UN meeting in Turkey aims to help world's poorest

ANTALYA, Turkey

Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said Friday that finding a solution for least developed countries (LDCs) is a “human obligation”.

In a speech at the UN's Midterm Review Conference of the Istanbul Program of Action for Least-Developed Countries in Antalya, Cavusoglu said Ankara's billions in development assistance was decisive in aiding such nations.

He said: "Our official development assistance was around a billion U.S. dollars in 2010." Cavusoglu said this figure reached $3.9 billion in 2015, an amount equal to “54 per thousand of our national income”.

The three-day conference in southern Turkey is a comprehensive review how the 2011 Istanbul Program of Action has been implemented.

That program, passed at the Fourth UN Conference on Least-Developed Countries, charts out the international community’s strategy for sustainable development through to 2021, with a strong focus on developing LDCs’ productive capacities.

Friday’s conference is co-organized by the United Nations Population Fund and the UN Office of the High Representative for Least-Developed Countries.

It aims at creating sustainable growth in a total of 48 countries which account for 12 percent of the world's population.

Topics to be covered include: production capacity; agriculture; food security and rural development; fiscal resources; trade; economic diversification; and human and social development.