LDC graduation criteria needs a revisit

Kathmandu, Sept. 27: Foreign Minister Pradeep Kumar Gyawali has said that the graduation criteria set for the Least Developed Countries (LDCs) needed a revisit.

“For many LDCs, the graduation criteria itself fails to capture the reality in its entirety, which deserve a revisit,” he said while addressing the Annual Ministerial Meeting of LDCs in New York.

He said that although the Committee on Development Policy (CDP) had recommended four countries for graduation which was encouraging that never so many countries had been identified for graduation at a single review, still the process fall short to meet the Istanbul Programme of Action (IPoA)’s aim to enable half of the LDCs to meet the graduation criteria by 2020.

He called for creating strong synergy between the implementation of the IPoA and the 2030 Agenda.

According to Gyawali, a robust response is required to ensure that a greater number of LDCs are prepared for graduation. Most importantly, the graduation must be smooth as well as sustainable.

He said that sustainability of development progress was a major challenge for Nepal.

“As the country is recovering from the disastrous earthquake of 2015 and continues to remain vulnerable to natural disasters, the decision regarding our graduation has been deferred till 2021,” he said.

Earlier, Nepal planned to graduate to the ‘developing country’ status by 2018 but at the last minute it wrote to the United Nations that it was not ready to graduate this year.

Nepal met two out of three criteria for graduation for the second consecutive triennial review this year, but we still have low per capita income, he said.

He also said that the country was intensifying development efforts to build ground for sustainable graduation as well as to become middle-income country by 2030.

Foreign Minister Gyawali said that the structural constraints of poverty, inequality and unemployment continue to impede the pace of progress in LDCs while adverse effects of climate change, natural disasters and internal conflicts further compound the challenges.

“Those LDCs, which are also geographically constrained, such as landlocked and small islands, are more vulnerable to these shocks. They bear higher cost of production, transportation and low comparative advantage of their exports,” he said.

He urged the international community to come forward to ensure market access, remove tariff and non-tariff barriers, lift quantitative restrictions, and help capacity building and technology transfer.

“They need financing and investments to conquer poor infrastructures, narrow production and export bases, dismal capital formation, and low factor productivity,” said Gyawali.

Meanwhile, the Foreign Minister has urged the world to uphold the principles of the United Nations (UN) and Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) to save the succeeding generations from the ‘scourge of war’.

In these uncertain times when there are many challenges created by conflicts, poverty and inequality, we should go back to the basics-- to reflect on the UN Charter to save the coming generations from the scourge of war, and to reflect on fundamental principles of NAM which are time tested and are relevant now, he said while addressing the Ministerial Meeting of the NAM in New York.

“The principles are the universal norms for conduct of healthy inter-state relations, and they make guiding ethos of the foreign policy of my country,” he said.

Gyawali also asked to fight against the culture of violence.

“The first line of defence against this should be built in the minds of people –by instilling in them the ‘culture of peace'- the culture which is inclusive and tolerant; the culture of solidarity and social cohesion; and the culture of pluralism and peaceful co-existence,” he said.

“The citadel of peace cannot stand upright if we fail to anchor it well in the way of our living, thinking, attitude and behaviour,” he added.