Excellencies, Ladies and Gentlemen,

I am happy to be here at the concluding session of this Dialogue on the Brussels Programme of Action for LDCs. I congratulate you on the thorough deliberations that you have generated on the full range of issues that concern the LDCs in their development endeavours. I am sure the outcome of your discussions here in Dhaka would provide substantive input to our deliberations at the forthcoming 4th UN LDC Conference in Turkey.

It has been about a decade that we adopted the Brussels Programme of Action for the LDCs for the decade 2001-2010. We are into the last year of the Programme of Action. It is a matter of deep concern that implementation of the Brussels Programme of Action has remained a far cry for most of the LDCs. I believe that regional dialogues, such as this one, among the LDCs, involving development parfeyelatitners and the UN System actors, would be able to identify the challenges and opportunities as we look forward to achieving the internationally agreed development goals, including the Millennium Development Goals.

There is no denying that despite the best of efforts, many LDCs could not achieve the level of development which the Brussels Programme of Action sought to achieve, primarily because of non-fulfilment of the ODA commitment made in the Monterey Consensus by our development partners. They failed, also due to the absence of fair, equitable and inclusive international finance and trade regimes. Only a few countries have lived up to their promise in terms of ODA. Our calls for quota and duty free access of LDC products to developed and other big markets as well as for reforming the international financial institutions (IFI) to make them fair and inclusive have gone largely unattended. These issues must be addressed in any future programme of action in a way that guarantees fulfilment of the ODA commitments to the LDCs in the shortest possible time, ensures liberalised trade regime for LDC products, and guarantees LDC representation in IFIs.

Ladies and Gentlemen,
Many factors beyond control of the LDCs have negatively influenced their development efforts in the current decade. Food crisis, energy crisis, financial and economic crisis, negative impacts of climate change, etc. have only complicated their long-standing fight against poverty, hunger, illiteracy and disenfranchisement of vulnerable groups, including women, children and the elderly. Health, education and social safety net programmes, the essential components for achieving the MDGs, have collapsed in many LDCs as resources were diverted from these critical socio-economic sectors to disaster management. There was no other option. Natural disasters have played havoc in many countries, including in Bangladesh, with increased frequency and ferocity that the scientists attribute to unabated climate change caused by inconsiderate industrialisation in developed countries and in big economies. Financial and economic crisis caused stagnation in vital sectors of economic growth, including trade, overseas and domestic employment, remittances and Foreign Direct Investment.

I thank you for the engaging deliberations that you have had on these issues during the last three days. Such deliberations provide scope for us to compare notes on these issues of critical importance to all of us, as well as to provide visibility and place in the public domain. Poverty reduction, ensuring food security, increasing LDC share in global trade, protecting environment and addressing vulnerability, and development of human and institutional capacity are the areas that we need to ensure international commitment and their full implementation if we are to save our peoples from the scourge of poverty, hunger, illiteracy and other forms of deprivation.

Ladies and Gentlemen,

In Bangladesh, the Hon'ble Prime Minister and her government attach highest importance to poverty eradication. We are convinced that poverty lies at the centre of all ills. We are determined to make Bangladesh a middle-income country by 2021, the fiftieth anniversary of our independence. We plan to bring down poverty rate to 15% by 2021. Providing employment to at least one person in each family is one of the targets among a range of programmes that will be implemented to reduce poverty.

Education, particularly primary education and education of the girl child, is a top priority of the present government. We believe that education is the most powerful tool for the empowerment of human beings, and particularly of women. We plan to ensure 100 per cent net student enrolment at primary level by this year and attain full literacy by 2014. We have introduced several programmes to retain children at schools, including providing meals at school, so as to effectively address the issue of school dropout.

Bangladesh believes that ensuring food security is an essential pre-condition for socio-economic development. It is from this perspective that our government, immediately after assuming office in January 2009, adopted several measures to bring down prices of essential food items making them affordable for the common people. These measures included reducing prices of fertiliser, seed, fuel and electricity for irrigation, and other farm inputs, ensuring their timely supply, and guaranteeing fair prices of farm products. All these have resulted in enhanced agricultural production, thereby stabilising the food supply situation in the country.

Bangladesh is among the worst victims of climate change. All of us here belong to the same category. We have been steadfast in our struggle to promote and protect the rights of the Most Vulnerable Countries (MVCs) and the LDCs in all international forums. You are well aware of the leading role that Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina played during and before the Copenhagen conference of December last year on global climate change issues. So have your leaders. It is critical that we continue to speak in one voice until a legally binding agreement is reached encompassing all the building blocks agreed under the Bali Plan of Action-mitigation, adaptation, finance, technology transfer, and capacity building. We also need to ensure preferential access of the LDCs to the present and future funding arrangements to meet our needs in terms of adaptation and mitigation.

Ladies and Gentlemen,

It makes me pause for a moment when I reflect on the fact that the number of hungry people has risen to over 1 billion, which is one-sixth of our human family. It reminds us of the unpleasant truth that the earth is one but the world is not. This is an unethical situation at a time of opulence and technological advance in parts of the world. We all need to reflect on this. It is critically important that all countries-developed, developing and LDCs-need to combine their strength to bring an end to this shameful chapter of human history. We need to work together to make this planet a habitable place for ourselves and for our future generations through protecting the environment and promoting sustainable development.

Posterity will remember us with gratitude if we succeed.

I thank you all.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Statement of the Hon'ble Foreign Minister at the closing session of the High-level Asia-Pacific Dialogue on the Brussels Programme of Action for the Least Developed Countries, 1400 hours, 20 January 2010, Sonargaon Hotel