Nine sponsors of initiatives to be adopted at the upcoming Third United Nations Conference on the Least Developed Countries were announced in New York on 9 February at an intergovernmental meeting charged with preparing the Conference.
The initiatives will be presented at the Conference (Brussels, 14-20 May) during the course of thematic sessions on the main challenges facing the world´s 48 least developed countries (LDCs). These "deliverables", or concrete actions to improve specific sectors in the LDCs, will be identified and promoted by two partner governments - one from an LDC, and the other from a developed country - as well as by UN agencies active in each particular field. Last week´s announcements, which concerned some of the developed-country sponsors, were as follows: Austria, on energy; Canada, on health; the European Commission, on trade; France, on human resources development; Germany, on investment; Norway, on governance; Netherlands, on financing growth and development; Portugal, on transport; and the United States, on education. LDC government sponsors will be announced at a later date.
Also at the close of this week´s session (5-9 February), the Intergovernmental Preparatory Committee extended to 31 March the deadline for non-governmental organizations (NGOs) to apply for participation in the Conference and in an NGO Forum, to be held in Brussels from 10 to 20 May (A/CONF.191/IPC/L.6). It had before it a list of 200 NGOs or "civil society actors" which had already applied for accreditation in time for the previous deadline of 15 January (A/CONF.191/IPC/CRP.5). These groups are not currently in consultative status with either the Economic and Social Council or with UNCTAD and did not participate in the second LDC conference (Paris, 1990). Ninety-six of them are from NGOs based in LDCs; if approved, they and other LDC-based NGOs will be eligible to receive financing for their participation. Members of the Committee may submit any objections to the list by 16 February. At the meeting, the Danish government announced the contribution of $500,000 to finance the participation of LDC representatives at the Committee´s third meeting.
During the weeklong meeting, governments conducted their first reading of the draft Programme of Action to be adopted in Brussels. That Programme is intended to "contribute to a significant improvement in the human conditions" in the LDCs, and to poverty reduction in particular (for background, see press release TAD/1927 of 6 February). They proposed numerous amendments on the commitments to be undertaken by LDC governments and their development partners in the Programme, concerned with fostering a people-centred policy framework; promoting good governance; building human capacities; strengthening productive capacities; making globalization work for LDCs; reducing vulnerability and conserving the environment; and mobilizing financial resources. These amendments will be considered by the Committee at an informal meeting next month, prior to its final session to be held on 2-6 April.
Also on 9 February, representatives of UNCTAD, which is serving as secretariat for the Conference, and of the European Union and Belgium, which are hosting it, discussed the structure of the Conference, worldwide preparatory meetings under way on the main themes, logistics, financing and the status of national programmes of action being prepared by each LDC for consideration at Brussels. These programmes constitute strategy documents for national development over the next decade and follow the structure of the Global Programme of Action. In a compendium before the meeting summarizing the 42 national programmes submitted to date, common concerns were the importance attached to investment in infrastructure; good governance; adequate financing for development, in the form of debt relief, official development assistance (ODA), foreign direct investment and the mobilization of domestic savings; and access to developed country markets for all LDC exports.
During the meeting, which was attended by representatives of over 115 countries, the President of the General Assembly said the conference would be a "major mechanism" in implementing the commitments of the Millennium Declaration adopted by the Assembly last year. Those commitments concerned three critical areas affecting development in the LDCs where external support could make a difference: trade, ODA and debt. Assembly President Harri Holkeri also said that the primary responsibility in meeting those targets lay with the LDC governments themselves. The Administrator of the UNDP, speaking as convenor of the United Nations Development Group, emphasised the importance which the entire UN system attached to working together to make the conference a concrete and practical expression of the system´s priority attention to reducing poverty in these, the poorest countries. A representative of the NGOs, in New York to attend a pre-Conference parallel meeting sponsored by the European Union, urged the Conference to call for the total cancellation of all LDC debt and for the granting by developed countries of duty-free market access for all LDC exports.
The Committee will next meet informally in New York, from 26 to 30 March, followed by its third and final formal meeting, also in New York, from 2 to 6 April.
