Africa

Credit: UN Photo/Loey Felipe

By Harvey Dupiton
NEW YORK, Sep 17 2025 (IPS)

The recent IPS article, “UNGA’s High-Level Meetings: NGOs Banned Again,” served as a stark and painful reminder of a long-standing paradox: the United Nations, an organization founded on the principle of “We the Peoples,” often closes its doors to the very communities it was created to serve.

Yet, after sharing this article with our members, we were reminded of a powerful truth: in spite of these physical barriers, the NGO community is “better together” and remains a potent force capable of shaping the decisions of governments.

The ban, far from silencing us, has only amplified our resolve. As we speak, hundreds of NGOs are organizing side events outside the UN, participating with willing governments and continuing our vital work.

We are often told that access is restricted “for security.” IPS quotes voices across civil society who have heard that refrain for years. But the net effect is to marginalize the very partners the UN relies upon when crises break, when schools need rebuilding, when refugees need housing, when women and youth need pathways into the formal economy.

If the room is too small for the people, you don’t shrink the people—you build a bigger room.

This ban also speaks to the very heart of why our NGO Committee is so deeply involved in the 2025 UNGA Week (September 22-30) of International Affairs initiative. We are committed to expanding UNGA beyond the walls of the UN and into the vibrant communities of the Tri-State area and beyond.

Our goal is to transform this week into an “Olympic-caliber” platform where diplomacy connects directly with culture, community, and commerce.

As a private-sector committee of NGOs, we recognize we are sometimes perceived as being “on the side of governments” because we emphasize jobs, investment, and a strong economy. That has spared us some of the blowback that human rights and relief NGOs bear every September.

But proximity to government doesn’t mean complacency. Where we part ways with business-as-usual—both in some capitals and within parts of the UN system—is on the scale of joblessness that goes uncounted.

Official series routinely understate the lived reality in many communities. In Haiti and across segments of the LDC bloc, our coalition’s fieldwork and partner surveys suggest joblessness well above headline rates—often exceeding 60% when you strip away precarious, informal survivalism. If you don’t count people’s reality, you can’t credibly fix it.

That is why our 2025 agenda is jobs-first by design. Our Global Jobs & Skills Compact is not just a proposal; it is a declaration of our commitment to a jobs-first agenda, aligning governments, investors, DFIs, and diaspora capital around a simple test: does the money create decent work at scale—and are we measuring it?

We are mobilizing financing tied to verifiable employment outcomes, building skills pipelines for the green and digital transitions, and hard-wiring accountability into the process so that “promises” translate into paychecks.

Accountability also needs daylight. During the General Debate we will run a Jobs-First Debate Watch—tracking job and skills commitments announced from the podium and inviting follow-through across the year.

The point is not to “catch out” governments but to help them succeed by making the public a partner. Anyone who has walked with a loved one through recovery knows the first step is honesty. Denial doesn’t heal; measurement does. That is as true for addiction as it is for unemployment.

IPS rightly reminds us that NGOs are indispensable to multilateralism even when we are asked to wait outside. We agree—and we’ll add this: if the UN is “We the Peoples,” then UNGA Week must be where the peoples are.

In 2025, that means inside the Hall and across the city—on campus quads and church aisles, in galleries and small businesses, at parks and public squares. We’ll keep inviting governments to walk that route with us, shoulder to shoulder.

Until every door is open, we will keep building bigger rooms. And we will keep filling them—with jobs, skills, investment, and the voices that make multilateralism real.

Harvey Dupiton is a former UN Press Correspondent and currently Chair of the NGO Committee on Private Sector Development (NGOCPSD).

IPS UN Bureau

 

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Uniformed marines hand over UN and Turkmenistan flags to UN special representative on LLCDs Rabab Fatima and Turkmenistan's Foreign Minister Rashid Meredov during a flag lowering ceremony in Awaza. Credit: Kizito Makoye/IPS

By Kizito Makoye
AWAZA, Turkmenistan , Sep 16 2025 (IPS)

The theater of diplomacy can be more revealing than the speeches. Under a scorching Caspian sun in Awaza, two marines lowered their flags with the precision of a ballet. The green silk of Turkmenistan, folded into a neat bundle before the UN’s blue-and-gold standard, fluttered briefly and vanished into waiting hands.

Delegates squinted in the glare. A security guard, drained after days of marathon negotiations, whispered, “We made it.” The applause that followed carried an implicit bet that geography would no longer condemn 32 landlocked developing countries (LLDCs) to economic stagnation.

“This is not the end,” Rabab Fatima, the UN’s top envoy for LLDCs, told the assembled diplomats. “It is the beginning of a new chapter for the LLDCs. LLDCs may be landlocked, but they are not opportunity-locked.”

Her words capped four days of bargaining that produced the Awaza Political Declaration and a ten-year Programme of Action—promising structural economic transformation, regional integration, resilient infrastructure, climate adaptation, and the mobilization of financing partnerships. But whether these ambitions become asphalt, fiber-optic cable, and trade corridors depends on what happens next—starting with the LLDC Ministerial meeting on September 26, on the sidelines of the 80th UN General Assembly.

“For the first time, we have a programme of action for the LLDCs, which includes a dedicated priority area on climate action and disaster resilience,” Fatima said. “As we all know, digital technology is reshaping how the world learns, trades, governs and innovates. The Awaza Programme of Action puts digital transformation at its core through investment in science, technology and affordable infrastructure for e-learning, e-governance and e-commerce.”

The geography tax

Being landlocked remains one of development’s oldest handicaps. More than 600 million people live in LLDCs. Their exports must cross at least one international border—and often several—before reaching a port. Transport costs can be twice as high as those of coastal economies, eroding profit margins and discouraging investment.

Dean Mulozi, a delegate from Zambia, put it bluntly: “It’s not just that we’re far from the sea. It’s that the world’s arteries don’t reach us easily. We are always waiting—for fuel, fiber-optic cable, containers, investment.”

The Declaration seeks to unblock those arteries: freer transit, harmonized customs, integrated transport corridors, and digital transformation—policies designed to cut border delays, lower costs, and attract investors. For countries such as Rwanda and Burundi, this is not rhetoric. Rwandan coffee growers lose profits as trucks crawl over narrow mountain roads toward Tanzania’s Dar es Salaam port. Burundian tea producers navigate customs regimes that can turn a week’s delay into financial ruin.

Ambition Versus Reality

The Awaza Programme includes a proposed Infrastructure Investment Finance Facility, with a headline USD 10 billion commitment from the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank. In theory, this could carve reliable corridors linking East Africa’s heartlands to the African Continental Free Trade Area. In practice, similar pledges have evaporated in the past when political will or money ran dry.

Five priorities dominate the blueprint: doubling manufacturing output and services exports; deepening trade integration; building transport links; embedding climate resilience; and mobilizing partnerships with development banks and private investors. Fatima called it “a blueprint for action, not just words,” but the distance between the two is long.

Rwanda and Burundi: Land-Linked Potential

Consider Rwanda, which has embraced digital innovation and ranks among Africa’s top reformers in business climate. Yet moving a container from Kigali to Dar es Salaam costs more than shipping it from Dar es Salaam to Shanghai. Blockchain pilots between Rwanda and Uganda have already reduced border clearance times by 80 percent, but scaling such reforms requires regional cooperation—the very essence of Awaza’s call for “land-linked” thinking.

Burundi faces even starker challenges. Political instability has disrupted transit agreements with neighbors. Poor road maintenance and limited rail options mean Burundian manufacturers pay a hidden geography tax on every exported item. A coordinated East African transport corridor—funded under Awaza’s financing facility—could halve transit times and cut spoilage for perishable goods.

Testing the Promise Divine

The first test comes on September 26, when ministers meet on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly. They are expected to name national coordinators, align budgets, and press for LLDC concerns at COP30 and UNCTAD XVI. As Turkmenistan’s foreign minister, Rashid Meredov, warned, the network of coordinators will make or break implementation.

The Climate Conundrum

LLDCs are among the most exposed to climate shocks: droughts paralyze Sahelian farmers, cyclones sever southern Africa’s trade routes, and glacial melt threatens Central Asia’s water supplies. Rwanda and Burundi, reliant on rain-fed crops, can see a single flood wipe out a season’s earnings. Awaza’s plan for an LLDC Climate Negotiating Group aims to amplify their voice at global talks. Shared hydropower grids and renewable energy corridors, if built, could stabilize supply chains and keep factories running.

Digital Detours

Physical infrastructure is not the only hurdle. Maria Fernanda, a Bolivian tech entrepreneur, captured the digital struggle: “Sometimes it feels like the internet is slower here because it has to climb mountains like we do.” Fiber-optic networks and regional data hubs—central to the Awaza agenda—could level the digital playing field. Rwanda’s ambition to be East Africa’s data hub and Burundi’s expansion of mobile banking are previews of what “land-linked” economies could look like.

The Politics of Pipelines

Awaza was also about geopolitics. Turkmenistan used its role as host to burnish its neutrality and to tout hydrogen energy schemes, circular economy frameworks, and Caspian environmental projects. Landlocked development, it signaled, is not merely a technical problem but a diplomatic one. Transit states and inland economies must cooperate, not compete, over corridors and pipelines.

As one UN development official observed, “Land-linked flips the narrative: inland countries become bridges, not barriers. With AfCFTA, LLDCs can turn geography into a competitive edge—moving goods, services, and data faster and more affordably across Africa and beyond.”

Bringing Civil Society and Youth to the Table

One innovation at LLDC3 was the deliberate inclusion of youth and grassroots activists “not outside the halls, but right here in the meeting rooms.” This multistakeholder approach could ensure that local voices—such as Rwandan farmers’ cooperatives or Burundian women traders—shape the policies affecting them. But inclusion must be sustained beyond Awaza’s photo ops.

From Awaza to Action

The Ministerial meeting will likely spotlight three urgent tasks:

Operationalizing the Finance Facility—Without timely disbursements, promised corridors and digital highways will remain on paper.

Integrating LLDC Priorities into Global Agendas—Ensuring COP30 and UNCTAD XVI address LLDC vulnerabilities.

Ensuring Accountability and Transparency—Regular progress reports, perhaps modeled on climate COP stocktakes, could keep momentum alive.

Fatima’s closing words resonate: “Let us make the promise of ‘land-linked’ not only a phrase but a new way of life.”

A Fragile Opportunity

For Mazhar Amanbek, the Kazakh trucker whose apples rot at customs, and for Burkinabe grain shipper Mohamad Oumar, Awaza’s words must become tarmac and telecoms. For Rwandan cooperatives betting on premium coffee exports, or Burundian entrepreneurs seeking markets beyond their borders, the declaration could mean the difference between subsistence and prosperity.

The UN will be pressed to broker the deals and financing that can make LLDCs competitive. These inland nations are not short of resources or ambition—minerals, fertile soils, and human talent abound. The challenge is converting potential into prosperity.

As the blue UN flag was folded under the Caspian sky, the marines’ boots clicked on the promenade, and the heat bent the air into shimmering waves. Awaza’s delegates boarded planes carrying a slender sheaf of paper with an outsized ambition: to turn geography’s oldest curse into an engine of shared growth.

The world’s attention will now shift to New York, where LLDC ministers must prove Awaza was not a mirage. If they seize the moment, the next decade could see East African trucks rolling on new highways, fiber cables humming under deserts, and landlocked nations from Bolivia to Burundi trading on equal terms. If not, the folded flags of Awaza will join the archive of fine promises that melted under a scorching sun.

IPS UN Bureau Report

 

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