/IPS DEVELOPMENT BULLETIN/ UNITED NATIONS: World’s Most Neglected Nations Plead for Help

By Thalif Deen Reprint | | Print |

Thalif Deen

UNITED NATIONS, Oct 12 1996 (IPS) - The world’s poorest nations say it is a fantasy that Third World economies are on the upswing.

“The idea that developing countries are doing better is a myth,” said Roble Olhaye of Djibouti, one of Africa’s poorest states.

“In truth, three-fifths of the world live in poverty, millions are forced to migrate each year and 15 percent suffer from chronic hunger and malnutrition,” Olhaye told the General Assembly Thursday.

Much of that stagnation is in Africa, he said, where 50 percent of people live in abject poverty.

As its plenary session winds down, the General Assembly sat down this week to hear from the poorest of the poor, including Sierra Leone, Maldives, Mali, Nepal, Djibouti, Cambodia, Chad, Lesotho, and Bangladesh.

Traditionally, representatives of the world’s poorer nations are slotted to address a near-empty General Assembly hall after the leaders of the world body’s major players have flown home.

Speaker after speaker, mostly from the world’s least developed countries (LDCs), took the podium this week to plead for international assistance to save their countries from economic disaster.

“The unfavourable economic situation, if allowed to drag on, can be calamitous for countries with severe resource constraints and fragile infrastructures,” warned Maldivian Foreign Minister Fathulla Jameel said.

As one of the 48 LDCs, the Maldives is fighting a relentless battle for economic survival, he added.

Like Olhaye, Jameel disputed assertions that the economies of developing nations are on the mend, claims made by some officials made at the World Bank and International Monetary Fund annual meetings in Washington earlier this month.

“While globalisation and liberalisation of the world economy had given the opportunity for some developing countries to assume a more prominent status in the world economy, the LDCs continue to be marginalised,” he said.

The standard of living in LDCs has in effect declined over the years, and the poverty level has intensified in many of these countries due to economic stagnation, Jameel said.

A similar view was expressed early this year by Gus Speth, administrator of the U.N. Development Programme (UNDP), who challenged the growing Western perception that rising foreign investments mitigate the need for development aid by the world’s poorer nations.

Speth said it is a “myth” that privatisation, a free market, globalisation, and foreign direct investment obviate the need for development aid.

He also pointed out that private sector flows are dramatically skewed in favour of a small number of countries, and development cooperation and assistance are absolutely essential to the successful development in most countries today.

“It is one of the great myths of our moment that the developing world is doing much, much better, when in fact recent World Bank data shows that over 60 percent of the countries where the United Nations and others have development assistance operations, have in fact experienced declines in real per capita incomes over the decade ending in 1994,” Speth said.

Addressing the Assembly Monday, Nepal’s Foreign Minister Prakash Chandra Lohani said many LDC economies are “deteriorating” and these countries are being marginalised due to the unfavourable conditions prevailing in the global market.

He called upon the World Trade Organisation to ensure that the products of the LDCs would be given free and unrestricted access to world markets.

Al Haj Ahmad Tejan Kabbah, president of Sierra Leone, said that the greatest threat to international peace and security today lies in poverty and social deprivation.

The majority of African countries, including Sierra Leone, continue to face a myriad of economic and structural challenges, he said.

Africa accounts for 33 of the world’s 48 LDCs, and it has the lowest average per capita income in the developing world.

“My appeal to the international community is not to abandon Africa,” he added. “Even though we may be on our knees in anguish, I firmly believe that there is hope for Africa, and its people have the ability and capacity to overcome natural and self- inflicted constraints, and achieve political stability as well as economic prosperity.”

A country is designated as a LDC if its population is less than 75 million and its annual per capita income is less than 699 dollars. These countries also must score 47 or less (out of a possible 100) on the U.N. “augmented physical quality of life index,” which measures health, education level, and other social indicators, and 22 or less on the U.N. index that measures the diversity of a nation’s economic base.

With 10 percent of the global population — more than 555 million people — the 48 LDCs earn only 0.1 percent of the world’s income. And for more than two decades, their average per capita income has declined, not grown, standing today at about 350 dollars.