incentive to foster development lies on ensuring property rights. In the absence of this certainty, all the other elements of development end up being quite irrelevant for they are not enough.

The idea of development appeared after World War II. With rampant optimism, the creation of the United Nations and multilateral institutions such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund seemed to inaugurate a new age of prosperity. Half a century later, the scenario though not gloomy is certainly contrasting. Although reasons for huge optimism exist, especially due to the experience of many nations -especially in Southeastern Asia but also in other latitudes- which in effect managed to break the chains of a poor past, most of mankind are still immersed in an entourage of violence and desolation.

Throughout this half century, trends have ruled development guidelines but development has reached only quite a small part of the worldwide population. Multilateral institutions have studied it all: from infrastructure to institutions, the dynamics of poverty and malnutrition, governance structures and financing tools. However, most of the nations that have been object of those studies and target of development programs are just as poor. Once it was thought that multilateral credits would create development opportunities. Later, when the debt of those nations grew unbearable, debt pardon was proposed. Despite many programs and ideas have come and gone, development contues as the exception rather than the rule.

Deep down, the big mistake of development-oriented strategies lies on the fact that they have never tried to dig into the causes of success but tried to understand the causes of failure and poverty. One may well think that the essential part of development should be emulating successful countries and not those doomed to fail, or in other words, it would be fundamental to go deep into the causes of wealth and try to implement them.

However, what has become the norm is exactly the opposite. Development-oriented strategies tend to overlook the essence of success of certain nations and only repeat experiences which in general explain the parts but not the whole. It is clear that there are factors -such as infrastructure and education, financing and institutions- which play a key role in development. But the essence of development lies on much more fundamental things but also less spectacular such as property rights and investment collaterals, reliable rules of the game and the prevalence of institutions.

What joins successful countries in terms of development is not the existence of Herculean investment plans or the availability of funds and invetsments but the existence of sound guarantees that people's rights, above all property rights and the prevalence of the rules of the game are immovable. This is the essence of the American FTA: investment guarantees though exclusively for foreign investors. Without them, the FTA would be one more deal lacking total relevance.

As long as politicians and multilateral financial bureaucracies keep on ignoring the essence of human nature and its basic rights beginning with property rights, the conferences will remain as opportunities to talk and not advance in development.