Least developed countries discuss past and future at UN summit

Delegations from the world's least developed countries convened on Friday in Antalya, a Mediterranean resort city in southern Turkey, for a summit entitled Midterm Review Conference. The three-day event, organized by United Nations agencies, aims to review how those countries have progressed in implementing the action plan to strengthen them, adopted in Istanbul in 2011, and seeing what can be done to sustain their development.

The world's 48 least developed countries have 12 percent of the world's population and are largely dependent on the international community to ensure development.

A U.N. summit in 2011 in Istanbul set out a roadmap to upgrade the status of least developing countries through international support and the national policies of those countries. The roadmap's objectives include achieving sustained, equitable and inclusive economic growth by bolstering productive capacity, building human capacity to foster social development, and reducing vulnerability to economic crises and disasters. A stronger economy remains key for development under the action plan given by the international community. The Istanbul declaration listed priority areas for action: increasing productive capacity, agricultural development and trade.

Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu delivered an opening speech in which he expressed concern about the drop in aid to the world's least developed countries in recent years. "Turkey is committed to (help) and extended $3.9 billion in aid in 2015."

According to Çavuşoğlu, it is a moral obligation to address the problems of the world's least developed countries, and eliminating problems such as poverty and unemployment would contribute to eradicating conditions that feed terrorism and extremism. He said the group of least developed countries might be driving forces of global economic growth with their population of about 900 million.

Çavuşoğlu said that the international community should increase financial and commercial support to improve infrastructure and administrative structure. He said: "Official development aid is still the most important foreign resource for the least developed countries, but we have observed a significant drop in foreign aid in recent years. Donor countries should fulfill their global commitments. We should focus on doubling the share of those countries in global trade and exports by 2020." Çavuşoğlu added that Turkey has fulfilled its commitments and that its official development aid rose to $3.9 billion last year, from only $1 billion in 2010. He noted that their original pledge was $200 million each year and that Turkey has already surpassed that.

Speaking at a press conference during the event, Gyan Chandra Acharya, U.N. Secretary-General for the Least Developed Countries, Landlocked Developing Countries and Small Island Developing States, praised Turkey's contributions. He stated that realizing international commitments would lead to greater progress for least developed countries and urged the international community to follow Turkey's example.

Acharya pointed out that the 2011 action plan seeks to lift the poorest and most fragile countries from their predicament by 2021 and that at least nine countries announced their ambition to "graduate" by 2021 by fulfilling criteria for an upgrade in status, saying this was an important development, given that only three countries graduated by 2011. He said that one-fourth of least developed countries were affected by conflicts, and those free of conflict suffered from a lack of progress in development.

Speaking at the same press conference, U.N. Development Program Administrator Helen Clark said, "no one should be left behind" in the world's least developed countries. Clark stated that 51 percent of people in least developed countries were on the threshold of poverty, and 18 million children of school age did not attend school. Mentioning the challenges for landlocked countries in imports and exports, Clark said those countries failed to fulfill their development potential. She said it was important to build commercial capacity in those countries and set up innovative financial mechanisms.

Clark stated that donors were concerned for support to low-income countries due to serious disasters and humanitarian problems and called upon the international community to divert more resources to low-income countries from poor but stable countries.