At Brussels meeting, UN officials describe efforts to help world's poorest States

As a major international conference on how to help the world's least developed countries (LDCs) opened today in Brussels, officials from several United Nations agencies pledged concrete steps to help tackle poverty and promote development.

In his address to the Third UN Conference on the Least Developed Countries, Mark Malloch Brown, the Administrator of the UN Development Programme (UNDP), announced the establishment of a new UNDP Democratic Governance Trust Fund which will be used to launch programmes in such areas as public sector reform, improving parliamentary systems, conflict prevention and peace-building.

"From helping promote decentralization in Nepal, to our work rebuilding security services in Somalia, to strengthening human rights protections in Yemen, we already have real skills and expertise, and there is already real demand with requests for assistance," he said.

The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Mary Robinson, described how her office is providing technical assistance to a number of LDCs, including help for Uganda, Rwanda, Malawi and Nepal in strengthening their national human rights institutions. "In a number of LDCs, such as Bangladesh, Sierra Leone and Cambodia, we have also been engaged in a rigorous debate with government and civil society concerning the establishment of such institutions," she added.

The UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), Ruud Lubbers, described a project proposed jointly by his agency and the UN Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) aimed at empowering women to ensure food security. He noted that increasingly, rural women - including refugees and returnees - have had to assume a key role in this area by producing staple crops and raising poultry and small animals in the LDCs.

Underscoring the value of all such initiatives, the President of the UN General Assembly, Harri Holkeri of Finland, called for a "multidimensional and integrated approach" to helping the world's 49 LDCs. "We need to remove trade barriers and provide debt relief as much as we need to build local health care and education systems," he said.

The Third UN Conference on Least Developed Countries brings together the leaders of some 30 donor countries and LDCs, as well as heads of UN and international organisations. The conference, hosted by the European Union, ends on Sunday.