This year marks 50 years since the least developed countries (LDCs) category was established by a United Nations General Assembly resolution, following research, analysis and advocacy work by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD). This pivotal landmark comes as intergovernmental negotiations are taking shape for a new programme of action for the LDCs for the decade 2022–2031, and whose implementation period will broadly coincide with the final decade of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. These negotiations bring together LDCs and their development partners to devise innovative ways to tackle the major development challenges that bedevil LDC economies and societies. These include long-standing challenges, e.g. impediments to structural transformation and sustainable development, more recent ones (especially those created by the COVID-19 shock), as well as increasingly serious and risk-bearing future challenges, such as
those deriving from climate change. The outlook for LDCs is grim: mired in the health, economic and social crises brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic, in 2020 they recorded their worst growth performance in about three decades. More broadly, these crises have reversed the progress that had been painstakingly achieved on several dimensions of development, notably on the fronts of poverty, hunger, education and health. Reversing these gains will have lingering adverse consequences on the development of LDCs over the mid-term.