World's Poorest Nations on Slippery Slope

Thalif Deen

UNITED NATIONS, Jul 2 (IPS) - The meeting was billed as a major gathering of political and economic leaders -- mostly trade and foreign ministers -- from the world's 50 poorest nations.

”Among unprecedented global prosperity,” they concluded at the end of a weeklong high-level meeting of the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) on Friday, ”the world's poorest nations were more vulnerable now than ever before.”

The 50 nations categorised as least developed countries (LDCs), with a total population of over 700 million people, range from Afghanistan and Angola to Sierra Leone and Somalia. And 34 of the 50 are from sub-Saharan Africa.

The only bright spot was that two of the LDCs -- the Maldives in South Asia and Cape Verde in Africa -- have shown such remarkable economic resilience that they are both on the verge of ”graduating” from the ranks of LDCs to that of developing nations.

This is a break from the past where the number of LDCs has kept increasing over the last two decades -- from about 26 in the 1980s to 50 last year -- symbolising the worsening economic situation in the developing world.

So far, the only LDC that has bucked the trend and graduated to the developing world is Botswana.