Graduation From LDC Status Lessons That Could Be Learned From Best Practices

Since the establishment of the category of Least Developed Countries (LDCs) in 1971 and the graduation notion in 1991, there has been little progress towards meeting the development needs of these countries. Regardless of the commitments made by the international community in assisting these countries, little efforts have been made to materialise such aspirations. Being categorised as a least developed country entails a country to benefit from trade related concessions and special treatments. Once LDCs meet the criteria to graduate from the LDC status, they face a bigger challenge and that is the loss of preferential treatments subsequent to graduation. Although special measures are developed to minimise the challenges of graduation and disruption of development progress, many LDCs are sceptical of workability of these measures and demand the extension of these preferential treatments even after graduation. This paper aims to examine the issues and PhD Candidate, Macquarie Law School, Macquarie University. Corresponding Author: seb.qazizada@gmail.com. PhD Candidate, Ahmad Ibrahim Kulliyyah of Laws, international Islamic University Malaysia. PhD Candidate, Ahmad Ibrahim Kulliyyah of Laws, international Islamic University Malaysia. 39 challenges of graduation from LDC status and its impacts on the graduating countries. This paper looks at Maldives as a case study to indicate how it could manage to minimise the challenges of graduation from LDC status. At last, in order to ameliorate the negative impacts of graduation from LDC status, this paper provides recommendations to facilitating a smooth transition.