PREPARATORY COMMITTEE FOR 2001 CONFERENCE ON LEAST DEVELOPED COUNTRIES OPENS SESSION

Press Release
DEV/2254

PREPARATORY COMMITTEE FOR 2001 CONFERENCE ON LEAST DEVELOPED COUNTRIES OPENS SESSION

Overcoming a 20-year-old credibility problem over commitments to the world’s poorest nations was the central challenge facing next year's Third United Nations Conference on Least Developed Countries, Rubens Ricupero, the Secretary-General of United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), said this morning as the Intergovernmental Preparatory Committee for the Conference convened its first meeting.

Mr. Ricupero, who is also the Secretary-General of the Conference, to be held in Brussels in May 2001, said the widening of income inequality between countries, the growing incidence of poverty and the threat of depopulation in poorer countries resulting from the HIV/AIDS pandemic were raising questions as to just how serious the international community was about its commitments. What was needed was a drastic new approach to implementation of an action-oriented agenda and the political will to carry it out.

[Those commitments were made at the First and Second Least Developed Country Conferences, held in Paris in 1981 and 1990, respectively.]

The Intergovernmental Preparatory Committee is expected to consider the substantive preparations for the Conference on the basis of country-level programmes of action, the reports of expert-level preparatory meetings, and the reports of the inter-agency consultations. It will also consider reports of the meetings of the consultative forums organized as part of the preparations for the Conference. The preparatory processes for the Conference are embodied in General Assembly resolutions 52/187 and 53/182.

At present, there are 48 least developed countries (LDCs), which are said to be ill-equipped to develop their domestic economies and to insure an adequate standard of living for their populations. There are 33 African LDCs, nine Asian, one Caribbean, and five in the Pacific region.

The Preparatory Committee elected 10 members of its bureau, which is headed by Jacques Scavee (Belgium). The following eight Vice-Chairmen were also elected: Aho Glele Edouard (Benin), Bjorn Skogmo (Norway), Pierre Lelong (Haiti), Sandor Mozes (Hungary), Yuji Kumamaru (Japan), Alounkeo Kittikhoun (Lao People’s Democratic Republic), Subhas Chandra Mungra (Suriname), and Richard T. Dogani (United Republic of Tanzania) who will also act as the Rapporteur.

Preparatory Committee - 1a - Press Release DEV/2254 1st Meeting (AM) 24 July 2000

In other action, the Preparatory Committee adopted its agenda and organization of work as orally amended.

Speaking after his election as Chairman, Mr. Scavee said he anticipated the scepticism that might greet a third LDC conference. However, the meeting today had been preceded by much work on the international and country levels, providing solid ground on which to build. The participatory work on the country level was particularly appreciated. In addition, during the past decade, some countries had made underlying improvements in governance and other areas. A number of developed countries had met or exceeded official development assistance (ODA) targets. There had also been progress on the issues of debt.

The representative of Nigeria, speaking on behalf of the “Group of 77” developing countries and China, called for a new Programme of Action for the LDCs for the first decade of the new century, taking into account some of the changes of the past decade, such as globalization, rapid advances in science and technology, and the greater articulation of social, human rights, and environmental objectives. Negative developments in some of the LDCs also needed to be taken into account, including civil strife, natural disasters, and disease.

Anwarul Karim Chowdhury (Bangladesh), Coordinator for LDCs, said efforts were not likely to succeed without strong international support measures. He said attention was required in the following priority areas: reorientation of aid programmes; decisive reduction of the debt burden; encouraging foreign direct investment in LDCs; market access; emphasizing capacity-building; and eradication of poverty. The high indebtedness and deteriorating capacity of LDCs to service debts underlined the need for comprehensive debt relief that was much broader than any of the schemes currently under way.

The representative of France, speaking on behalf of the European Union and associated States, said every effort should be made to ensure that the Conference -- which the Union would be hosting -- resulted in a concise and operational document. Interactive discussions and round tables planned for the Conference should provide a central place for LDCs in the evaluation of past programmes of action and future ones. The best possible conditions must be established for the participation of civil society and the private sector.

The Preparatory Committee will meet again at 3 p.m. today to hear an introductory statement by the Executive Secretary of the Conference and presentation of reports.

Preparatory Committee - 3 - Press Release DEV/2254 1st Meeting (AM) 24 July 2000

Preparatory Committee Work Programme

The Intergovernmental Preparatory Committee for the Third United Nations Conference on the Least Developed Countries met this morning at the start of its first session, which is scheduled to conclude on Friday, 28 July.

It will elect officers and adopt its agenda and organization of work for the session.

During its five-day session, the Preparatory Committee will review the substantive preparations being made for the Conference to be held in Brussels in May next year.

It will also assess progress in the implementation, at the country level, of the Programme of Action during the 1990s adopted at the Second United Nations Conference on the Least Developed Countries, held in Paris in 1990. (For details about the session, see Press Release DEV/2253 of 21 July).

Statements

RUBENS RICUPERO, Secretary-General of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) and Secretary-General for the Third United Nations Conference on the Least Developed Countries, said the central question that must be addressed was the 20 year-old credibility problem regarding commitments to reverse the increasing marginalization of least developed countries (LDCs) and to put them on a sustainable path. [The first United Nations Conference on the Least Developed Countries took place in Paris in September 1981].

He said the widening of income inequality between countries, the growing incidence of poverty and the threat of depopulation in poorer countries resulting from the HIV/AIDS pandemic and from emigration were raising questions as to just how serious the international community was about its commitments. The least developed countries were legitimately asking themselves why they should put their faith in a third conference and yet another Global Programme of Action after two previous conferences in 1981 and 1990. "They may be tempted to say 'déjà vu'", he added.

The greatest challenge for the international community this time around was to deal with the credibility gap and with growing frustration on the part of the world's poorest countries. Those countries might justifiably ask: “Are we going to adopt new targets with new time frames, but without being given the means to act on them?” The challenge, however, must also be taken up by the LDCs themselves. Indeed, he said the success of international support measures would depend on their having a genuine sense of national ownership and responsibility. At the same time, their domestic policies and conditions must reflect their determination to bring about change, he added.

Many LDCs had implemented far-reaching policy reforms in the last decade, thus, creating an improved domestic context to promote accelerated development. Sustained growth of 7 to 8 per cent would be required if they were to achieve meaningful poverty reduction. But their macroeconomic and sectoral policies would have to pay more attention to structural and institutional constraints. Incentive schemes appropriate for well-functioning markets needed also to be developed. That, in turn, required effective management by the State, and for that to happen, strong and efficient institutional and regulatory arrangements were essential.

Once again, all key actors in the development process had to play their part. The challenge facing the Third Conference, to be held in Brussels in May 2001, went beyond the task of producing another sweeping manifesto. Drastic new approaches were needed: a bold but, at the same time, pragmatic vision to pursue the implementation of commitments; partnership based on a set of concrete, action- oriented or implementable commitments; reduction in the structural handicaps to improvements in the economy; reduction of economic vulnerability of LDCs with a view to seizing new economic opportunities, and facilitation of the involvement of all relevant actors -- government, private sector and civil society involved in the determination and fulfilment of those objectives.

Another challenge, he said, was agreement on a mechanism to oversee and monitor the realization of the commitments in the defined critical areas. Mechanisms for monitoring the implementation of agreed programmes would be one major achievement, providing an innovative response both to the credibility problem and to the LDCs' frustration about the limited impact of development cooperation.

The last challenge was to ensure effective country-level implementation of the Conference outcomes. The weak link between global commitments on international support measures, on the one hand, and specific, well-focused and prioritized country development objectives, on the other, was a factor in the relative failure of the two previous Programmes of Action.

He said there was a resurgence of international interest in ending the scourge of poverty once and for all. There was also growing recognition that the LDCs, as the most impoverished segment of the international community, should be at the centre of the renewed concern. North and South had a role to play at the Conference in Brussels, he said, adding that all should make sure that the Conference offered "the most vulnerable countries of the planet a long-awaited, and well deserved, ray of hope for their future sustainable development".

JAQUES SCAVEE, Chairman of the Intergovernmental Preparatory Committee, said that he was pleased to note that the meeting today had been preceded by much work on the international and country levels, providing solid ground on which to build. The participatory work on the country level was particularly appreciated.

He noted, however, the results of previous efforts regarding LDCs. The number of LDCs continued to increase, to the current total of 48. Only one country, Botswana, had managed to graduate from the list. The situation had been further exacerbated by globalization. Radical intervention was needed to improve production capacity and other crucial sectors of each country’s economy.

He anticipated that scepticism might greet a third LDC conference. The fostering of a dependence mentality and of conference fatigue were two issues that needed to be answered. But hope was desperately needed for the millions living in LDCs. Indeed, he noted, some countries had made underlying improvements in governance and other areas. A number of countries had met or exceeded official development assistance (ODA) targets. There had been progress on the issues of debt. So, he said, there were reasons to hope that things could change for the better.

ARTHUR C.I. MBANEFO (Nigeria), on behalf of the “Group of 77” developing countries and China, noted that the increasing marginalization of the least developed countries was even more disturbing at a time when globalization had engendered colossal increases in prosperity in the more developed countries.

He called for a new Programme of Action for the least developed countries for the first decade of the new century, taking into account some of the changes of the past decade, such as globalization, rapid advances in science and technology, and the greater articulation of social, human-rights, and environmental objectives. Negative developments in some of the LDCs also needed to be taken into account, including civil strife, natural disasters, and disease.

Otherwise, he said, the development problems of the LDCs are well-known. Surmounting them required a jump-start for the relevant economies, through concrete international support measures. Many of these measures could be taken from the Programme of Action for the 1990s.

Among them was ODA, for which only four developed countries had reached or surpassed their targets, and which had declined 23 per cent in the past decade. In addition, efforts to increase market access should continue, with campaigns for duty-free and quota-free access amplified by financial and technical support.

Recent steps toward debt reductions, he said, needed to be broadened to include, for example, efforts to insure that the Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) Debt Initiative was fully funded and more easily accessible. It was also important to leverage foreign investment flows to the LDCs, through cooperative arrangements between government and the private sector in each country.

Finally, with proposed Programmes of Action on the country level, UNCTAD should ensure that the overall Programme of Action provided linkages on all levels -– from global to country, as well as among international organizations and bodies of the United Nations system.

ANWARUL KARIM CHOWDHURY (Bangladesh), Coordinator for the least developed countries, said the outcome of the Brussels Conference would influence the lives of a tenth of the global population, who were among the poorest and living in countries with the most fragile economies.

Since the adoption of the Paris Programme of Action, in 1990, major changes had taken place in political paradigms and significant breakthroughs in technology had been made. The LDCs had unfortunately remained untouched by the wide-ranging changes. Indeed, their opportunities had diminished, their risks had increased and their challenges had become more complex. They had been bypassed in trade, investment and capital flows; advancement in technology benefited them little; their competitiveness had further eroded; poverty had become widespread; and living standards for many of them had declined.

He said the good news was the recognition that something concrete and comprehensive had to be done to reverse the situation. The preparatory process leading to the Conference was itself an expression of the recognition of the international community that special measures were needed to bring an end to the continuing marginalization of LDCs. The biggest challenge ahead was the transformation of the general recognition into a true political commitment.

The LDCs agreed that the onus of development lay on national governments. What was, however, overlooked was how factors beyond national competence influenced the capacity of their governments to design, implement and follow up a programme of their socio-economic development. It was practically "beyond their capacity to implement their part of the compact, which often is a prescription cooked outside", he said. There was hardly any example when the efforts of a least developed country had been matched by similar efforts in assistance from the donors.

The efforts of the LDCs were not likely to succeed without strong international support measures. Attention was required in the following priority areas: reorientation of aid programmes; decisive reduction of the debt burden; encouraging foreign direct investment in LDCs; market access; emphasizing capacity building; and eradication of poverty. He said the high indebtedness and deteriorating capacity of LDCs to service debts underlined the urgency of writing them off. There should be a comprehensive debt relief, much broader than any of the schemes currently under way.

He hoped discussions of those issues during the meeting would result in strong, concrete and realizable commitments.

JEAN-DAVID LEVITTE (France), speaking on behalf of the European Union, Bulgaria, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Czech Republic, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Cyprus and Malta, said the Union was happy to be the host for the Third United Nations Conference on the Least Developed Countries in Brussels.

The Conference would provide a unique occasion for the international community to adjust to the needs and hopes of the least developed countries. It would also provide an opportunity for LDCs themselves to take control of their development. The LDCs had, for a long time, been at the heart of Union policies, and would ensure that the Conference was a success, and that it resulted in real progress for more than 650 million of the world's population who lived in those countries. He said the European Union had in 1998 allocated $6.6 billion out of $10.5 billion for development assistance.

The Union believed that the eradication of poverty should be at the heart of the Brussels Conference -- reduction of poverty by half by 2015. Economic growth and sustainable development should be among the focus of national policies. To ensure concrete, implementable results at the end of the Conference, attainable objectives must be identified. The LDCs must be responsible for their development process, and must be key actors at the Conference.

The LDCs had been placed in a generally unfavourable situation in terms of human development, as shown by the annual United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) Human Development Reports. HIV/AIDS and other diseases had also contributed to that. A response must be found to the marginalization those countries faced in trade, investment flows and other economic ills. There must be international assistance to help them help themselves and become full partners. The LDCs must put in place good governance, strengthen the rule of law, and the

participation of their population in decision-making. Those elements were a necessary prerequisite for the efficient use of allocated resources. The European Union welcomed regional economic integration and was pleased about the regional dimension being given to the preparatory process of the Conference.

He said the Conference also offered excellent opportunities for the coordination of development assistance, programmes on poverty reduction. Interactive discussions and round tables planned for the Conference should provide a central place for LDCs in the evaluation of past programmes of action and future ones. The best possible conditions must be established for the participation of civil society and the private sector. Every effort should be made to ensure that the Conference resulted in a concise and operational document.

The European Commission was providing a major logistic contribution to the Conference, he said. The Union had long supported the development of the LDCs, and had entered into trade and aid agreements with the African, Caribbean and Pacific countries from the first 1975 Lomé Convention to the recent Cotonu pact, which had followed 18 months of negotiations.

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