BSS, Dhaka

In the global fight against poverty, the international community should move towards working out a 'new deal' to make aid architecture to LDCs more people centric to promote inclusive development under country specific development programme.

President of LDC Watch Dr Arjun Kumar Kirki told BSS on Thursday of the need for reforming the global aid system to build it on a more coordinated approach from donors and recipients sides to make development assistance bringing sustainable development to poorer nations.

Dr Karki, a national of Nepal made the observations after attending a conference of LDCs Asia-Pacific nations held here to review the progress of Brussel's Programme of Action (BPoA) worked out in 2001 under a UN sponsored conference on least developed nations.

"Mere commitment is not enough; there must be strong political will from both sides to bring change and the LDCs especially should not shy away in making their voice heard," he said making points which are undermining aid effectiveness. For that LDCs should take all stakeholders on board in developing and implementing poverty eradication programmes, he added.

"Moreover such programmes need to be more targeted, realistic, measurable and achievable," he said adding people ownership to such efforts is highly essential over narrowly based government ownership to deliver the goods.

This is especially true in case of BPoA, he said laying emphasis on a fresh look and a new vow to change the ongoing approach to official development assistance (ODA) to LDCs to make it more demand based than a supply side phenomenon.

Moreover, he said he was the lone civil society representative from the entire Asia-Pacific regions to Dhaka LDC conference, in addition to a few local NGO representatives. This is not helpful to LDCs cause, he said laying emphasis on securing broader participation of NGOs, civil society organizations and private sector to such event to help develop people centric policy framework for achieving sustainable growth.

The Dhaka LDCs conference was held as part of a regional exercise leading to The 4th UN conference on LDCs to be held in Istanbul, Turkey next year, he said adding a review of the progress of the BPoA so far proved dismaying.

He said in fact, the entire ODA approach proved counter- productive so far only contributing to a steady rise in the number of LDCs. It was 24 in 1970 when the group was created only to grow to 49 at the moment.

"Why more nations are becoming poorer," he poised the question and blamed lack of sincere commitment of the developed nations to the development of the poorer nations. "We are having more outflows of resources now from less developed regions than the ODA inflow," he said explaining the situation.

He said alone from 2001 to 2008 the gap between aid promised and delivered to LDCs under BPoA stood at US$ 31.4 billion. It is enough to indicate how this programme is failing to achieve the projected goals.

Moreover, duty free market access to LDCs exports also remained more limited; he said blaming more non-tariff barriers as outweighing the advantages officially offered by many developed nations to LDCs in this respect.

Thus when ODA is on decline, trade for aid is not also bringing the desired benefits contributing to the making their situation worse. "This is why the LDC Watch is spearheading the global campaign to protect and promote the cause of the world's poorer nation," he said.

This organization was established after UN Brussels conference as a global alliance of regional, national and international civil society organizations. It mainly works as a lobbying group and run advocacy campaign to make the voice of the poor heard at all levels.

He said a strong advocacy programme and government, NGO and civil society partnership is essential to build pressure in the global front for the development of the poorer nations. At the same time LDCs should secure improvement in governance and build human and institutional capacity and promote productive ability to make globalization work and enhance the role of trade in their development.

Efforts should be also in place, he said to reduce vulnerability and protecting environment. They should also improve domestic resource mobilization to reduce external dependence; which are also the major outlines of the BPoA, he said.

Dr Karki said, LDCs are mainly fighting in five fronts with climate change issues including food security, fuel and debt crisis and impact of global warming for which developed nations are mainly responsible. He said justice demands that they should pay for damages to the vulnerable nations including their debt cancellation.

International financial institutions should also come under reform to promote need based loans to LDCs so that they can avoid bad loans and growing debt crisis, he suggested.

Source: The New Nation (January 24, 2010)