NAM Takes Initiative To Bring Order Into Post-Covid Disorder

The Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) has often been derided as a defunct grouping or highly redundant since the collapse of the loose bipolar international system in 1991.

- Ameen Izzadeen

Yet, this week, NAM proved that it has still some life left to live for the common cause of developing countries. This was when Azerbaijan hosted an emergency virtual summit as part of an effort to initiate a global campaign to fight the Covid-19 pandemic.

The move belies criticism that NAM is not relevant today. The Azerbaijan-initiated summit made a powerful statement that NAM could still be useful though it has outlived its necessity or raison detre for its members to survive in a cold war setup dominated by two rival forces – the Western bloc led by the United States and the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) and the Eastern bloc led by the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact military alliance.

But after the demise of the Cold War, NAM countries gradually drifted away from Third World solidarity that had bound them together since the Afro-Asian solidarity movement of the late 1940s and the early 1950s. Most NAM members today adopt self-centred or national interest-driven stands at international forums at the expense of undermining their collective bargaining power, which was their strength during the Cold War. The united stand had enabled NAM nations to have their say, sometimes their way, too, at international forums, be it the drafting of a new treaty like the Law of the Sea Convention or the setting up of United Nations bodies such as UNCTAD to ensure a fair world market price for third world commodities.