Section outline

  • The international community has placed strong emphasis on accelerating the process of graduation from the LDC category, i.e. the process through which countries that are LDCs eventually stop receiving special LDC treatment from its development partners thanks to their steady development. The international community has repeatedly set targets for the number of LDCs that graduate in the near future. However, the international economic and geopolitical context has become increasingly challenging for LDCs, and therefore the path towards eventually achieving graduation has become more difficult for LDCs to tread. This has led several countries that could potentially graduate to ask for deferral (postponement) of their graduation. Development partners have reacted on an ad hoc basis, as there are no clear rules of how to process these requests and react to them.