Last week, Dhaka hosted Asia-Pacific Dialogue on LDCs as part of preparation of the 4th UN Conference on LDCs in Islanbul, Turkey next year. But the two-day entire exercise remained essentially limited to government-to-government discourse without taking on board the broader stakeholders from civil society, NGOs and private sector. LDC Watch President Dr Arjun K Karki was the only representative of the global civil society in the conference, besides representatives of a few NGOs essentially toeing the official lines of donors support.

Civil society�s involvement needed

Karki made a strong point in the conference for vigorous involvement of the civil society organisations in such important gathering to bring the voice of the people on the floor as supplementary to government efforts for a common cause. Unless people�s voice is heard, development will not reach the grassroots, he said.

He said there is a growing need to work out a new deal to redefine the ODA and its outreach. �We must see how it is going to benefit the poor, reaching to projects focused to hit poverty level in the ground and above all democratization of development programmes and projects away from narrowly based government control.

Therefore LDCs must have greater control on flexibility over foreign loans to mobilize them to places and activities where they need it the most, he said.

This is why ODA must be targeted, realistic, measurable and achievable to bring sustainable development, he said.

Another critic said, the very serious issue is drastic fall of ODA to LDCs and ruthless exploitation of global trade to the benefit of the developed nations, he said. He said as ODA starts declining, developed nations put forward the new idea of helping the poorer nations by helping them promoting free trade to the market of developed nations.

WTO's maneuvering agreeing duty-free access to 97 per cent exports originating from LDCs

They promised them duty-free access for that purpose but the WTO Hong Kong ministerial summit showed how they are maneuvering the process by only agreeing duty-free access to 97 per cent exports originating from LDCs. But they are keeping secret what items will come under the 97 per cent offer and which of them will remain under the ban, they are saying they will not divulge it until the negotiation of Doha development round is over, effectively denying them the chance of diversifying export to benefit from such upcoming opening.

Moreover, developed nations are pushing the LDCs this time to take new credit from them to learn how to make successful trade. This means pushing new consultants and new conditions to aid to tie LDCs annual development programmes with supply side of donors credit. It looks like entering into a black hole, he said.

In fact the Doha development round is failing in endless stalemate so also is failing the BPoA.

Karki said, LDCs are now fighting on five fronts and none of which is their own creation. Naming food security, fuel and climate change issues and debt trap, he said developed nations are at the root of all such problems hitting hard the world�s poorer nations. He said the exploiters must pay, this is the agreed principle now and justice demand so to make compensation of damages and put forward adaptation fund to deal with evolving crisis.

So also the cancellation of debt of LDCs should come on top priority of the global community while rebuilding the global aid architecture, he said.

Karki said there is no alternative to strong advocacy and public awareness campaign to protect and promote the cause of the poor not only in the domestic front of LDCs but also in the global scale to make the voice of the poor heard.

Here the governments of LDCs should find new friends in NGOs and civil society organizations to present their case more effectively to the global community but also in diversifying development activities to ensure more effective use of aid, implementation of projects and securing higher accountability at all levels.

Source: http://www.weeklyholiday.net/front.html#04