Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

The path to graduation and beyond

2016; United Nations; Linguagem: Inglês

10.18356/6d4db5ea-en

2225-1723

Regional Development and Policy

The 2011 Programme of Action for the Least Developed Countries for the Decade 2011–2020 (the Istanbul Programme of Action (IPoA)) included a target that half of the 49 countries with least developed country (LDC) status at the time should meet the statistical criteria for graduation by 2020. This was the first time that the international community had adopted an explicit target for graduation from the LDC category. Now, halfway from the setting of the target to the date for its attainment, it seems clear that it will not be met. The projections presented in chapter 2 of this Report suggest that only 16 (one third) of the current LDCs (in addition to Samoa, which graduated in 2014) can be expected to satisfy the full graduation criteria by 2021. This suggests that policies at the national and/or international level — that is, national graduation strategies and/ or the international support measures (ISMs) for LDCs — have so far fallen significantly short of the expectations of the IPoA.