Abdel-Moneim Said ponders the relevance of the Non-Aligned Movement, the largest grouping in the Third World Does the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) have a future? The question may seem redundant given the organisation that has just convened in Sharm El-Sheikh now comprises 118 member states, covering pretty much the whole of the Third -- or the developing -- World. Its members are known collectively as the countries of the south. Mostly poor, in terms of geographical area and population size they account for the overwhelming majority of the inhabited regions of our planet. When it held its first constitutional summit in Belgrade in 1961 NAM had 25 member states. There are now 53 members from Africa, 38 from Asia, 26 from Latin America plus 16 observer states, one of which is European, and nine organisations that have observer status. Does it make sense to doubt the wisdom of all these countries joining beneath the umbrella of a movement that has held 24 summits since Belgrade, the most recent convened this month in Sharm El-Sheikh, the one before in Havana in 2006? Even to entertain such doubts may smack of frivolity. Summit conferences are not political jamborees, even less holidays in attractive cities for leaders who must plan how to use every second of their time. Nor is NAM a VIP club for heads-of- state. The movement has lost most of its major luminaries, including Nasser, Tito, Nehru and Sukarno. It has also lost much of its apparent raison d'être since the end of the Cold War and the collapse of a world in which NAM offered countries that had just emerged from colonialist captivity an alternative to dependency on one of two superpowers. But the seemingly redundant, and awkward, question gains urgency in the context of globalisation, which acts to dissolve borders and boundaries, including those between the aligned and non-aligned blocs. The world now ticks to the beat of commercial and financial networks that transcend continental divides, sails on seas that ebb and flow with the waves of goods and merchandise, buffeted by the currents of exchange rates and the blips and pulses of 24/7 media. This multicoloured, multifarious world is no longer in thrall to ideological blocs. Focus has shifted to the cultural contradictions that rent societies and nations, generating alliances that transcend national identity to the extent that some features of the "North" can be found in countries of the "South", and characteristics associated with the "South" in countries of the "North", a bewildering crosscurrent of material and moral signals. So what does this have to do with a movement born in 1961 and that gave rise to various bodies that, collectively, represent developing countries, defending their interests in the tug-of-war between them and the developed industrialised world while simultaneously promoting South-South cooperation? The first step towards NAM was the Bandung Conference of African and Asian states in 1955. Participants adopted a ten-point declaration outlining the principles that should govern international relations. The "10 Bandung Principles", as they later became known, were subsequently adopted as the goals of the NAM. As it progressed from Bandung to Belgrade NAM expanded the concept of independence to include, in addition to independence from colonial rule, the promotion and defence of freedom from the military, ideological and geographic domination of the great powers and the colonialist drive to press weaker countries into alliances that acted to undermine their powers of self-determination and sap the autonomous will and resolve of their peoples and leaders. It was a vision for a new world, and if it lacked the material might to back it up it possessed moral stature aplenty. It was a vision grounded in faith in the power of the spirit of brotherhood and cooperation to build a new and humanitarian mode of life, radically different to that which prevailed under the logic of domination and control. The NAM was not a flight from reality or a form of isolationism and fear of engagement with the strong; rather, it proposed an alternative in which the victims of injustice would deliver all of mankind from the vicious cycle of domination and subjugation. This fact alone might offer an answer to my opening question. Certainly it lifts it from the realm of awkwardness onto a new plane, foregrounding the continued relevance and validity of the NAM's moral premises in today's world. There are two by now familiar views on the future of the NAM. The first holds that the NAM now exists more in theory than practice given the original justifications for its existence have disappeared. NAM was born as a "third way", to contend with the Cold War contest between the socialist camp led by the former USSR and the capitalist camp led by the US. Following the collapse of the Soviet Union at the beginning of the 1990s, and by extension the disappearance of the ideological polarisation that had prevailed, NAM's rationale was rendered obsolete. Some countries began to shift away from the very concept of non-alignment, forging strategic relations with the US as the sole superpower in a mono-polar order. Proponents of this perspective further point to the profound changes that have affected some of NAM's founding nations, such as Yugoslavia, which has disappeared from the world map. A second point of view maintains that NAM must continue, building on its past successes but developing itself in a way that equips it to deal with global challenges and opportunities that did not exist at the time of its birth. As Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Abul-Gheit put it: "The world today is completely different to the world we have known since the founding of the movement five decades ago." According to this body of opinion, this fact does not put paid to the movement itself but rather throws into relief the need to re-examine the very concept of non-alignment, which was founded upon the pursuit of a foreign policy independent of both the socialist and capitalist camps. While the initial impetus for this concept had vanished by the time of the Belgrade summit of 1989, when it was no longer possible to point to a world divided between "reactionary" and "revolutionary" forces, the world that has subsequently emerged and the opportunities it offers to promote peaceful coexistence, dialogue and cooperation among nations has compelled NAM to reshape its identity by returning to the humanitarian and moral foundations obscured by Cold War politics and exigencies. NAM does seem to have a huge opportunity to survive and grow, precisely because the world is no longer dominated by states as much as it is by ideas and visions which have the ability to rise above nationality and penetrate even the most dense centres of power. We have seen how the voice of the developing world has made itself heard in major international gatherings in the heart of the Western world, from the Davos economic summit to G8 meetings. It now falls upon Egypt, which assumed the leadership of NAM on 15 July and will retain the chair for three years, to steer the organisation's efforts to breathe life and vigour into the concepts encapsulated in the motto of the Sharm El-Sheikh summit -- "International solidarity for peace and development". Egypt has a special place in the NAM. It is one of its original founders and driving forces. Egypt hosted the second NAM summit in 1964. It sees NAM as the broadest possible multilateral framework for coordinating the positions of developing nations across a range of political, economic and social issues on the UN agenda. NAM offers enormous potential for advancing its members' interests in these areas. Counting nearly two thirds of the UN as its members, NAM represents a potentially influential voting block in the UN. This alone is a substantial reason for strengthening relations among NAM members, updating the organisation's outlook and developing the mechanisms that will equip it to wield greater influence in shaping the course of international relations. Cairo has much to offer this nearly half a century old movement. Some associations of developing nations continue along well-trodden paths that pay off sometimes but more frequently lead nowhere. They play on the theme of victimhood, harping on about the injustices inflicted by colonialism and the setbacks these have wrought to development. The primary aim of this approach is to compel developed nations to increase levels of aid to developing nations. Ultimately it is a strategy that has little impact, not least because many decades have passed since the end of the colonial era during which some newly independent nations have demonstrated they did not know what to do with their independence and ended up as failed or impoverished states. A second tendency is to home in on the fact that NAM has not broadened its agenda and, instead, trains its attention on issues, generally of an economic nature, very selectively. It is impossible to deny that questions such as free trade, commercial justice and Third World debt are pivotal to relations between the North and South. There might be some justification behind concerns that broadening NAM's agenda will render it less effective on these issues. Yet it is equally legitimate to wonder how NAM can possibly formulate united stances on an array of issues when its 118 members have no higher common national interest apart from strategic economic concerns. No less important in this regard is that a number of Third World associations now exist. In addition to NAM there are the G15 and the G77. That there is little or no coordination between them has contributed to the declining importance of NAM. Although there have been some calls to merge NAM with the G77 little has been done towards this end apart from the creation, during the NAM summit in Jakarta in 1992, of a joint steering committee. This is far short of the level of coordination and cooperation needed to cope with the political and economic demands of the new global order. The Egyptian vision for NAM seeks to avoid such pitfalls. It prioritises the economic dimension while seeking to enhance relations between developing nations with the goal of improving development rates, supporting their negotiating positions and preventing their marginalisation in the international arena. This vision did not spring up overnight. During the NAM summit in Accra in September 1991 Cairo called for NAM to merge with the G77. The idea was to create a more powerful front of developing nations in which NAM would become the political wing and the G77 the economic wing. What I am about to suggest is not intended to belittle the importance of economic factors or global economic negotiations, it is just that with the universalisation of the free market economy there have arisen so many contradictions between the positions of developing nations that one cannot help but caution against pinning high hopes on collective economic action. Simultaneously, there are huge opportunities -- indeed, a vacuum that needs to be filled -- on many other, primarily humanitarian, issues. For example, there is great value in the Egyptian proposals to rally the collective efforts of the non-aligned nations in the UN behind a General Assembly resolution to ban the use of the veto on cases of genocide and crimes against humanity and to empower the General Assembly, in the event of the Security Council failing to undertake its responsibilities in this regard, to assume these responsibilities and intervene in the interest of preserving international peace and security, in accordance with Article 34 of the UN Charter. There is an excellent opportunity for NAM to pit its weight behind enhancing the ability of the international order to handle major issues related to promoting respect for, and enforcement of, international law. Terrorism, the spread of nuclear weapons, gross violations of human rights and the advancement of global civil society are all pressing issues that desperately need a much more sensitive and aware humanitarian conscience than they have received.
