LDC conference ends with 10-year action plan

The Fourth U.N. Conference on Least Developed Countries (LDCs) closed in Istanbul on Friday "with a number of recommendations seeking to halve, from 48 to 24, the number of LDCs during the next 10 years," the Guardian's "Global Development" blog reports (Tran, 5/13). 

The U.N. News Centre writes that "[d]onor countries also committed to supporting programmes to improve the capacity of the youth through providing them with skills, jobs opportunities and health care. ... The LDCs and their development partners committed to ensuring good governance, rule of law, human rights, gender equality and women's empowerment and inclusive democratic principles" (5/13).

The plan "stresses the importance of foreign investment and the private sector in lifting millions of people out of poverty. ... The emphasis on productive capacity - energy, infrastructure and agriculture - marked the most significant difference from the last LDC action plan in Brussels in 2001, which concentrated on health, education and other social programs," VOA News reports (Jones, 5/13).