Statement by Dr. Arjun Karki, Chair and Spokesperson of the Civil Society Steering Committee to the Opening Ceremony of the Fourth UN LDC Conference, Istanbul, Turkey, 09 May 2011       

Mr. Chairperson, Excellencies, Ladies and Gentlemen,

On behalf of the Civil Society Steering Committee and Civil Society Forum representatives gathered here in this beautiful city of Istanbul, I thank you for giving us this opportunity to address the Opening Ceremony of the Fourth United Nations Conference on the Least Developed Countries.

We are meeting here in the final days of a long journey to craft the new agenda for sustainable development for the 48 Least Developed Countries of the world. As civil society we have an ambitious vision for this process. In our world of plenty, no nation should be left in the status of ‘least developed”. We must challenge governments, the international community and ourselves to do better. We can no longer tolerate the massive suffering, unnecessary deaths and waste of human potential that result from the under-development of 900 million people in the LDCs.

As civil society, we have been engaged in an intense and extensive process of mobilising and listening the concerns of the people in the LDCs through local, national and regional consultations and interactions in Africa, Asia and the Pacific, and dialogues in Korea, the USA and the UK.

Despite repeated commitments to reduce poverty and hunger, there has been little progress in reducing poverty and providing sustainable livelihoods opportunities for the growing numbers of young women and men. To the contrary, vulnerable and marginalised people in LDCs have to bear the burden of new crises of food, water, climate change, energy and global finance, even though they have not caused these crises. As an example, the cumulative share of the LDCs in greenhouse gas emission is half of 1 per cent of the global total, but the LDCs are hardest hit by the adverse effects of climate change due to vulnerability, lack of resources and low adaptive capacities.

I would like to share some of the realities of the 900 million people that are living in the LDCs: almost more than half of the women and men are living in abject poverty and hunger, nearly one half of the population is illiterate, one third of them do not have access to safe drinking water and proper sanitation facilities, about 850 mothers per 100,000 live births and 80 infants per 1,000 live births loss their lives annually due to inadequate health facilities. Women are doubly disadvantaged in bearing much of the load, while being denied their rights.

At the same time the LDCs have massive potential. The younger generation in particular have had opportunities for education that their parents never had. With opportunities and even minimal levels of support from governments and the internationally community, the young women and men of the LDCs are set to play a major role in the 21st Century. LDCs are poised for a massive leap forward.

But the productive capacities of most of the LDCs are severely constrained. Even when there have been relatively high levels of economic growth, it has not been sustainable, inclusive or job creating. Few LDCs have been able to diversify away from a dependence in a few commodities, and build a productive domestic economy.

There have been repeated commitments from the international community to reform the unjust international rules that constrain LDC prospects for development, and commitments to provide support. But the implementation of these commitments has been woefully inadequate. As an example, only nine donor countries have met the committed targets of 0.15% of their GNI in official development assistance to the LDCs.

New thinking and innovative approaches are needed. Policies of the past have resulted in an increase in the number of LDCs from 24 in 1971 to 48 countries today. Only three LDCs have graduated so far.

Therefore, we ask you, the governments negotiating in this conference, to raise your vision. The Political Declaration and Programme of Action that will be agreed by the end of this week should not only set a target of reducing the number of LDCs by half, it should be a step towards eliminating the category of LDCs. Our aim is to make LDCs history. We should accept nothing less.

When we talk about a new approach to development, we mean an urgent and radical shift from the current development paradigm to genuine pro-people development. We need an international development architecture that supports lifting LDC peoples out of the continuing vicious cycle of poverty and vulnerability. We need to put equity and human rights, particularly for women and disadvantaged groups in society, at the heart of development efforts. And we need policies that put people and the planet before profit.

But architecture is not enough. We also need implementation. Throughout our engagement process, we have called for specific and tangible commitments within the next Programme of Action. These are necessary to ensure that the achievement of the aims becomes a reality, instead of an empty aspiration. We are disappointed that most of the targets and commitments proposed for inclusion in the Programme of Action have not been agreed. We urge governments in these final days of negotiating the remaining issues in the Programme of Action, to agree on specific and timetabled commitments that can be measured and monitored.

 In particular, we would like to emphasize the importance of ensuring that there are tangible commitments to adequate, additional and predictable financing. As well as fulfilling the agreed aid targets, new financial mechanisms, such as a financial transactions tax, are required to deliver the scale of financial resources that are needed.

We also urge you to secure a commitment to a process that will result in new debt cancellation without inappropriate conditions. Nearly 8% of the total exports of goods and services of the LDCs is used for debt servicing. Cancellation of debt will help the LDCs to invest in developing their productive capacities and sustainable development.

There are measures on trade that could still be agreed in the Programme of Action, particularly a stronger commitment to full implementation of 100% Duty Free Quota Free market access, improved rules of origin, action on implementation problems previously highlighted by LDCs, and retention of the policy space for LDC development in all trade negotiations. These measures are essential if LDCs are to be able to build their productive capacities in their domestic economies and not rely on the flawed assumption that foreign companies will deliver development.

As we commence the final week of these negotiations, it is time for leaders to embody the spirit of partnership and come together around a shared political vision. The aim of halving the number of LDCs in a decade could be that vision. The Istanbul Political Declaration could provide the inspiration and the commitment to action that would make this vision a reality.

The political declaration could include a process to periodically review implementation of the Programme of Action, with reporting and peer reviews from LDCs and development partners, and participation of civil society and other stakeholders.

The Political Declaration should also support the strong emphasis on enhanced economic growth that is a major focus of the Programme of Action. We urge you to ensure that there is clear definition about what kind of growth is being promoted. LDCs need the forms of growth that will provide benefits for the many, not just benefits for the few. We urge you to be specific in calling for inclusive and poverty reducing economic growth. This should be supported by calling for a focus on job creation to provide opportunities and hope for the growing numbers of young people in LDC societies, sustainable livelihoods, full respect for human rights in the workforce and decent work for all.

We also urge you to ensure that the aims of country ownership are respected throughout the outcome documents. We remind you that country ownership means sovereignty of domestic policies, inclusive ownership by all of society, not just government. This means a strong emphasis on democratic processes, development effectiveness, transparency and accountability.

We welcome the inclusion of agricultural development for food security in the Programme for Action, but further encourage you to include in the Political Declaration a paragraph recognising that access to affordable food and water are human rights, and they must not be undermined by unjust trade, land grabs, a lack of rights for small farmers, domination by powerful companies in supply chains and food speculation.

These are a few of the key issues. A more comprehensive set of recommendations is included in the Civil Society report “Towards a world without LDCs”, released here in Istanbul.

As civil society, we look forward to working with you to achieve a strong and inspirational Political Declaration. We are grateful for the support from governments, especially the Turkish government, and from the UN that brought a diverse and skilled range of civil society representatives together for the Civil Society Forum. We look forward to harnessing these skills and the tremendous energy over this coming week. We welcome the participation in the Forum of government representatives and the private sector, as participants in a shared dialogue.

Civil society will work on our own programmes for action for the development of LDCs. We consider that real change cannot happen without the ownership and participation of people across society. We will prepare for action beyond this conference, to engage and inform the public, strengthen our work and hold governments to account for effective implementation of the Istanbul Programme of Action.

In closing, we see this conference as an opportunity to forge a new spirit of partnership between government and civil society which is essential to achieve real change in the decade ahead. We would like to join you in a transformative process of inclusive development that will halve the number of LDCs within a decade and allow ALL LDCs to graduate in the decade that follows. In our world of plenty, we must consign the category of LDCs to history. We look forward to working with you to achieve these ambitious but achievable aims.

Thank you very much once again for the opportunity to address you.

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