UN General Assembly
2013

the third International Conference on Small Island Developing States in Apia, Samoa, we urge the United Nations to ensure that SIDS status and SIDS-specific recognition are truly sanctioned in the Organization’s bureaucracy. We have seen enough General Assembly resolutions that address SIDS issues in a vague and abstract way, and yet the entire United Nations development agenda includes no specific treatment of SIDS. The 2014 SIDS Conference must be decisive on establishing special windows for partnerships on SIDS that are designed to ensure not only their sustainable development but also their long-term security and survival. Tuvalu appreciates the decision of the Economic and Social Council to defer consideration of Tuvalu’s graduation from the least developed country (LDC) category under the Istanbul Programme of Action for the Least Developed Countries for the Decade 2011- 2020. That said, however, Tuvalu humbly submits that while the threshold criteria of LDC graduation — the human development index, per capita gross national income and the economic vulnerability index — are well established, it would simply be irrational and