Trade Hot Topics Issue#69: Fourth UN Conference on LDCs - What to Expect?

Global problems need global responses. Global leaders often get together to validate these responses. However, such high level conclaves often have low effectiveness when their outcomes do not contain relevant, concrete and monitorable deliverables -backed up by critical political ownership. The Fourth United Nations Conference on the Least Developed Countries (UNLDC IV) will be held in Turkey during the first half of 2011. As the preparatory process gathers momentum, the challenges of designing a high-value outcome appear to be increasingly daunting. The present article seeks to highlight some of the relevant concerns.