New Delhi: Leaders from the world’s poorest nations expressed their disappointment over the treatment of their countries at a UN Summit on Sunday, news agency AFP reported.
Central African Republic’s president, speaking at UN Least Developed Countries meeting, said that his resource-rich but impoverished nation was being “looted” by “Western powers”.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres condemned the rich countries for throttling poor nations with “predatory” interest rates and crippling fuel prices. He said there could be “no more excuses” for not providing aid.
Meanwhile, Presidents and Prime Ministers from Africa and the Asia-Pacific region made calls for financial aid.
Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, whose country is scheduled to graduate out of LDC status, said poorer nations “deserve” certainty over financing for development and climate.
“The international community must renew its commitment for real structural transformation in LDCs,” Hasina said, adding, “Our nations do not ask for charity. What we seek are our due international commitments.”
Zambia’s President Hakainde Hichilema said providing financial aid was “a matter of credibility”.
“LDCs cannot afford another lost decade,” said Narayan Kaji Shrestha, deputy prime minister of Nepal, which is to leave the LDC club for the Middle Income Countries division by 2026.
Central African Republic’s President Faustin-Archange Touadera, in his speech, lashed out at sanctions imposed by the UN Security Council and other institutions against the nation that has seen decades of instability.
Touadera said the country’s 5.5 million people could not understand how with vast reserves of gold, diamonds, cobalt, oil and uranium, it “remains, more than 60 years after independence, one of the poorest in the world”.
“Central African Republic has always been wrongly considered by certain Western powers as a reserve for strategic materials,” he said, adding, “It has suffered a systematic looting since its independence, helped by political instability supported by certain Western powers or their allies.”