A world without LDCs: Towards a Better Framework to Assist Structural Transformation for LDC Graduation

Round Table jointly organized with UNCTAD – Tackling vulnerabilities, building resilience 

No country wants to be an LDC. Yet in the last 44 years, only four countries have been able to graduate from the LDC category. None of these four, let alone the 48 others, have been able to seriously reduce economic vulnerability. And we are far from meeting the agreed target, set out in the Istanbul Programme of Action, of enabling half of the LDCs to meet the graduation criteria by 2020. There is urgent need for a better framework, with a much more concerted, comprehensive, and coherent set of measures to ensure self-sustained growth in LDCs and to re‐structure their economies towards higher levels and a wider spectrum of value addition. This round table will identify what such a framework should entail.