Countries emerged out of LDC list still need support to face challenges

Participants in the eighth round table meeting of the Fifth United Nations Conference on the Least Developed Countries stressed that the countries that graduated from that list still need support to face challenges and meet their own needs, especially in the areas of trade, intellectual property rights and financing for development.At the round table, the participants renewed the consensus call to renew and revitalise partnerships and mobilise additional international support measures for least developed countries, to enhance their resilience to multiple shocks and accelerate the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals.Vice-President of Benin Mariam Chabi Talata Zime Yerima, stressed the need to address the challenges that African least developed countries suffer from in order to reach the graduation thresholds, especially since these challenges are closely linked to structural obstacles such as low human capital, high economy and environmental vulnerability, which must be addressed through the full implementation of the Doha Programme of Action initiative.She said that countries that have graduated or are in the process of graduating from the category of least developed countries need help, on a country-by-country basis, to meet their own challenges and needs. For her part, the Deputy Minister for Development Co-operation and Humanitarian Aid of Belgium Heidi Rombouts, said that her country always stands by the least developed countries by launching several initiatives, whether at the country level or at the level of the European Union, pointing out the need to strengthen support in all its forms to ensure that graduation leads to sustainable economic growth and prosperity.She also stressed the need to develop more incentives, such as strengthening the support programme to address the specific vulnerabilities of the countries emerging from the list, in a way that can involve the private sector, develop and promote investment and build resilience. She said that the Doha Programme of Action aimed to enable an additional 15 LDCs to meet the graduation criteria by 2031.Thus, it called for improving the scope and use of a smooth transition through measures and incentives for all countries graduating from the LDC list, in addition to support specific measures for countries that have recently graduated to make graduation sustainable and irreversible. For her part, Deputy Secretary-General of the United Nations Amina Mohamed, said that the time has come to achieve the development goals in the least developed countries, and to provide assistance to this fragile group of countries.A critical component of such support, she said, is the development of dedicated capacity in the form of policy and technical advisory services, which are incentive-based, time-bound and tailored to each country’s needs, including the response to potential crises or disasters that the country may face.She added, that concrete measures such as the iGRAD (Sustainable Graduation Support Facility) which is included as a core component of the Doha Programme of Action can serve as a key stepping stone for countries that graduate from the list to achieve the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and its goals.Participants in the session stressed the need to adopt a programme of renewed, forward-looking global partnership with an imperative role for the international community to provide the full support needed by the countries that graduated from the list.