LEADERS from the world’s poorest nations condemned the treatment they receive from their rich counterparts during a United Nations summit in Doha, Qatar.

On Sunday at the UN Least Developed Countries (LDCs) meeting, which is held every 10 years, richer nations were urged to make good on their promises of aid to battle poverty and the impact of climate change.

UN secretary-general Antonio Guterres followed up an attack he made a day earlier on the predatory interest rates imposed by international banks on poor states, saying there could be no more excuses for not providing aid.

There were renewed demands that the rich industrialised nations hand over the $100 billion a year they promised to support efforts to counter climate change, with Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina saying that poorer nations deserve certainty over financing for development and climate.

Ms Hasina said: “Our nations do not ask for charity. What we seek are our due international commitments.”

Zambia’s President Hakainde Hichilema said providing the finance was a matter of credibility for the richer nations, and Nepali Deputy PM Narayan Kaji Shrestha pointed out: “LDCs cannot afford another lost decade.”

The Central African Republic’s President Faustin-Archange Touadera said his country “has suffered systematic looting since its independence, helped by political instability supported by certain Western powers or their allies.”

He said his country’s 5.5 million people could not understand how, with vast reserves of gold, diamonds, cobalt, oil and uranium, it remains, more than 60 years after independence, one of the poorest in the world.

The summit lasts until Thursday, while hundreds of business executives are attending a parallel private-sector forum.