The 19th Summit of The Non-Aligned Movement
The Non-Aligned Movement, NAM, has its origin from what has been referred to as the first large scale Asian- African or Afro-Asian conference, held in April 1955. This conference held in Bandung, a city in Indonesia was attended by delegations from 29 governments with most being from Asia as most present-day African states were still colonised. It was convened to discuss peace and the role of developing countries in the face of the raging cold war besides economic development and the decolonisation of countries under colonial occupation. The desire was to focus on national independence struggles and economic development. Drawing on the principles agreed upon at the Bandung conference, NAM was formally established at the First Summit held in September 1961 in Belgrade, Yugoslavia in the presence of 25 countries, 11 of them being African countries. These principles commonly referred to as Bandung, guide and cater for the movement’s political agenda and over the years, economic cooperation and social and humanitarian issues have become the core of work of NAM.
The NAM is an important political space for South-South cooperation due to the salient political and international as well as social, human rights and development issues of interest such as the reform of the United Nations including the Security Council, right to self-determination and decolonisation, peaceful settlement of disputes and non-use of force, the world Financial and economic crisis, unemployment, development challenges of LDCs (Least Developed Countries), LLDCs and Small Island developing states, climate change, human rights and fundamental freedoms among others. Most of these issues are presently at the core of socioeconomic landscape of Africa and the global South in general hence the need for cooperation and leverage of mobilisation power of the NAM to develop solutions that would improve the socioeconomic status of Africa and the Global South.
The 19th Summit of the Non-Aligned Movement was held in Kampala, Uganda between 15th and 20th January 2024 under the theme “Deepening cooperation for Shared Global Affluence”. The decision to have the summit held in Uganda was reached out during the 18th Summit held on the 19th of October 2019 in Baku, Azerbaijan. Uganda takes over the chair of the movement for the period 2024-2027 from Azerbaijan who held the position during the period 2019-2023. This years’ theme aptly captured the prevailing economic, political, and social instability internationally with the impacts felt disproportionately in the global south.
The theme of this year’s summit aligned with the movement’s founding principles of collaboration and cooperation as espoused in the Bandung Principles, a guiding framework of the movement since its establishment in 1961. It is only through concerted efforts that the socioeconomic and political issues affecting Africa and the Global South in general can be resolved. This was particularly supported as evidenced in the outcome document of the summit by outrightly recognising that the strengthening of regional and subregional cooperation and integration are key for enhancing economic and social development of the movement through industrial cooperation, promotion of trade, investment and technical transfer, job creation and the facilitation and acceleration of economic growth, development, and transformation of their economies.
At the top of the agenda of the 19th summit of NAM was the prevailing global tension and conflicts as witnessed in Ukraine, Middle East and Africa as well as reforms and strengthening of the United Nations as the primary multilateral institution and the UN Security Council, in accordance with the General Assembly Resolution 62/557 in a comprehensive and integrated manner in order to make the council a more democratic, transparent and representative organ of the UN. Regarding the prevailing conflicts, there was much focus on Gaza with both the UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres as well as the President of the General Assembly of the United nations calling for humanitarian ceasefire. The UN Secretary General was quite particular in mentioning that presently as it is, people are not only dying from bombs and bullets but also from lack of food and clean water, medical facilities without power and medicine, and gruelling journeys to escape the fighting. He also cautioned that there could be spillover of the conflict in the region in the West Bank, across the Blue Line between Israel and Lebanon and in Syria, Iraq and the Red Sea. What remains quite ironical, and intriguing is the explicit lack of focus on the conflict happening in Sudan, a country not so far away from the venue of the summit and on African soil! This begs the question as to whether we are on our own as a continent. The brutal civil war keeps on getting uglier by the day as it threatens to engulf the whole country and push it further down the path of long-term state failure. This will be a total violation of human rights particularly of women and children who are affected the most by the war. The Pan African Lawyers Union earlier in 2023, through their CEO pointed out the need for AU (African Union) and other actors to the Sudan civil war to intensify response to bring the fighting to an end. The assumption of the chairship of NAM by Uganda should be a galvanising moment for Africa based on recent development that threaten the stability of several nations across the continent.
In the Kampala Declaration of the 19th Summit of Heads of States and Governments of the NAM, member countries committed to strengthening of the UN as the primary Multilateral Organisation and reaffirmed their commitment to contribute positively to the Summit of the Future in September 2024 in a bid to “Enhance Cooperation on Critical Challenges and Address gaps in Global Governance”. Besides these, the members agreed to make joint efforts towards the realisation of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and the Addis Ababa Action Agenda (AAAA) through development cooperation, acceleration of Sustainable Development Goals investments and reform of the International Financial Architecture.
The reform of the International Financial Architecture and strengthening of the International Financial System to be fit-for-purpose and help developing countries to better address the current multiple crises and enhance the coordination of financial and economic policies at the international level and conditionalities and broaden and strengthen the voice, participation and representation of developing countries in international economic decision making, norm-setting and global economic governance is vital. This aligns with some of our policy positions as AFRODAD and reflect some of the recommendations of the Harare Declaration. The Global Financial Architecture built nearly 80 years ago in the aftermath of World War II has failed in its mission to provide safety nets for developing countries. To date, even with some changes, it still reflects the political and economic power dynamics of that time. The architecture presently as it is, is dysfunctional, unjust, and outdated as it is no longer capable of meeting the needs of 21st-century world: a multipolar world with deeply integrated economies and financial markets, while at the same time ladened with geopolitical tensions and growing systematic risks. The recent admission of the Africa Union as a permanent member of the G21 should reflect the important role that African economies will play in reshaping the voice of key global issues including realigning the global financial architecture. The G21 is particularly an important forum for Africa as it brings together leaders from both the developed and emerging economies around the table thus represents a far broader range of views which could be beneficial and shore up the aspirations of the NAM in this regard.
With the debt crisis in the Global South being a key obstacle to economic growth and development as debt servicing drains resources that would otherwise be channelled towards financing development needs as outlined by AFRODAD. At the core of propelling the crisis is the failure of the not fit-for-purpose international financial architecture which through its neoliberal approach to economic transformation favours the Global North at the expense of the Global South. To resolve this crisis, there is need for concerted efforts from national, regional, continental, and global level to reform the international financial architecture to not only equalise the loan contraction processes but also decision making in a bid to make Africa a rule maker, not a rule taker! We can only move in the right direction when we speak in one voice in ensuring that we do away with short-term solutions and put in place durable solutions.
The recommendation to support and facilitate regional and international trade, affordable and appropriate technology transfers, development of adequate and appropriate infrastructure for industrialisation and production, value addition, attraction of quality investments in strategic sector of NAM economies, for employment creation and supporting efforts that promote peoples’ wellbeing and prosperity is also very vital. While reforms of the international financial system are critical, reforms of the global trade architecture are equally important. Just as the financial architecture, the trade architecture favours the Global North at the expense of the Global South hence the need for reforms. The architecture continues to pin down the Global south to be a primary producer and to have commodity dependent economies. This makes it hard to get out of the crises we are in especially with the fluctuations in the global market prices and the minimal to no value addition to the commodities we produce. This therefore means that we cannot generate optimum revenues from trade to finance our development needs hence making us to continuously depend on debt financing. There is need to eradicate the inequalities that continue to emerge as global trade and value chains expand to ensure equitable distribution of the benefits that arise from the global trade. Africa and the Global South in General must be elevated from the bottom of the value chain. The move towards trade integration is also critical especially during this time when the Africa Continental Free Trade Agreement is being put into force. This will play a vital role in fomenting trade in the region and thus elevating resource mobilisation to finance our development needs and reduce overreliance on debt financing.
As the continent continues to plunge into a poly-crisis whose compounding effects are continuously slowing down the progress of our continent and primarily reversing the hard-won gains made by the continent, there are a couple of issues that the Kampala Declaration did not speak strongly towards or omitted. The Declaration barely touched on the issue of climate crisis. The question remains as to whether this was deliberate because of the ongoing massive investments in fossil fuels by the Ugandan government with the Tilenga Conventional Oil Field and the East African Crude Oil Pipeline. Climate finance remains a critical topic in the continent particularly on its prevailing political economy as is evident by research done by AFRODAD on the Political Economy of Climate Finance in Africa and Climate Finance- Power Mapping. Presently as structured, majority of climate finance is leveraged through debt and prioritises adaptation and mitigation efforts over funding for loss and damage. This by the face of it transfers the burden to African countries as opposed to the historical polluters or the heavy emitters.
Africa is feeling the impact of a crisis it barely contributed towards and what makes things worse is that there is a limited access to resources needed to mitigate the impacts of the climate crisis and the instruments of climate financing as presently constituted is about 90% debt. The reparations framework has encountered resistance particularly from the richer and more developed countries who have historically contributed the most to climate change due to the need to contribute financially to less developed countries that have contributed the least to the climate crisis but bear the most burden. Climate being an issue of interest of the movement, this ought to have been deliberated upon extensively. Besides this, the emergence of green debt that come at relatively high costs and with the likelihood of there being continuous climate disasters, this will exacerbate the already dire debt crisis across the continent. It would have been great to see a significant push by the Heads of State and government of the NAM for the developed world to be held accountable regarding their pledge to raise US$ 100 billion towards climate finance projects in developing countries.
The Kampala Declaration of the 19th Summit of the Non-Aligned Movement outlined great propositions critical for the economic transformation of the Global South including Africa. As its Bandung Principles demand for collaboration and cooperation, the chairship of the NAM could be instrumental for Africa in the coming years. This, however, can only be possible when NAM joins forces with key African institutions like the AU who recently got permanent membership to the G21 and combine efforts in developing and propping policy propositions that would have Africa’s interests at the forefront to ensure that Africa’s voice is heard and is influential during decision making on critical policy issues that for over 80 years now have sidelined the continent and its transformation agenda aimed at attaining inclusive and sustainable development as encapsulated in Agenda 2063. Besides this, other critical institutions such as the BRICS are equally key due to the potential to institute structural changes aimed towards making Africa a rule maker not a rule taker in the global governance space.
By John Oduk – Policy Assistant, Executive Director’s Office