beginnings, UN development aid has become a multi-million-dollar global enterprise. With contributions promised for 1989 totalling $1.1 billion, a staff of 4,700 and a world-wide network of 112 field offices, UNDP works today in 152 countries and territories.

Among thousands of projects, it has helped set up the first medical training institution in the Cameroon and Sri Lanka's Urban De- velopment Authority-one of Asia's premier urban planning and development institutions. The Dominican Republic's sugar industry and the Senegal River Basin have been developed. Algeria's expertise in meteorology and statistics was expanded significantly with UNDP aid.

Today, as in the-pioneering times of the Special Fund and EPTA, United Nations development aid has no strings attached", other than its lifeline to the UN Charter's original commitment. There, in 1945, the peoples of the world first proclaimed their determination "to promote social progress and better standards of life in larger freedom" for everybody, everywhere.