EDITORIAL: It seems that the United Nations (UN) has finally realised that one of its most ineffective initiatives has been the LDCs (Least Developed Countries) category, created in 1971 with 24 original members with the aim to grant trade and market privileges, special aid packages, and easier access to finance to the most suffering countries to help lift them out of the poverty trap.
Yet the number of member countries has doubled in the five decades that this platform has done little more than issue statements that rich countries have been unable, or chosen not to, back with solid, long-term investments.
And now recent disasters like the hangover from the Covid pandemic, commodity price uncertainty triggered by the Russia-Ukraine war and especially the many challenges of climate change have combined to threaten economic collapse in some countries, outright default in others (like Pakistan) and even the prospect of a violent implosion in a few of them.
That explains the rush to gather hundreds of presidents, prime ministers and business leaders from 33 countries in Africa, 12 in Asia-Pacific and Haiti in the Caribbean at Doha, Qatar to take stock and hammer out solutions all over again.
Ironically, though, buried deep in press releases advertising this big gathering is the admission that major cash pledges are still not expected anytime soon, especially not this week.
That begs the same old question, of course, of what they hope to accomplish by throwing millions of dollars into an event that will just highlight what is already very well known.
The UN’s high representative for LDCs seems to think that about 500 business executives descending on Doha from around the world will find ways to “boost private investment in poor countries”. But she didn’t care to explain why they would do so now when they’ve avoided such commitments for the last 50 years because under-developed countries do not have the framework to support their risk management requirements.
The UN itself has admitted that distress calls from LDCs have increased over the last few years, especially since Covid shutdowns battered some economies more than others. And rich countries are being urged to step up and help them because everybody would lose if some of them actually go under.
They are in desperate need for more foreign aid and investment, more trade and commerce, and especially urgent debt write-offs because they’re caught in the vicious circle where they constantly need more debt to pay off old loans. And it is very concerning that nothing concrete is being done even as problems are mounting and some countries are ready to fall right over the edge without immediate help.
Some G20 countries did agree to rollover parts of third world debt in the thick of the Covid pandemic, but that did not make the problem go away and something far more substantial is going to be needed.
It’s also pretty clear that while bouncing ideas off the global business elite prompts a lot of fancy ideas and fancier headlines, very few of them are really implementable. And all poor countries take home from such congregations is further realisation of their helplessness and the sense that nobody with the financial firepower to make a difference is really willing to back their talk with action.
That is why the UN needs to move from its role as a facilitator and develop a framework based on deliverables.
It is the only international institution with a truly global footprint, which enables it to reach deep into troubled areas and offer crucial help in things like disaster relief, refugee resettlement, etc.
It must now use this outreach to tilt the developed world into offering quantifiable help to countries on the brink of collapse.
Copyright Business Recorder, 2023
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