Least Developed Countries (LDCs or Fourth World countries)

LDC’s are countries which, according to the United Nations, exhibit the lowest indicators of socio-economic development, with the lowest Human Development Index ratings of all countries in the world. A country is classified as a Least Developed Country if it meets three criteria:

• low-income (GNI per capita of less than US $750)
• human resource weakness (based on indicators of nutrition, health, education and adult literacy) and
• economic vulnerability (based on instability of agricultural production, instability of exports of goods and services, economic importance of non-traditional activities, merchandise export concentration, and handicap of economic smallness, and the percentage of population displaced by natural disasters)

Please follow this link for a list of LDC’s.