In May 27, 2016, the United Nations Congress of the least developed countries opened in Antalya, the coastal city of Turkey, in May 27th. The three day conference will assess the progress made by the 48 least developed countries in the world in the past five years, and looks at how to help these countries to accelerate their progress on the road of sustainable development.
The mid term review conference of the Istanbul programme of action is another important international conference held in Turkey after last week's World Humanitarian summit.
In 2011, five years ago, the United Nations Member States held a conference on the least developed countries in Turkey and adopted the Istanbul programme of action. The 10 year plan aims to drive the economic and social development of the most disadvantaged countries in the world. The purpose of the Antalya conference is to assess the progress made by these countries in the past five years. More than 2000 representatives from over 2000 governments, international and regional organizations, civil society, private sector, foundations, think-tank and media attended the conference.
In his address to the general assembly, Secretary Ban Ki-moon called for the revitalization of the global development partnership and urged donor countries to cash in 0.2% of their foreign aid to support the commitments of the least developed countries.
The United Nations the least developed countries, landlocked countries and small island developing high representative Acharya (Gyan Chandra Acharya) pointed out that the least developed countries have made significant progress in the past five years, and has the world needed for human and natural resources, but the international community needs to take more measures to support the development of the country.
Acharya: "the least developed countries have a long way to go, and one of the four least developed countries is suffering from the impact of the conflict. Even those who are not affected by the conflict, they have not made much progress, and the prices of primary commodities have declined. Generally speaking, the mechanism of the world supporting the least developed countries is also weakening, which also affects the development of these countries.
The United Nations Development Program Director Helen Clark also attended the opening ceremony and pointed out that the least developed countries has a population of 880 million, equivalent to 12.5% of the world's population, but 51% of them still living in extreme poverty, as many as 18 million school-age children not in school; in addition, these countries share in global GDP ratio less than 2%, less than 1% of the proportion of total global trade.
The review conference will focus on the progress made by the least developed countries in terms of poverty reduction, child mortality, gender equality, Internet and mobile Internet access rate. In the past 10 years, the economy of the least developed countries has been growing, but its growth is lower than the world average and fluctuates.
The least developed countries are at the end of the world in the socioeconomic indicators. At present, there are three criteria: first of all, the least developed countries in 2015, per capita gross national income of less than $1035, $1242 higher than that of developed countries can never category "graduation"; secondly, to assess the nutritional status of the population, health, education and adult literacy rate data based on the bottleneck of human resources; third economy, fragile, including unstable agricultural production, products and services of export instability, the traditional industry economy is dependent on exports, single, small economies due to lack of ability, and the number of people displaced natural disasters led to higher proportion.
According to these standards, before 2011, only Botswana, Cape Verde and Maldives graduated from the ranks of the undeveloped countries. The only country to graduate in 2011 was Samoa. 7 countries have reached the standard graduation in March 2015, including Bhutan, Kiribati, Nepal, Sao Tome and Principe, Solomon islands, East Timor and tuvalu. Equatorial Guinea, Vanuatu and Angola are about to graduate.
The United Nations General Assembly established the category of the least developed countries in 1971, in order to attract the attention of the international community and support the most vulnerable countries in these United Nations families. There were only 25 least developed countries in the world at that time. At present, there are 48 least developed countries in the world, of which 34 are in Africa, 13 in Asia and the Pacific, and Latin America has only one least developed country. The latest member of the least developed countries is South Sultan.
