A boatload of people, some of them likely in need of international protection, are rescued in the Mediterranean Sea by the Italian Navy. The UN at 70 must “be fit for the purpose … otherwise it would be letting down people in need and compromising its legitimacy”. Photo credit: UNHCR/A. D’Amato

By Julia Rainer
VIENNA, May 14 2015 (IPS)

Events are being organised around the world to celebrate the 70^th anniversary of the founding of the United Nations, but a recent seminar held in the Austrian capital was not held to applaud the body’s past contributions.

Rather, the 45^th International Peace Institute (IPI) Seminar, held from May 6 to 7,  saw representatives from the political, NGO, media and military sectors come together to discuss the organisation’s capability to deal with the crises and challenges of the future.

There was consensus among participants that the difficulties in the realms of international peace and security are very different today from those that dominated the international community at the time of the foundation of the United Nations in 1945.The global scenario has seen the entry of non-state “actors” such as criminals and terrorists representing a real threat to stability of the international system that the United Nations was set up to safeguard

Not only has the number of member states quadrupled since then, the global scenario has seen the entry of non-state “actors” such as criminals and terrorists representing a real threat to stability of the international system that the United Nations was set up to safeguard.

At the same time, the planet is afflicted by other threats that do not stop at national borders, such as climate change, pandemics and wars, which have global dimensions and are extremely difficult to contain in our globalised world.

As Martin Nesirky, Director of the United Nations Information Service (UNIS) in Vienna, put it: “The UN grew from the ashes of World War Two and there has been no global conflict since then, but neither has there been global peace.”

This year, debate about reform of the United Nations comes at a time that represents a possibility for change and action on two major fronts.

The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), although they have not yet been fully realised, are being pushed forward in the spirit of adapting a new development agenda in the form of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

Furthermore, there are hopes that a global agreement on climate change will finally be reached in Paris in December at the U.N. Climate Change Conference.

According to U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon, “this is not just another year, this is the chance to change the course of history.”

However, the not all participants at the IPI seminar were convinced that the United Nations could fulfil its destined role without adapting to the fast changing circumstances that shape the world community.

A hotly debated issue was the long demanded reform of the U.N. Security Council and the power of veto held by its five permanent members – China, United States, France, United Kingdom and Russian Federation – which were said not to represent the world community.

Some participants noted that the current geopolitical situation is marked by a breakdown of power relations which have complicated the work of the United Nations enormously.

Richard Gowan, Research Director at New York University’s Center on International Cooperation (CIC) and a Senior Policy Fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR), expressed his concern about the escalation of power struggles in recent years.

“Tensions between Russia and the West, and to some extent China and the West, have severely impaired the UN’s ability to deal with the Syrian crisis and stopped the UN having a serious role in the Ukrainian crisis altogether.”

He called for resolution of ongoing geopolitical competition to enable the United Nations to regain the strength to deal with pressing crises” and warned that “if the Security Council breaks down, the rest of the UN will ultimately break down.”

Meanwhile, as the world faces the most severe refugee crisis since the Second World War, it was stressed that the proper functionality of international institutions – and of the United Nations in particular – is of the highest importance. More than 53 million people worldwide have been forcibly displaced today, a figure equal to the entire population of South Korea.

The last tragic incidents of hundreds of refugees drowning in the Mediterranean have shown that the international community is failing to ensure the security of those seeking a safe future in Europe. “Desperation has no measure and no cost,” said Louise Aubin, Deputy Director of the Department of International Protection at the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).

During her work for the U.N. refugee agency, Aubin came face to face with the situation of the world’s largest refugee camp in Dadaab, Kenya, situated some 100 kilometres from the Kenya-Somalia border, which houses an estimated 500,000 Somali refugees, some of whom are third generation born in the camp.

“It’s impossible for me to explain as a parent that I would actually accept that situation,” Aubin said.” There is no way I would not do anything in my power to try to send my children somewhere else. And that somewhere else is across the Mediterranean.”

In the light of the recent tragedies suffered by refugees, participants said that it is necessary to create safe access to asylum in order for refugees to enjoy the rights that are theirs under international law.

It is clear that this responsibility does not lie only with the United Nations, they agreed, pointing to the role of the European Union in dealing with refugee flows.

However, both the United Nations and the European Union are only as strong as their member states allow them to be.

If the UN at 70 turns out not be fit for the purpose, it has to take immediate measures to become so – otherwise it would be letting down people in need and compromising its legitimacy.

Edited by Phil Harris    

In the face of the growing number of crises taking place at the same time worldwide, humanitarian aid organisations – many of which have already reached their financial and logistic limits – are in desperate need of global coordination.

“We feel like we’ve hit the wall,” is how U.N. Assistant Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Deputy Emergency Relief Coordinator Kyung-Wha Kang has described the dramatic situation.

This situation was the subject of the 3rd Vienna Humanitarian Congress held last week in the Austrian capital under the slogan ‘Humanitarian Aid Under Fire’.Humanitarian organisations are rethinking their strategies, especially in Syria and Iraq, and trying to include all stakeholders in a dialogue to obtain access to the people in need – Kyung-Wha Kang, U.N. Assistant Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs

Opening the congress, Annelies Vilim, Director of Global Responsibility, the Austrian platform for development and humanitarian aid, told participants: “Humanitarian aid is not an act of charity. It is a human right.“

In a world in which trouble spots and wars are on the rise, the question of how aid operations are carried out most successfully to meet the necessities of recipients is becoming increasingly relevant and, noted Vilim, at this moment millions of people are in desperate need of humanitarian aid.

Among others, the goal of the congress was to make humanitarian work more visible in these difficult times and to commit decision makers at all levels to value the importance of humanitarian assistance and cooperation.

Unfortunately, sufficient funding and clear structures are lacking and already inadequate contributions are under constant threats of budget cuts.

Host country Austria itself, for example, is no exception – an OECD study has shown that state spending in 2013 was only 1.3 euro per capita, 20 times less than the amount a country of similar wealth such as Sweden was paying.

“The world is facing drastic transformations and politics are not keeping up,” complained Yves Daccord, Director General of the International Committee of the Red Cross.

To address those challenges, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has launched an initiative, managed by the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), to hold the first World Humanitarian Summit in May 2016 in Istanbul, Turkey.

It will bring together governments, humanitarian organisations, people affected by humanitarian crises and new partners, including from the private sector, to draw up solutions and set an agenda for the future of humanitarian action.

Logo of the 3rd Vienna Humanitarian Congress. In the face of the growing number of crises taking place at the same time worldwide, humanitarian aid organisations are in desperate need of global coordination.

One issue that is certain to be on the agenda is the safety of aid workers. With 1.5 billion people living in conflict-affected areas, “we will unfortunately have to face more stories in the media about aid workers killed in the line of duty, of atrocities committed against innocent civilians,” said Kang.

In 2013 alone, 474 humanitarian workers were attacked, injured or abducted and 155 lost their lives.

Due to the difficult circumstances, Kang explained that humanitarian organisations are rethinking their strategies, especially in Syria and Iraq, and trying to include all stakeholders in a dialogue to obtain access to the people in need.

Controversially, this also means that for the sake of civilians, parties that are considered “terroristic” should also be involved in the process. Humanitarian actors legitimate this by upholding the principles of humanity, neutrality, impartiality and non-discrimination in regard to beneficiaries, and independence.

It is estimated that today over 30 armed conflicts are taking place worldwide, 16 of which are considered as wars with more than 1,000 victims each year. According to the United Nations, Syria, Iraq, South Sudan and the Central African Republic are ranked at the highest level of emergency.

The Central African Republic occupied some of the limelight at the Vienna congress in a panel discussion on humanitarian space and life and work in war. Two of the country’s religious leaders – Archbishop Dieudonne Nzapalainga and Imam Layama Oumar Kobine – spoke out about their fight for peace and disarmament.

Both argued that the civil war in their country was not a religious war. “Neither the Bible nor the Koran say that people should kill,” said Nzapalainga, explaining that five days after the beginning of the crisis in December 2012, religious leaders had come together to work collectively on an interreligious platform.

The problem, said the religious leaders, is that 75 percent of the country’s population is illiterate and therefore open to exploitation and recruitment by militant groups. This affects young people in particular and, because the state and government have ceased to exist, it is humanitarian workers who often fulfil the duties of the authorities.

Karoline Kleijer, Emergency Coordinator of Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), described her experience of how life has become incredibly difficult for humanitarian workers in the country.

She described how shortly after arriving in the country in April 2014, armed forces entered a meeting of MSF staff and local community leaders that she was attending, opened fire and killed 20 people, including three MSF workers.

The incident had a huge impact on the organisation, she said, but despite all the difficulties “it did not stop us from working in the country. Since then, we have performed more than 10,000 operations and treated more than 300,000 people for malaria. We have delivered more than 15,000 babies and we have been continuing activities up to today.”

Although the principle that civilians have to be protected in armed conflicts and war and have a right to humanitarian assistance is embedded in the Geneva Convention, humanitarian workers have to take great risks to obtain access to the population in distress and, contrary to their neutrality, are becoming targets themselves.

“We hope that humanitarian workers will continue to take those risks, because we continue to take those risks in order to help the population in need,” said Nzapalainga.

Edited by Phil Harris    

“Never was there a greater need than now for all the religions to combine, to pull their wisdom and to give the benefit of that combined, huge repository of wisdom to international law and to the world.”

The words are those of Christopher Weeramantry, former judge at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) and its vice-president from 1997 to 2000, who was addressing a session on faiths united against nuclear weapons at the civil society forum organised by the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) on Dec. 6 and 7 in the Austrian capital.

Former ICJ judge Christopher Weeramantry. Credit: Henning Blatt, Wikimedia

Weeramantry strongly criticised the argument of those who claim that nuclear weapons have saved the world from another world war in the last 50 years.

He pointed to the ever-present danger represented by these weapons and said that on many occasions it had been luck that had prevented catastrophic nuclear accidents or the breaking out of a devastating nuclear war.

Noting that nuclear weapons “offend every single principle of religion,” Weeramantry was joined on the panel by a number of different religious leaders, including Mustafa Ceric, Grand Mufti of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Ela Gandhi, granddaughter of Mahatma Gandhi and peace activist, as well as Akemi Bailey-Haynie, national women’s leader of the Buddhist organisation Soka Gakkai International-USA.

Although there often seems to be a gap between the positions of different faith communities concerning different issues, all panellists were very clear in pushing the moral imperative and declaring the similar values that are inherent to all religions.“The atom bomb mentality is immoral, unethical, addictive and only evil can come from it” – Mahatma Gandhi

According to Mustafa Ceric, it “is not the question of whether you believe, it is the question of whether we are going to wait and see the destruction of our planet.”

Ceric also stressed that the goals and values of humanity are defined by common moral and ethical standards and that the role of religious communities today is greater than ever. Faced with fear and mistrust in society, he said, they also have the responsibility to care for peace and security in the world.

Akemi Bailey-Haynie continued with an emotional statement from first-hand experience – her own mother was a survivor of the Hiroshima bombing in 1945.

“When nuclear weapons are considered a deterrent or viable option in warfare, it seems from a mind-set that fundamentally denies that all people possess infinite potential. No one has the right to take away a precious life of another human being.”

Akemi Bailey-Haynie, national women’s leader of the Buddhist organisation Soka Gakkai International-USA. Credit: SGI

For Bailey-Haynie, nuclear weapons serve no purpose other than mass destruction. They have devastating effects on human beings and the environment, and the possibility of nuclear accidents or potential terrorism cannot be ruled out, she said, adding that dialogue between people of different or opposing opinions is the beginning to achieve change regarding this issue.

“As a second generation survivor, I deeply feel the sorrow, as well as the outrage, born of not being able to yet live in a time when the most inhumane of weapons, nuclear weapons, have been banned,“ she concluded.

Desmond Tutu, Nobel Peace Laureate and former Anglican Bishop, sent a video message to participants to express his deep solidarity and support for ICAN’s civil society forum initiative.

He argued that the best way to honour the victims of the incidents in Hiroshima and Nagasaki was to negotiate a total ban on nuclear weapons to ensure that nothing comparable could ever happen again.

Two of the session’s speakers, Ela Gandhi and Mustafa Ceric, also attended the Dec. 8-9 Vienna Conference on the Humanitarian Impact of Nuclear Weapons.

There, Ela Gandhi delivered a speech in the spirit of her grandfather who, she said, would have joined the movement to abolish nuclear weapons if still alive.

As Gandhi had dedicated his life to teaching humanity that there is a non-violent way of dealing with conflict, he even condemned nuclear weapons himself in 1946 when he said: “The atom bomb mentality is immoral, unethical, addictive and only evil can come from it.”

Pointing out that the mere existence of nuclear weapons leads to similar armament of rival countries, Ela Gandhi warned that these nuclear arsenals could destroy a chance for future generations to survive and have a prosperous life.

The Conference on the Humanitarian Impact of Nuclear Weapons was the scene of intense and often emotional discussions among official representatives from over 160 countries, victims and civil society participants. Notably, both the United States and the United Kingdom were officially represented for the first time at a conference where their nuclear arsenals were subject to debate and criticism.

Religion played an important role at the conference, where many lobbying groups had religious backgrounds, and the opening ceremony was addressed by Pope Francis.

“I am convinced that the desire for peace and fraternity, planted deep in the human heart, will bear fruit in concrete ways to ensure that nuclear weapons are banned once and for all, to the benefit of our common home,” aid Pope Francis, expressing his hope that “a world without nuclear weapons is truly possibly.”

In a statement on behalf of faith communities to the final session, Kimiaki Kawai, Program Director for Peace Affairs at Soka Gakkai International (SGI), said: “The elimination of nuclear weapons is not only a moral imperative; it is the ultimate measure of our worth as a species, as human beings.”

He said that “acceptance of the continued existence of nuclear weapons stifles our capacity to think more broadly and more compassionately about who we are as human beings, and what our potential is. Humanity must find alternative ways of dealing with conflict.”

(Edited by Phil Harris)

Mushroom cloud over Bikini Atoll in the Marshall Islands from Castle Bravo, the largest nuclear test ever conducted by the United States. Credit: United States Department of Energy [Public domain] via Wikimedia Commons

By Julia Rainer
VIENNA, Dec 9 2014 (IPS)

Ahead of the Dec. 8-9 Vienna Conference on the Humanitarian Impact of Nuclear Weapons, activists from all over the world came together in the Austrian capital to participate in a civil society forum organised by the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) on Dec. 6 and 7.

One pressing issue discussed was the Marshall Islands’ lawsuit against the United States and eight other nuclear-weapon nations that was filed at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in April 2014, denouncing the over 60 nuclear tests that were conducted on the small island state’s territory between 1946 and 1958.“The Marshall Islands is a small, gutsy country. It is not a country that will be bullied, nor is it one that will give up. It knows what is at stake with nuclear weapons and is fighting in the courtroom for humanity’s survival” – David Krieger, President of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation (NAPF)

The location was chosen not only because it was an isolated part of the world but also because at the time it was also a Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands governed by the United States. Self-government was achieved in 1979, and full sovereignty in 1986.

The people of the Marshall Islands were neither informed nor asked for their consent and for a long period did not realise the harm that the testing would bring to the local communities.

The consequences were severe, ranging from displacement of people to islands that were strongly radiated and cannot be resettled for thousands of years, besides birth abnormalities and cancer. The states responsible denied the harm of the practice and refuse to provide for adequate amount of health care.

Castle Bravo was the code name given to the first United States‘ test of a nuclear bomb in 1954 and was 1000 times more powerful than the bomb dropped on Hiroshima in 1945.

Addressing the ICAN forum, Marshall Islands Foreign Minister Tony de Brum explained that his country had decided to approach the ICJ to take a stand for a world free of nuclear weapons.

De Brum said that the Marshall Islands was not seeking compensation, because the United States had already provided millions of dollars to the islands, but wants to hold states accountable for their actions in violating the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and international customary law.

The NPT, which entered into force in 1970, commits nuclear-weapon states to nuclear disarmament and the peaceful use of nuclear power. The nine countries currently holding nuclear arsenals are the United States, United Kingdom, France, Russia, China, India, Pakistan, North Korea and Israel.

Tony de Brum, Foreign Minister of the Marshall Islands, who talked about “stopping the madness and banning nuclear weapons once and for all”, with Daniela Varano, ICAN Campaign Communications Coordinator. Credit: ICAN

Although a certain degree of disarmament has been taken place since the end of the Cold War, these nine nations together still possess some 17,000 nuclear weapons and globally spend 100 billion dollars a year on nuclear forces.

The Marshall Islands case, which has received worldwide attention and support from many different organisations, is often referred to as “David vs. Goliath”. One eminent supporter is the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation (NAPF), whose president, David Krieger, said: “The Marshall Islands is a small, gutsy country. It is not a country that will be bullied, nor is it one that will give up.”

“It knows what is at stake with nuclear weapons,” he continued, “and is fighting in the courtroom for humanity’s survival. The people of the Marshall Islands deserve our support and appreciation for taking this fight into the U.S. Federal Court and to the International Court of Justice, the highest court in the world.”

Another strong supporter of the case is Soka Gakkai International (SGI), a Buddhist organisation that advocates for peace, culture and education and has a network of 12 million people all over the world. The youth movement of SGI even launched a “Nuclear Zero” petition and obtained five million signatures throughout Japan in its demand for a world free of nuclear weapons.

The campaign was encouraged by the upcoming 70^th anniversary of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 2015 as well as the holding of the 2015 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) Review Conference.

Addressing the ICAN, de Brum urged participants to support the cause of the Marshall Islands. “For a long time,” he said, “the Marshallese people did not have a voice strong enough or loud enough for the world to hear what happened to them and they desperately don’t want it to happen to anyone else.”

He went on to say that when the opportunity arose to file a lawsuit in order to stop “the madness of nuclear weapons”, the Marshall Islands decided to take that step, declaring in its lawsuit: “If not us, who? If not now, when?”.

De Brum recognised that many had discouraged his country from taking that step because it would look ridiculous or did not make sense for a nation of 70.000 people to take on the most powerful nations in the world on such a highly debated issue.

However, he said, “there is not a single citizen on the Marshall Islands that has not had an encounter with one or another effect of the testing period … because we have experienced directly the effects of nuclear weapons we felt that we had the mandate to do what we have done.”

The Vienna Conference on the Humanitarian Impact of Nuclear Weapons is the third in a series of such conferences – the first was held in Oslo, Norway, in March 2013 and the second in Nayarit, Mexico, in February 2014.

(Edited by Phil Harris)

With annual economic growth rates of over 10 percent and attractive investment conditions due to low infrastructural and labour costs, Ethiopia is eagerly trying to rise from the status of low-income to middle-income country in the next 10 years.

Ethiopia, with some 94 million inhabitants, is the second most populous country in Africa after Nigeria, but it remains a predominantly rural country. Only 17.5 percent of the population lives in urban areas, mainly Addis Ababa.

It is also one of the continent’s fastest growing economies. Between 2015 and 2018 growth is expected to average 7.3 percent, according to a recent study by the United Nations Industrial Development Organisation (UNIDO).

While economic growth since 2006/2007 doubled per capita income to 550 dollars in 2012/13, and the percentage of people living below the national poverty line dropped from 38.9 in 2004 to 29.6 in 2011, government sources admit that eradication of poverty remains a compelling issue.“There is not a single country in the world which has reached a high state of economic and social development without having developed an advanced industrialised sector” – UNIDO Director General Li Yong

The official target of rising to a middle-income country is considered to be realistic, but an East Asian diplomat accredited to the African Union in Addis Ababa says there is reason to be sceptical, partly because although the amount of foreign direct investment (FDI) rose from 0.5 percent in 2008 to 2 percent in 2013, investors continue to face trade constraints.

According to UNIDO, these are mainly related to border-logistics. Djibouti, the main import-export seaport used by Ethiopia, is situated 781 km from Addis Ababa, which makes the cost of land transportation a critical factor.

It is against this backdrop that UNIDO has chosen Ethiopia, along with Senegal, as a pilot country for its ambitious inclusive and sustainable industrial development (ISID) programme, which aims to achieve industrialisation in developing countries in order to eradicate poverty and create prosperity.

According to UNIDO Director General Li Yong, “there is not a single country in the world which has reached a high state of economic and social development without having developed an advanced industrialised sector”.

What distinguishes the ISID programme is that “current modes of industrialisation are neither fully inclusive nor properly sustainable”, he added. UNIDO is therefore not merely promoting industrialisation but trying to approach the needs and challenges of the globalised world that demand future-oriented concepts.

Promoting the sustainability that should be inherent to industrialisation, UNIDO says that the ISID programme takes into account environmental factors together with its partner countries and organisations.

It also fosters an industrialisation that is inclusive in sharing the benefits of the generated prosperity for all parties involved, thereby promoting social equality within populations as well as an equal distribution between men and women to ensure that nobody is excluded from the benefits of growth.

To show how these objectives can be met and to promote ISID, UNIDO organised the Second Forum on ISID from Nov. 4 to 5 in Vienna. In an opening statement, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said: “We have a vision of a just world where resources are optimised for the good of people. Inclusive and sustainable industrial development can drive success.”

The Secretary-General, who is a strong advocate of the sustainable development agenda, also said that in order to achieve this objective, “industrial development must abandon old models that pollute. Instead, we need sustainable approaches that help communities preserve their resources.”

Prime Minister Hailemariam Desalegn of Ethiopia and Prime Minister Mahammed Dionne of Senegal – representing the two pilot countries chosen for ISID – commended UNIDO for implementing a partnership programme, and Ethiopia’s State Minister of Industry, Mebrahtu Meles, emphasised that building industrial zones will accelerate industrialisation, as has been done by Asian countries such as China.

Forum participants expressed optimism about Ethiopia achieving economic growth through inclusive and industrial sustainable development provided that leadership and vision focused on the country’s comparative advantages while improving infrastructure.

They said that regional integration could be key for the development of the country, and called for further exploration of UNIDO’s role as a catalyst of transformational change.

In particular additional efforts were required to enhance the productivity in existing light industries such as agro-food processing, textiles and garments, leather and leather products. There was also a need to diversify by launching new industries such as heavy metal and chemicals and building up high-tech industries like packing, biotechnology, electronics, information and communications.

The ambassadors of China, Japan and Italy to Ethiopia – Xie Xiaoyan, Kazuhiro Suzuki and Giuseppe Mistretta respectively – as well as business stakeholders and development banks assured their continued support in helping Ethiopia take the path towards inclusive and sustainable industrial development, mainly through UNIDO.

(Edited by Phil Harris)

Gyan Chandra Acharya, Under-Secretary-General and High Representative for the Least Developed Countries, Landlocked Developing Countries and Small Island Developing States (UN-OHRLLS), called for actions “that match the magnitude of the challenges of being landlocked”. Credit: UN Photo/Loey Felipe

By Julia Rainer
VIENNA, Nov 4 2014 (IPS)

Some 440 million people are living in 32 countries that are among the world’s poorest, most of them least developed, and geographically isolated from world markets not only because they have very few commodities to export, but also because they have no direct territorial access to the sea.

These landlocked developing countries (LLDCs) – 16 of which are located in Africa, 10 in Asia, four in Europe and two in Latin America – are drawing the focus of the United Nations at a conference in Vienna, the capital of Austria, which is also landlocked but does not suffer the disadvantages of LLDCs because of its membership in the 28-nation bloc of European countries.“The LLDCs can count on the United Nations to transform their geographical disadvantages into platforms for great innovation and progress.” -- Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon

The gathering in Vienna from Nov. 3 to 5 is the Second U.N. Conference on LLDCs. The first conference was held in Almaty, Kazakhstan, in 2003, which adopted the Almaty Programme of Action.

The Vienna conference is set to approve an action plan that would stress the need to provide adequate aid to the least developed countries in pursuing their goals for greater economic development to transition from being landlocked to what Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon termed “land-linked”.

“We need to forge an even more ambitious, comprehensive and results-oriented plan,” he added. Only through comprehensive improvements in trade would such nations be best prepared to tackle the post-2015 agenda, Ban told some 1,000 delegates.

Echoing the expectations of several heads of state and government in the opening session, Ban said: “This conference is also a critical part of the U.N.’s broader campaign for a more sustainable future. We want to turn landlocked countries into land-linked countries – integrated with the global economy in a way that connects both markets and people.

“The United Nations will continue to help landlocked developing countries to achieve a life of dignity for all,” he added. “The LLDCs can count on the United Nations to transform their geographical disadvantages into platforms for great innovation and progress.”

U.N. General Assembly President Sam Kutesa, a Ugandan national, said while “notable progress” had been made in several key areas outlined in the Almaty Programme of Action, deep-rooted and multifaceted structural challenges still remain.

“Export volumes, compared to imports, are still low, and are predominantly raw materials and commodity based. Critical physical infrastructure, such as roads, railways and energy, is either lacking or inadequate. Energy, a basic requirement for industrialisation and production, including the facilitation of ICT-based infrastructure, remains inadequate and expensive,” Kutesa added.

He referred to the secretary-general’s report that provides a sobering assessment of the task at hand.

It points out: “In 2012, the trade volume of ‘LLDCs’ was 61 percent that of coastal countries… the World Bank estimated that the basic import and export costs of ‘LLDCs’ were nearly twice those of their transit neighbours. LLDCs spent, on average, $3,204 to export a standardized container of cargo, whereas transit countries spent $1,268. Furthermore, while it cost LLDCs $3,884 to import a container of merchandise, their coastal neighbours incurred a cost of just $1,434 for the same.”

“With such statistics,” the General Assembly president added, “it may be an understatement to say that LLDCs are swimming against the tide. And while LLDCs have the primary responsibility for their own development, even with their best efforts, they cannot meet their development objectives on their own.”

LLDCs needed sustained and unwavering cooperation from transit countries; financial and technical support from bilateral and multilateral partners; and firm commitments from the international community, he added.

Engagement with the private sector was also essential, including through foreign direct investment and public-private partnerships.

He urged the new Programme of Action to be adopted in Vienna to support LLDCs to enhance their competitiveness, stimulate productive capacities, diversify exports, strengthen their resilience to external and internal shocks, and most importantly, ensure a better future for their citizens.

In his remarks to the conference, Gyan Chandra Acharya, the U.N. High Representative for the Least Developed Countries, Landlocked Developing Countries and Small Island Developing States, called for actions “that match the magnitude of the challenges of being landlocked”.

Urging greater synergy between the LLDC development agenda and the ongoing discussion around the next generation of development goals, Acharya said: “We have all agreed that the post-2015 development agenda would be transformative, inclusive and should ensure a life of dignity for all. LLDCs issues therefore rightly deserve due consideration in the formulation of the next global agenda.”

Edited by Kitty Stapp