What is Non Aligned Movement?

Relevance of Non-Alignment Movement in today’s worldWhen the Cold War started in the mid-twentieth century, the two world powers – the Soviet Union and US – responded by organising their allies into rival military alliances. The US founded the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO), and shorter-lived alliances. The Soviet Union founded the Warsaw Pact.
Another response among some underdeveloped countries of the third world was neutrality. This led to emergence of a third bloc which decided not to go into a formal alliance with either of the Cold War era power blocs – USA or USSR.

Drawing on the principles agreed at the Bandung Conference in 1955, the NAM was established in 1961 in Belgrade, Yugoslavia through an initiative of the Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru[5] and the Yugoslav President Josip Broz Tito.

The purpose of the organization was enumerated by Fidel Castro in his Havana Declaration of 1979 as to ensure “the national independence, sovereignty, territorial integrity and security of non-aligned countries” in their “struggle against imperialism, colonialism, neo-colonialism, racism, and all forms of foreign aggression, occupation, domination, interference or hegemony as well as against great power and bloc politics.
Today Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) is a forum of 120 developing world states that are not formally aligned with or against any major power bloc. After the United Nations, it is the largest grouping of states worldwide.

Significance of NAM today

Since the end of the Cold War and the formal end of colonialism, the Non-aligned Movement has been forced to redefine itself and reinvent its purpose in the current world order. A major question has been whether many of its foundational ideologies, principles can be applied to the contemporary issues. The NAM has emphasized its principles of multilateralism, equality and mutual understanding in attempting to become a stronger voice of developing and third world countries as well as an instrument that can be utilized and promote the needs of member countries.

We cannot ignore the role of NAM in recent time. They represent nearly two third of the UN members and comprise 55% of the world population. Many of US and USSR former ally partners have become members of NAM. All these factors indicated the importance and relevance of NAM in post-Cold War era. The NAM is an international platform of developing and under-developing countries. The NAM produce a platform as ‘dialogue table’ for developing world and it has done lot of for united these countries. These countries discuss their mutual problem and find a way to resolve these problems.

The termination of cold war doesn’t mean that an end of world power domination/ hegemony. The NAM is too relevant in present context because the third world countries are being subjected to supremacy and exploitation on all kind of issues from economic to political and cultural. The NAM would be proved a platform of developing countries in bargaining with the developed countries. The NAM countries should tackle problems with coordinative approach.

The Nonalignment platform could play a meaningful role for developing countries. This platform is the common voice of third world countries. It is considered as a positive and constructive movement in across the world. India’s efforts for non-aligned countries has appraised by everyone. Therefore, we can say that Non-aligned agenda has immense important for future.