Morocco hosted a high-level ministerial conference dedicated to the specific challenges middle-income countries (MICs) face in their economic and social development. Participants adopted the Rabat Declaration, in which they commit to developing a Strategic Action Plan for MICs for the years 2025-2030, in collaboration with the UN system, development partners, and stakeholders.

Held on the theme, ‘Solutions to Address Development Challenges of Middle-income Countries in a Changing World,’ the conference brought together 32 countries and 23 UN development agencies and other international and regional institutions.

MICs are a diverse group of more than 100 countries. According to the World Bank, their per capita gross national incomes (GNI) vary from around USD 1,000 to over USD 13,000. Due to the different classification metrics currently in use, MICs include 20 least developed countries (LDCs), 19 landlocked developing countries (LLDCs), and 29 small island developing States (SIDS). They are home to about 75% of the global population and 62% of the world’s poor.

In her message to the conference, among the many challenges MICs face, UN Deputy Secretary-General Amina Mohammed highlighted conflicts and instability, climate change, recurrent and more intense natural disasters and associated economic losses and costs, and heavy public debt burdens. She said many MICs “are unable to find the fiscal space for sustainable development,” with 39 of them shouldering net interest payments that account for more than 10% of government revenue, compared to 23 a decade ago. 

To unleash MICs’ potential, Mohammed called for support and solidarity from the international community in three areas: scaling up development finance; reforming the international financial architecture; and developing measures of progress beyond gross domestic product (GDP). She highlighted the Financing for Development (FfD) Forum Follow-Up in April and the Summit of the Future in September as opportunities for the global community to agree and act on these issues.

In her remarks, President of the UN Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) Paula Narváez Ojeda underscored that access to finance, including concessional finance, is critical to address the needs of MICs and to ensure that SDG implementation does not cause further debt distress. She called for scaling up the impact and effectiveness of South-South and triangular cooperation and identified the FfD Forum and the 2024 session of the UN High-level Political Forum on Sustainable Development (HLPF) as opportunities to “advance policy measures that can guide the response to short-term development needs while addressing longer-term development challenges.”

Edward Christow, Resident Representative and Head of the UN Development Programme (UNDP) in Morocco, highlighted UNDP’s efforts to support inclusive and sustainable development in Morocco and other MICs by:

• promoting competitiveness and decent jobs, especially for women and youth, through a structural transformation based on green transition and a sustainable and inclusive development model;
• reducing social, spatial, and gender inequalities; and
• generating evidence-based, inclusive, and context-sensitive public policies and programmes.

Pedro Manuel Moreno, Deputy Secretary-General of the UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), stressed the essential role of industrial policies in helping MICs avoid the ‘middle-income trap’ by “leverag[ing] their existing industrial skills to develop and expand new production and export sectors.” He emphasized the need to relieve growing debt burdens and urged capitalizing on MICs’ “green” potential, enabled by quick access to clean technologies.

The conference outcome – the Rabat Declaration – calls for a paradigm shift in international cooperation to promote fair, inclusive, and just transitions towards sustainable development. Participating countries emphasize the need for a more comprehensive development cooperation system that incorporates the transitional development approach, which “acknowledges that development is a multidimensional, progressive and ongoing process that extends beyond reaching a specific income threshold.”

The declaration reaffirms participating countries’ commitment to advancing their collective interests and finding practical, innovative, and effective solutions to MICs’ challenges through South-South and triangular cooperation, capacity building, peer learning, and best practice sharing among MICs across regions.

The declaration urges the UN development system to devise a comprehensive system-wide inter-agency action plan to better tackle the multifaceted nature of sustainable development by promoting cooperation and providing concerted and inclusive support to MICs, given their specific challenges and diverse needs. Participating countries welcome the proposal from the Philippines to host an international conference in support of the Strategic Action Plan for MICs by the end of 2024.

Countries further commit to strengthening the Like-Minded Group of Countries Supporters of Middle-Income Countries as an official intergovernmental forum for dialogue, advocacy, and coordination on priority development issues related to international development cooperation and global governance.

The conference was organized at the initiative of Morocco’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, African Cooperation and Moroccan Expatriates, jointly with the UN Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA) and the UN Development Programme (UNDP). It took place in Rabat, Morocco, from 5-6 February 2024. [UN News Story]