Despite the widespread agreement on the lesson of the world wars and on its applicability to relations between rich and poor countries, when the post-war UN started, few imagined that its Secretariat – the central bureau with headquarters in New York – would become so focused on development. The most powerful governments saw the institutions in New York as concerned, primarily, with matters of international high politics, in contrast to the World Bank (offcially named the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development, IBRD) and the UN Specialized Agencies, where global inequalities might well be addressed. Yet, while it would take more than fifteen years for the Bank to put development at the centre of its portfolio, the UN Secretariat immediately started to focus on the issue, bringing the Specialized Agencies along. That is how UNDP became the centre of the UN's development network. This chapter is about the construction of that network from the end of the Second World War until the late 1960s.

The network grew through the efforts of the UN representatives from Asia and Latin America who worked alongside the economic staff of the Secretariat itself. Men and women in both groups had been schooled through participation in the Good Neighbor policy, the Middle East Supply Centre (MESC), UNRAA (UN Relief and Rehabilitation Administration), and, in a few cases, the League of Nations.