Third UN Conference on LDCs Ends With DeclarationThe Third United Nations Conference on the Least Developed Countries (LDCs) ended in Brussels Sunday as all government officials from all over the world issued a final declaration and adopted a draft program of action for the next 10 years.The declaration said the participating governments are determined to make progress toward the global goals of poverty eradication, peace and development for the least developed countries and their people. They recognized that the goals set out at the previous conference in 1990 have not been reached and that LDCs as a whole remain marginalized in world economy and continue to suffer from extreme poverty. They agreed that progress of the LDCs has been undermined by lack of sufficient human, productive and institutional capacity, indebtedness, low levels of domestic and foreign investments, declining trends in flows of official development aid (ODA), severe structural handicaps, falling or volatile commodity prices, HIV/AIDS and for some of them violent conflicts or post-conflict situations. The program of action for 2001-2010 adopted by the seven-day conference said the participants reaffirmed their commitment to the development of the 49 LDCs and to the improvement of the lives of the more than 600 million women, men and children living in those countries. "Our common efforts will be an important contribution to achieving the international development goals and realizing the universal aspirations for peace, cooperation and development," they said. The previous two U.N. conferences on the LDCs were held in Paris respectively in 1981 and 1990, both aimed to solve the problems of poor countries. In the past three decades, the number of the LDCs shot up from 25 to 49. |
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