Redefining NAM’s role
By Shamshad Ahmad Khan


THE numerical strength of both G-77 and NAM (non-aligned movement) has been a major factor in decision-making at the UN and in all conferences held under the auspices of the UN system. For many years, the Third World states have had the voting strength to constitute two-thirds majority on any issue of importance to them. Their voting pre-eminence, however, remained inconsequential because of the widening gap between the “power to decide” and the “power to implement” decisions.

This grim reality is evident from the fate of the outcomes of a series of UN’s major conferences and summits held since 1990s on different aspects of a development agenda. In particular, the decisions and commitments made at the last three global conferences, namely the Millennium Summit (New York, 2000), the International Conference on Financing for Development (Monterrey-Mexico, 2002) and the World Summit on Sustainable Development (Johannesburg, 2002) remain unimplemented.

During the chilling Cold War era, East and West represented the bipolarity of the world. The Cold War has ended. East-West rivalry is no longer dividing the world. In fact, there is now a visible strategic convergence between the two with Nato admitting as its members some of the former Warsaw Pact countries of Eastern Europe, and with Russia becoming a member of the US-sponsored Partnership for Peace, G-8 and Contact Group.

Today’s world is now divided between the “West and the Rest” and as before, between two unequal halves, one embarrassingly rich and the other desperately poor. The income gap between the rich and the poor has never been so wider in human history. While the West is endowed with abundance of wealth and affluence, the “Rest” which includes developing countries of all sorts and regions representing the overwhelming part of humanity languishes in poverty and backwardness.

The top 20 per cent of the world’s people, living in the richest countries, account for 86 per cent of the world’s GDP, 82 per cent of its export market, and 68 per cent of all foreign direct investments (FDIs). While the per capita income of 80 developing countries had fallen significantly during the last decade, the net worth of the world’s 200 richest people more than doubled from $400 billion in 1994 to over $1,000 billion in 1998.

No wonder, the number of LDCs (least developed countries so categorized on the basis of their low GDP, human resources and economic diversification indices) has more than doubled from 24 in 1971 to 50 today. The “grotesque inequalities” in the world are regularly highlighted in annual human development reports. According to the last report, the wealth of the three richest persons of the world is greater than the combined GNP of the 50 least developed countries (LDCs) with 600 million people. More than a billion people, one in every six human beings, live on less than a dollar a day.

These are no doubt, staggering figures. The Third World has had no belle ipoque to signify its better times, if any. It has experienced no industrial revolution, no economic miracle, no educational upsurge, no social renaissance, no political emancipation, and no worker’s movement. Today, with few exceptions, poor countries are poorer and rich richer.

The poor and dispossessed nations, emerging from centuries of exploitation of their lands by the colonial powers find themselves totally marginalized in the global economy. With economic disparities increasing, the overwhelming majority of developing countries remains deprived of the benefits of economic growth and continues to suffer abject poverty, hunger, disease, illiteracy and larger socio-economic asymmetry.

Globalization has not helped the situation; it has actually aggravated global economic disparities, worsening conditions for the poor. The fact of the matter is that the market-driven process of globalization, integrating national economies into the world economy, is an asymmetric one, with some winners but many losers. Growth and development have not and cannot automatically bring about reduction in inequality. The growing size of the pie does not ensure that everyone will get his or her piece of the pie.

One may ask why there are so many poor people in the world at a time of such abundance of wealth. Absence of level-playing field is one of the major reasons, and level playing is not possible between strong and weak economies unless international regulatory measures are in place to control the predatory policies of the more powerful players. The signs of a resurgence of the 19th century economic adventurism through military force are no less alarming for the developing world.

While the developing world is treated with sermons about the advantages of deregulation and liberalization, the developed countries hardly apply these principles to their own markets which in most cases are almost like closed fortresses. Major areas of export interest to developing countries are either closed or protected through subsidies and other means. WTO has yet to establish what the Monterrey Consensus on Financing for Development (2002) envisaged as “a universal, rule-based, open, non-discriminatory and equitable multilateral trading system”.

Meaningful trade liberalization through removal of trade barriers as well as trade-distorting subsidies, particularly in sectors of special export interest to developing countries, including agriculture, also remains as elusive as ever. Since the world’s poor people, those living below the international poverty line of two dollars per day, work mostly in agriculture and labour-intensive manufactures, these sectors present the greatest trade barriers, putting the world’s poor at a particular disadvantage.

All this notwithstanding, there is no denying the fact that the basic ownership of development rests with each developing country. Instead of remaining dependent on the “largesse” of industrialized nations, the developing countries need to forge closer trade links and genuine cooperation among themselves to build their mutual capacity for sustainable development and sustained economic growth. They are rich in terms of resources, talent, skills and manpower and have the necessary technological base as well as an unparalleled market of their own. What they need is enough space to harness their own resources and to capitalize on their overall potential.

Unfortunately, all is not well with the Third World. Most developing countries suffer serious governance and rule of law problems rooted in their authoritarian and non-representative political culture. Democracy is distorted and misused. Corruption is a way of life in most Third World countries. Some of them are mired in perpetual intra-state or inter-state conflicts. There is something fundamentally wrong with the Third World’s approach in striking a balance between its problems, its remedial needs and its impulse for change.

What is even more disturbing is that the world’s two largest regions, Africa and South Asia, both rich in natural and human resources, are the biggest victims of poverty and violence. Both continue to be the scene of endemic instability as a result of conflicts and hostilities, unresolved disputes, unaddressed historical grievances, and deep-rooted communal and religious estrangement.

In order to put their house in order, the developing countries, be they in Africa, Asia or Latin America or in the equally backward Muslim world, must own and fulfil their responsibility to improve their system of governance and rule of law and to re-order their national priorities. They must create a domestic socio-political environment that helps, not impedes, a healthy transformation of their societies.

Despite all the contributions that G-77 and NAM have made through their negotiating skills on the economic and political causes of the developing world in global forums and within the UN system, there is very little to credit them with any substantive or perceptible socio-economic change on the global horizon. The debate and acrimony in multilateral forums on behalf of the developing countries, nothing has come out of the UN’s development agenda that could build a genuine partnership for universalizing affluence and elimination of poverty, hunger and disease.

Both G-77 and NAM have limited operational capacity in the absence of any organizational structure or a permanent secretariat. They had neither the means to change the political and economic systems of developing countries, nor could they redress the global economic inequalities by enabling the resource-rich countries among them to capitalize on their natural wealth.

At best, they have maintained group discipline in formulating common positions on major global issues. On the other hand, the traditional triad of affluence and power comprising the European states, the US and Japan has been building upon its economic as well as technological gains and monopoly, despite all that talk about fairness and equity, remain the sole determinant in global trade and finance.

With the East and West no longer being strategic rivals, the notion of non-alignment has become more or less anachronistic. The relevance of non-alignment and the Non-Aligned Movement is being questioned both within and outside its membership. Today’s unipolarity has given rise to new strategic alliances with some of the stalwarts and founding fathers of the non-aligned movement becoming aligned with the unrivalled “pole of power.” While on global economic issues, G-77 retains its relevance, NAM needs to redefine its role in the post-Cold War world.

The Cold War has ended but most of its legacies are still there which notably include “foreign occupation, foreign military bases, the use or threat or use of force, pressure, interference in internal affairs and coercive sanctions.” Global peace and stability are facing new threats. Developing countries remain under pressures to conform to an agenda “which is being defined and driven by others.”

The role of NAM as a movement and as an organization, therefore, acquires even greater importance. It can serve as a balancing factor in the unipolar world and help promote a new system of international relations based on peace, justice, equality, democracy and development. Perhaps the only change that it needs is in its name. Understandably, and for historical reasons, its acronym, NAM is irreplaceable but it should now stand for “New Age Movement” rather than timeworn and rusty “Non-Aligned Movement.” This would neither alter the historical outlook and rationale of the organization nor dilute its importance or relevance as a movement and as a process.