The Fourth U.N. Conference on Least Developed Countries (LDCs) closed in Istanbul on Friday “with a number of recommendations seeking to halve, from 48 to 24, the number of LDCs during the next 10 years,” the Guardian’s “Global Development” blog reports (Tran, 5/13). 

The U.N. News Centre writes that “[d]onor countries also committed to supporting programmes to improve the capacity of the youth through providing them with skills, jobs opportunities and health care. … The LDCs and their development partners committed to ensuring good governance, rule of law, human rights, gender equality and women’s empowerment and inclusive democratic principles” (5/13).

The plan “stresses the importance of foreign investment and the private sector in lifting millions of people out of poverty. … The emphasis on productive capacity – energy, infrastructure and agriculture – marked the most significant difference from the last LDC action plan in Brussels in 2001, which concentrated on health, education and other social programs,” VOA News reports (Jones, 5/13).