By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Nov 27 2001 (IPS)

U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan is creating a new high-ranking post whose functions include overseeing the plight of the 49 least developed countries (LDCs), the poorest of the world’s poor.

The proposal to create the new post of U.N. High Representative was formally submitted Monday for approval by the 189-member General Assembly. This is considered a formality since the U.N. Conference on LDCs, held in Brussels last May, recommended creating the post.

Besides LDCs, the High Representative will also oversee the world’s land-locked developing countries and small-island developing states. There is some overlap among the three categories of country.

U.N. spokesman Fred Eckhard told reporters Monday that the High Representative would carry the rank of Under-Secretary-General, a standing below that of Deputy Secretary-General in the U.N. hierarchy.

The Office of the High Representative will be located at U.N. headquarters in New York.

Currently, all matters relating to LDCs come under the purview of the U.N. Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) in Geneva.

The first High Representative is very likely to be from one of the LDCs although though several Western countries have staked claims on the job, which comes with an annual salary of more than 151,000 dollars.

Annan, in a report to the General Assembly, said the High Representative would be responsible only for coordination and reporting as well as advocacy and fundraising to implement the LDC action plan adopted at the Brussels conference. All analytical and technical cooperation functions would continue to be carried out by other organisations in the U.N. system, including UNCTAD, in accordance with their mandates.

“The international community has a responsibility to adopt the necessary support measures to reverse the marginalisation of the least developed, landlocked and small-island developing states and to promote their expeditious integration into the world economy,” Annan said.

In a report released last April, UNCTAD said the world’s richest nations continue to renege on their pledges to provide increased development aid and debt relief to LDCs.

In its “Trade and Development Report 2001”, UNCTAD said official development assistance (ODA) to LDCs amounted to only 0.05 percent of gross national product (GNP) from 1997 through 1999 – far short of the target ratio of 0.15 percent set at the Second UN Conference on LDCs in Paris in 1990.

“It is also only half of what it was at the beginning of the 1990s, in spite of the commitments by donors to increase aid to LDCs,” UNCTAD said.

Among members of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) who pledged to increase aid, only five met the 0.15 percent target in 1999: Denmark (0.32 percent), Luxembourgh (0.16 percent), the Netherlands (0.16 percent), Norway (0.30 percent) and Sweden (0.17 percent).

The programme of action adopted in Brussels called for “a reversal of the declining trends in ODA flows and early realisation of the internationally agreed ODA targets for LDCs no later than 2005, and the improving of aid effectiveness to LDCs through, inter alia, untying of aid.”

The conference also called for a resolution of the debt crisis “by providing broad, deep and immediate debt relief to all LDCs, including through total debt cancellation.”

Additionally, it called for provision of “secure and predictable market access through bound, duty-free and quota-free access for all our products within a specified time-frame, which would enable us to effectively participate in the global economy.”

The Brussels conference was the third in a series. The first two installments of talks were held in Paris, in 1981 and 1990.

In its introduction, the Brussels Programme of Action said that “owing to declining ODA, heavy debt burdens and collapsing commodity markets, the economic development of LDCs did not turn for the better, and the implementation of the Programme of Action for the 1990s was far from satisfactory, with many goals and targets unrealised.”

According to UNCTAD, LDCs are the major “pockets of poverty” in the world economy. As domestic savings in these countries are insufficient to attain a faster pace of growth, they continue to depend on external finance, and especially on official capital flows, for the financing of their development.

Since 1971, when the General Assembly originally designated 24 nations as LDCs, the numbers have continued to increase, reaching 49 last April.

Of the 49 LDCs, 34 are from Africa. These countries range from Angola and Mozambique to Uganda and Zambia. The remaining 15 LDCs include nine from Asia, five from the Pacific and one from the Caribbean.

So far, only one country, Botswana, has graduated from the ranks of LDCs to developing countries.

The thresholds for inclusion in the list of LDCs include: a population of less than 75 million; per capita gross domestic product (GDP) of 799 dollars or less and an Augmented Physical Quality of Life Index (combining health, nutrition and education) of 47 or less. A country has to meet all these criteria to be designated an LDC.

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