Intergovernmental Preparatory Committee

for Third United Nations Conference

 on Least Developed Countries

1^st Meeting (AM)

PREPARATORY COMMITTEE FOR LEAST DEVELOPED COUNTRIES CONFERENCE

HEARS CALL FOR MORE EFFECTIVE FOLLOW-UP TO COMMITMENTS

The Intergovernmental Preparatory Committee for the United Nations Conference on Least Developed Countries began its third session this morning at Headquarters in New York, by adopting its agenda and organization of work and hearing presentations on a number of pre-Conference events that had recently taken place in support of its work.

The Conference, which will be held in Brussels, Belgium, from 14 to 20 May, will address the concerns of least developed countries (LDCs).  It is expected to review progress since the second Least Developed Countries Conference, which took place in Paris in 1990, and determine strategies and priorities for the future. Least developed countries are designated by the General Assembly as the poorest countries in the world.

The presentations this morning included:  Germany's report on International Policy Dialogue -- Attracting Private Sector Participation to Infrastructure Development in Least Developed Countries (Bonn, 12-13 March); the United Kingdom's report on the Ministerial Round Table on Trade and Poverty in LDCs (London,

19-20 March); South Africa's report on the Workshop on LDCs' Building Capacities for Mainstreaming Gender in Development Strategies (Cape Town, 21-23 March); the report of the Economic and Social Commission of Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP) on the fifth session of the Special Body on Least Developed and Landlocked Developing Countries (20-21 February); and the report by the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) on the High-Level Round Table on Innovation, Knowledge Society, Intellectual Property Rights and the LDCs (Lisbon, 1-2 February).

Also addressing the Committee this morning, Bangladesh's representative (on behalf of LDCs) said the key to the programme of action for the upcoming Conference was the implementation mechanism.  Least developed countries believed that the follow-up mechanisms in the past two programmes of action were not effective.  There were serious disjoints between the national, regional and global levels and between the follow-up at the intergovernmental and agency levels. 

He said the mobilization of organizations of the United Nations was also less than satisfactory.  Secretariat support would have been better provided through greater partnership among relevant entities of the Organization's system.  Intergovernmental follow-up should take account of national level processes.

The Preparatory Committee also head three oral reports on workshops which covered capacity-building, tourism and energy.  Those were delivered by the representatives of Lesotho, Spain and Austria, respectively.

The representative of the Pacific Concerns Resource Centre, a non-governmental organization, said the Conference should be a response to the deterioration of the LDCs and called for full debt consolidation for least developed countries so that they could release more resources for development.

Also this morning, the Committee was informed that Kenji Hirata (Japan) had replaced Yuji Kumamaru (Japan) on the Committee's Bureau, while Grenada had replaced Suriname.

The representatives of Cuba, Iran, Lao People's Democratic Republic, and Norway also made statements.

The Committee will meet again in plenary at a date and time to be announced in the Journal.

Background

The Third Intergovernmental Preparatory Committee for the United Nations Conference on Least Developed Countries will begin its session this morning at Headquarters in New York.  It will continue work on documents for the Conference. The session is scheduled to end on Friday, 6 April.

The Conference itself, which will be held in Brussels, Belgium, from 14 to 20 May, will address the concerns of the least developed countries.  It is expected to review progress since the Second Least Developed Countries Conference, which took place in Paris in 1990, and determine strategies and priorities for the future.

Least developed countries are the poorest countries in the world.  They are officially designated as "least developed" by the General Assembly based on a number of criteria.  Those include low national income, low economic vulnerability and low levels of human development.  There are currently 48 designated least developed countries with a combined population of 610.5 million -- 10.5 per cent of the world's total.  In the development efforts of the United Nations, they receive particular attention, since their development needs are greater than those of other developing countries.

The Committee's first session, held from 24 to 28 July 2000, reviewed preparations for the Conference and assessed progress in the implementation of international support measures for those countries, particularly in the areas of official development assistance (ODA), debt relief, investment and trade.  The measures were embodied in the Programme of Action adopted at the Paris Conference.

The first session also considered a draft provisional agenda for the Brussels Conference.  The agenda was proposed by Assembly resolution 54/235.  It also examined draft provisional rules of procedure and the organizational aspects of the Conference.

The second preparatory session, held from 5 to 9 February 2001, was devoted to the first formal reading of a draft programme of action for the decade 2001-2010, which it is hoped will be adopted at the Conference, and consideration of national reports on preparations for the Conference.  It also adopted a draft decision by which it extended, until 31 March, the deadline for accreditation of interested civil society actors, and approved a list of such actors which had applied by 26 January for participation in the Conference and its preparatory process.

Reports on Pre-conference Events

HANNS HEINRICH SCHUMACHER (Germany) said his country and the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) organized an international policy dialogue, on attracting private participation to infrastructure development in least developed countries (LDCs), about a fortnight ago in Bonn.  He said the results of the meeting could provide inputs for policy recommendations and help propose concrete action for the LDC Conference and beyond.

During the dialogue, he said, innovative mechanisms for private participation in removing fundamental weaknesses in the infrastructure and institutional framework of LDCs were discussed.  The results of the dialogue included the view that infrastructure was more than hardware, and that human resource development was essential for infrastructure building and maintenance.

JEFF CHINOCK (United Kingdom) said a high-level ministerial round table on trade and poverty was hosted by the United Kingdom Secretary of State for International Development, in London on 19 March.

The main purpose of the meeting was to encourage the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) development partners and the international institutions to do more to harness the potential of trade as a key component of strategies to eliminate poverty, focusing on the importance of mainstreaming trade issues into their development policies.

Discussions also covered how development partners could work together to enhance LDC capacities to maximize the poverty reduction benefits of trade and to ensure that trade was seen as a critical component in poverty reduction strategies.

In a keynote speech, British Secretary of State for International Development, Clare Short, said that globalization was neither good nor bad, but a reality which offered real opportunities for LDCs to develop.  To prevent the marginalization of the LDCs, she said, open trade was essential, but that did not mean deregulated trade.

Mike Moore, World Trade Organization (WTO) Director General, according to the United Kingdom representative, suggested that cutting barriers to trade in agriculture, manufacturing and services by a third would boost the world economy by $613 million.

Key proposals put forward by ministers and other delegates for consideration at the forthcoming Conference on Least Developed Countries included the extension of duty-free access for all goods from LDCs to all OECD markets (the European Union, Norway and New Zealand had recently taken steps in that direction), and binding trade preferences in the WTO which would give security and help investor-building confidence.

DUMISANI S. KUMALO (South Africa) presented the report of the Workshop on Least Developed Countries' Building Capacities for Mainstreaming Gender in Development Strategies, which was held in Cape Town, South Africa, from 21 to

23 March.  The workshop was organized with UNCTAD, with support from the Governments of Finland, Japan, Denmark, Sweden, and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP).

He said discussion in the workshop focused on the links between poverty eradication, development and the need to mainstream gender equality into national policies and programmes of the least developed countries.  The outcome was the Cape Town Declaration, and a set of agreed recommendations addressed to the least developed countries and their development partners.

"We believe that there is need to adopt a comprehensive approach to the empowerment of women", he said.  "The time has come for us to consider gender equality beyond the traditional role that women play in poverty alleviation."  Gender equality needed to be advanced, and located as an integral component of the economic agenda.  It was, therefore, critical that the empowerment of women became a major focus in the areas of trade, finance and investment, he said.

AYNUL HASSAN, Chief, Least Developed Countries Section, Development Research and Policy Analysis Division, Economic and Social Commission of Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP),  presented the report of the meeting of the Special Body on Least Developed Countries and Landlocked Developing Countries.  He said the meeting had focused its discussions on reviewing the implementation of the programme of action for LDCs for the 1990s and developing recommendations for the future.

He said one of the important recommendations that came out of the meeting concerned the important role that regional commissions could play in the implementation of the programme of action.  Stressing the diversity of the problems of least developed countries , he explained that some were landlocked, some were double landlocked (Bhutan and Nepal), and some were small island States.

KIFLE SHENKORU, head of the Least Developed Countries Unit, World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), presented the report of the High-Level Interregional Round Table on Innovation, Knowledge Society, Intellectual Property and the Least Developed Countries, which was held in Lisbon from 1 to 2 February.  He stressed that in the new millennium, the wealth of nations and human kind would develop to a large extent based on ideas and knowledge, rather than on land, skills and capital accumulation as had occurred in the past.  Knowledge was now critical in the process of economic growth and development, and the gap now was not only between the "haves and have nots", but also between the "knows and know nots". 

He said that in preparation for the May Conference, WIPO had organized three regional seminars:  one for Africa, one for Asia and one for the Arab States.  A national seminar had also been organized for Haiti, as it was the only LDC in the Latin America and the Caribbean.  The aim of those seminars was to articulate policy and intellectual issues that would contribute to knowledge-building in those parts of the world.  The Lisbon Declaration stressed that the new direction for the millennium should incorporate a new set of objectives aimed at transferring knowledge to least developed countries.  It should build knowledge capital in those countries and creating solid management societies in those nations to manage that knowledge.

PERCY M. MANGOAELA (Lesotho) said a workshop on enhancing productive capacities and diversification of commodities in least developed countries was held in Geneva on 22 and 23 March.  The workshop was attended by representatives of 24 LDCs and development partners from 10 countries, the European Commission and

10 international development institutions.

He said expert presentations were made on key commodity-related subjects such as enhancing productive capacities and competitiveness, commodity market development and structured commodity finance, price risk management, and commodity development financing and foreign direct investment.

He said representatives of LDCs made presentations on the challenges and prospects of their countries in the commodities field.  He was confident that the Preparatory Committee would take account of the recommendations of that workshop.

ANTONIO BULLON (Spain) reported on a workshop on tourism which was held in Canary Islands, with participants from more than 30 LDCs.  The workshop analysed the importance of tourism for the economies of least developed countries.  Potential for tourism in those countries was noted.  The workshop stressed the importance of peace and security for the development of tourism.  The workshop proposed the Preparatory Committee take account of the importance of tourism in the economies of LDCs.

MARIAN A. WRBA (Austria) reported on a workshop on energy issues that took place in Vienna from 14 to 16 March.  He said the meeting emphasized the differences in the energy situation in urban and rural areas which required different ways to tackle respective problem fields.  It also underlined the need for vigorous institution- and capacity-building as a precondition for any development in the energy sector.

He said Austria sought the incorporation of energy considerations into the plan of action and invited the partners to consider contributing to making the “deliverables” a reality as soon as possible.

Austria would also elaborate a compendium of successful development cooperation programmes or projects in the energy field, including contact points.  He also said the United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO), which co-sponsored the workshop, was given a number of tasks, including identification of LDCs interested in integrated rural development programmes.

ANWARUL KARIM CHOWDHURY (Bangladesh), speaking on behalf of the least developed countries, said this final session of the Committee was the last opportunity for concerned agencies to "let us know the specific nature and

content of their deliverables".  He asked the Secretariat to provide the Committee, by next Wednesday, a compendium of information on those deliverables by each agency.  "I would like to add that least developed countries would be disappointed if those deliverables are mere repackaging of existing or planned programmes", he said.

He said the key to the programme of action was the implementation mechanism.  Least developed countries believed that the follow-up mechanism in the past two programmes of action were not effective.  There were serious disjoints between the national, regional and global levels and between the follow-up at the intergovernmental and agency levels.  Mobilization of organizations of the United Nations was also less than satisfactory.  Secretariat support would have been better provided through greater partnership among relevant entities of the Organization's system.

He said governments of LDCs would need the support of their partners to strengthen their capacities in pursuing national programmes of action, as well as periodic national dialogue among stakeholders.  "We also need strong offices for resident coordinators in LDCs to carry out their responsibilities", he said.  At the global level, he asked for a more effective, integrated follow-up arrangement which would bring together all relevant institutions and processes.  At present, intergovernmental follow-up hardly took into account the national level process.  Those arrangements should be improved in the upcoming processes.

Non-Governmental Organization Statement

The representative of the Pacific Concerns Resource Centre reiterated the determination of civil society actors to actively participate in the Conference and in the deliberations of the Committee as stakeholders, to remain active and to work in genuine partnership with national governments and the international community, and to ensure concrete outcomes of the Conference and ownership by the governments of LDCs and civil society.

She said the Conference should be a response to the deterioration of least developed countries.  She also called for full debt consolidation for least developed countries so that they could release more resources for development.

MEHDI MIRAFZAL (Iran), speaking on behalf of the “Group of 77” developing countries and China, said two members of the Cuban delegation to the Preparatory Committee had not yet been able to obtain visas to travel to New York for the session

RAFAEL DAUSA CESPEDES (Cuba), thanking the representative of Iran for raising the issue, said visas for the two Cuban experts had still not been issued despite the fact that the United States authorities had been provided with the relevant documents regarding their travel.  Their absence would affect Cuba’s contribution to the work of the session.  He hoped the problem would be resolved quickly.

Reports by Chairpersons of Working Group Clusters

INGA MAGISTAD (Norway) reported on discussions on aspects of the draft programme of action of the forthcoming Conference relating to a cluster of commitments covering issues such as enterprise development, agriculture, physical infrastructure, technology, trade, and action by development partners. 

She said very good progress had been made and that her group had completed a first reading on matters dealing with trade, regional trade arrangements and action by development partners.  The second reading would be undertaken this week.

ALOUNKEO KITTIKHOUN (Lao People’s Democratic Republic) told the meeting that his group had completed a first reading on issues relating to fostering people-centred development and building human capacities, as well as other actions to be undertaken by the LDCs themselves.  He was optimistic that the group could clear most of the brackets by the end of the week.  He said the negotiations overall were fruitful and positive, and he hoped the same spirit would prevail during the group’s work during the week.

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