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DEVELOPMENT: New Action Programme, and New Name for the Poorest

Jacques N. Couvas

ISTANBUL, May 13 2011 (IPS) - A new 10-year blueprint for assisting the poorest countries on the planet to join the league of the more fortunate ones was approved Friday at the closing of the Fourth U.N. Conference on the Least Developed Countries (LDC-IV) held May 9- 13 here.

The Istanbul Programme for Action, a 50-page plan negotiated for a week by heads of state and diplomats from both least developed and economically developed states, contemplates the reduction of LDCs by half by 2020 and proposes specific actions by both donors and recipients of aid to achieve this goal.

There are 48 least developed countries in the world, with a total population of 900 million. Among these, 33 are in Africa, 14 in the Pacific, and one in Latin America. Their poverty results from chronic structural problems in their economies, development capabilities and available human resources.

The notion of LDCs was established in 1971, when the international community determined that this group of countries was distinguished not only by widespread poverty, but also by the structural weakness of those countries’ economic, institutional and human resources – often compounded by geographical handicaps.

The group, composed of 25 countries at the time, has been described by the U.N. as “the poorest and weakest segment of the international community” whose economic and social development presents a major challenge both for them and for their development partners.

The first U.N. conference on the LDCs was convened in Paris in 1981 to respond to the special needs of the LDCs. The second conference was also held in Paris, in 1990. It was followed by a third conference in Brussels in 2001.

Meanwhile, poverty continued to spread to more countries than initially identified as LDCs. The number of LDCs has practically doubled to 48, triggering consternation and scepticism among western nations, which foot the largest part of the bill for these conferences, with the European Union being the most generous donor.

Negotiations this week were dominated by reluctance of developed countries to come forward with more financial aid, unless drastic measures were taken to improve public governance in LDCs and accountability for the funds supplied.

Asked by the press at the opening of the event on Monday about accountability for the funds provided, U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon was reassuring, although vague. “We realise the importance of the issue,” he affirmed. “We will establish an independent commission to come up with proposals.”

By the end of the week it seems that accountability had been debated around many negotiating tables here. There was less talk of philanthropy and more about creating transparent management policies with the involvement of the private sector toward increasing productive capacity in the LDCs.

The Istanbul Summit was not a negotiating scene for winners and losers, but a venue where “bridges were created among LDCs and between LDCs and developed countries, as well as with the civil society and the business community. Thirty-six heads of state and 90 ministers were involved in the talks,” said Lazarous Kapambwe, president of the U.N.’s Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC).

Economic development was apparently not the only objective sought by the parties. “There can be no peace as long as small islands of poverty will float,” Kapambwe stressed at the Summit’s closing meeting Friday.

A total of 8,900 official delegates and 1,100 business executives attended the Summit.

Chairman of the closing meeting, Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu, was also positive about the results obtained at the Conference. Reminding the delegates that Turkey has so far invested 2 billion dollars in helping LDCs move toward developing country status, he said that his country was committed to providing 200 million dollars annually, beginning in 2012. The aid should reach 10 billion by 2020.

Expressing his optimism about the progress to be achieved in the coming decade in fighting world poverty, Davutoglu threw in a new idea: changing the name of the group of countries to be assisted from Least Developed to Future Developed Countries. Genuine or not, the initiative will have to wait for the U.N. General Assembly to adopt it.