BACKGROUND

Building on the endeavors of the 5th United Nations Conference on the Least Developed Countries (UN LDC5) held from 5th to 9th March 2023 on the topic “From potential to prosperity”, the 10th UNIDO Ministerial Conference of the Least Developed Countries aims to explore new ways towards unlocking this potential through leveraging the innovative solutions in place and turning the policy visions of tomorrow into the actions of today.

Progress by innovation. The United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO) acknowledges the power of innovative solutions as the main driver of progress particularly for the world’s most vulnerable countries. Facing a number of serious challenges, including unrecoverable debts, extreme hunger, lack of access to financial markets, inadequate infrastructure, as well as direct impact from the negative developments deriving from climate change, the LDCs can only rely on the innovative solutions in place to tackle these challenges.

Policy Visions. The Doha Programme of Action has paved the way forward outlining concrete comprehensive actions for the ongoing 2022-2031 decade in the LDCs. Through its newly established Operational Strategy 2022-2031, UNIDO has aligned its strategies and operations across all six DPoA focus areas, making its contribution to their realization indivisible. Similarly, these focus areas which aim to address some of the substantial challenges faced in the 46 least developed countries need to be incorporated into the respective national, regional and global policies to pave the way towards irreversible graduation and sustainable prosperity.

Building resilience. This Conference underlines not only that LDCs have been striving for irreversible graduation for five decades, but also, more than ever, the importance of prioritizing resilient and inclusive industrial development in light of the multiple challenges facing the world. This Conference can serve to not only drive forward the discussions on the tools and policies in place but primarily to acknowledge the importance of timing, to act promptly and accordingly on building resilient industrial development systems to be able to confront the challenges of today and the foreseeable obstacles of tomorrow.

Strengthening partnerships. Nothing is impossible to achieve when partnerships are reinvigorated and strengthened further. The LDCMC10 can serve as a platform of recognition on the significance of partnerships and the multiple benefits they can bring in driving genuine progress and prosperity for the people located in LDCs and beyond.

OBJECTIVE

The High-level Ministerial Dialogue aims to drive forward discussions on the LDCs’ best practices and lessons-learned towards the goal of achieving sustainable industrial development and irreversible graduation from the LDC category. It aims to bring light to the innovative solutions and policies in place towards the realization of the Doha Programme of Action focus areas which include eradicating poverty, leveraging science, technology and innvoation, driving structural transformation, enhancing trade and regional integration, building resilience as well as mobilizing global partnerships.