Statement by

H.E. Mr. Kamlesh Sharma - Head of Delegation from India,

Ambassador and Permanent Representative to the United Nations in New York

May 15 – PM Session

(Check Against Delivery)

Mr. President,

We congratulate you and members of the Bureau on your election. We know that this important conference has been placed in good hands.

This is the third UN Conference on the LDCs. Mr. President, we must first of all recognize that the object of these conferences has to be that they should draw towards a close by virtue of the countries constituting this category graduating out of it. That these conferences should be perpetuated indefinitely would signify failure and that the objective of the conferences is not being met. But what we see is entrenchment and even expansion of the category. Anyone looking at the papers for this third UN Conference must find it disquieting that from conference to conference the number of LDCs has gone up.

If so much of a nation's population was allowed to be so severely disadvantaged, there would be scathing international criticism of there being a bad governance system. But here we are in a global society, and those who have the most say in its governance should see to it that their response to the plight of the LDCs does not invite the same criticism. Donors doing the barest minimum to salve their consciences will not be enough to save the LDCs.

This Conference must become a turning point from failure to success.

The fundamental challenge LDCs face, of populations at risk, is one they share with many other developing countries. India shares many of the features of LDCs, even though growth in India has diminished the numbers of those who live in absolute poverty. The international community must consider the problem of poverty, underdevelopment and vulnerability in the wider context of the developing world. It is both cruel and laughable to argue, as has been done, that other developing countries must share with the OECD equal responsibility as development partners for the LDCs. We trust this conference will see the last of these diversionary attempts.

On the question of responsibility and accountability, there has been much discussion in recent months of the linkage between human development and human rights, and of the need to draw up indicators to monitor how governments perform on both. It is, however, often forgotten that the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR) imposes specific obligations for international cooperation on resources, on the right to an adequate standard of living and freedom from hunger. It is necessary to develop indicators in order to carry out the objective measurements of the performance of donor governments with regard to the extent of fulfilling these obligations.

I would like to illustrate by referring, for instance, to agriculture and food security, two of the tasks of Commitment 4 which donors undertook under the Covenant. Agricultural subsidies in the developed world, estimated at almost $500 billion, can be seen to be ten times higher than the total volume of ODA. The inadequate response to the Consolidated Appeals from the UN system, even for emergency food supplies, has been attributed to `humanitarian favouritism'. As yet, there is still very little research or interest in improving the productivity of arid lands, or of the crops grown there, which would have greatly benefited a large number of LDCs, specially in regard to food security.

We also note with concern that population programmes, covered under Commitment 3 are receiving a smaller share of ODA, and that in spite of the agreement at the ICPD in Cairo on the sharing of the costs of financing the Programme of Action, the international community has met only 38% of its obligation of $5.7 billion by 2000. Similarly, the World Health Report points out that less than 10% of the $ 60 billion spent annually on medical research in the developed countries goes into a search for cures for the diseases that afflict the 90% of the world's population who live in developing countries. While increasing and justified attention is being paid to HIV / AIDS, we should not lose sight of the continuing scourge of entrenched diseases such as tuberculosis and malaria - which cripple development and quality of life in all aspects.

Commitment 5, on enhancing the role of trade in development, will be crucial. It is to be welcomed that some donors have now committed themselves to opening up their markets to essentially all products from the LDCs; it remains to be seen how speedily and comprehensively these measures are implemented. At the same time, it would also be necessary to monitor the impact of these measures on exports from other developing countries, many of whom are in a position almost as parlous as that of the LDCs.

The growing marginalisation of the LDCs since the Uruguay Round needs to be addressed frontally. Their share in global trade is around 0.4%. We should be looking at ways of substantially improving this by other developed countries granting products of LDCs improved market access. I am glad to note from the WTO paper circulated for this meeting that in terms of imports from LDCs as a percentage of total imports, India's imports from LDCs is the second highest.

Another issue that needs urgent attention is the accession of LDCs to the WTO. Presently, there are nine applicants; we would strongly urge admittance of these applicants based on minimum agreed criteria. This would go a long way in integrating them into the global trading system and would help them to address their acute economic and social problems.

In Commitment 6, development partners are asked to facilitate access to and to transfer modern, intensive, environmentally sound technologies to the LDCs to reduce their vulnerability and to conserve the environment. This is one of the many commitments undertaken at Rio that the development partners have largely ignored.

In Commitment 7, mobilising financial resources, development partners are urged to reverse the declining trend in ODA etc. For most LDCs, ODA constitutes an overwhelming portion of their development budget; for some of the poorest countries, ODA is the development budget. The sharp fall in per capita ODA must have had a calamitous impact on the LDCs, and on their ability to meet their development goals and infrastructural needs central for development.

Fostering a people-centred policy framework in Commitment I and promoting good governance in Commitment 2 are laudable objectives, but there is nothing like perfect governance. We believe that any exhortation to the LDCs to promote good governance and root out corruption at the national level, should be matched by an equal commitment to the repatriation of funds taken illegally out of the developing countries, estimated to be in the region of $22 billion in the 1990s.

There is no evidence, from the statistics available, that LDCs spend unconscionable amounts of money on defence; some have genuine security problems, and as long as it is the responsibility of governments to protect their citizens from external and internal threats, this is an obligation they must discharge. But there is another interesting fact that the international community should recognise - that LDCs are among the staunchest supporters of UN peacekeeping. Just four LDCs provided over 26% of the 32,000 troops in the field at the end of March 2001. This commitment of the LDCs to UN peacekeeping is invaluable. At the same time, there is not sufficient focus on the extraordinary costs of recovery from the conflicts that many LDCs have undergone in recent years. For example, the territories of LDCs are seen to carry a disproportionate percentage of the unmarked mines sown throughout the world; the cost to them in lives and in the amount of arable land taken out of cultivation is rarely factored into their needs. To this must be added the cost of clearing mines worldwide, estimated as ranging from US$33 billion to US$85 billion in 1997 and which would have escalated over the past five years.

Mr. President, India has constantly tried to increase mutually beneficial economic cooperation with all LDCs in general, and with those in our extended neighbourhood, in particular. We have a strong faith in and commitment to SouthSouth cooperation. We have had an extensive and expanding programme of economic and technical cooperation in diverse sectors for more than four decades, involving the training and education of many nationals from these countries in Indian institutions and the despatch of Indian experts in identified areas to these countries, in keeping with our belief in self-reliance and human resource development. The statistics are impressive but we wish to do more. In our neighbourhood, we have undertaken major development projects, including a modern hospital in Maldives, hydroelectric projects in Bhutan and, most recently, a road project in Myanmar. Africa, with whom we have historical and warm relations based on solidarity, has always been a very high priority for us in our technical cooperation programme, and this will continue.

Mr. President, I want to make two last points in closing. The first is that, because LDCs are by definition fragile economies and societies, faulty prescriptions can be fatal. Any advice they are given must be thought

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through. The second point has to do with the repeated calls for coordination of External Assistance. Donors say that they want to coordinate so that they see the whole picture. What has happened is not what the well-meaning intended. Donors lay down policy in discussions among themselves; the recipients are then coordinated. The other problem with coordination is that donors, having checked with each other, tend to flock to the more accessible and better-developed areas, creating disparities within States, setting up the very pattern of development without equity that, as a doctrine, the international community warns against.

We hope, therefore, Mr. President, that, at this Conference, development partners will hear what the LDCs have to say, and take their views into account in the formulation of their own policies, and in the enhancement, distribution and allocation of development assistance. We shall also no doubt be aware that we carry out this somewhat desperate discourse in an era of the promises held out in a globalising world. Here, we would like to reiterate that the important principle is of respecting the priorities of the LDCs and the agreements at the international level, such as those reflected in the Millennium Declaration. Above all, Mr. President, we should all strive always to be animated by a belief in human dignity, solidarity and shared destiny.

Mr. President, this is a compressed version of a longer statement for circulation.

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