South Centre Statement at the NAM Summit
Mr. President and chair, excellencies, distinguished delegates,
At the outset, let me express our deepest appreciation for our host, the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela and its people, for their warm welcome in this beautiful Caribbean Island of Margarita and, to the outstanding effort they have put into the organization of what is already a very successful summit of a group of countries that represents nearly two thirds of the UN membership.
We congratulate the member countries of the Non Aligned Movement for having maintained unity and solidarity within the group and, for the holding of its 17th summit on a very timely theme of “Peace, Sovereignty and Solidarity for Development”.
The strong solidarity, which has guided this Movement in the past decades and its founding principles, are equally important and even more relevant today as it was fifty-five years ago.
We congratulate the Islamic Republic of Iran for its successful stewardship of the movement in the past four years.
We also congratulate the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela as the incoming chair of the NAM. You have our full support in making the next three years of your chairmanship a new era in the history of this important movement.
The South Centre, an intergovernmental and multilateral policy research and analysis think tank of the developing countries, created by the “Spirit of Bandung and NAM”, stands ready to continue working together with the NAM in its endeavours.
Since our establishment in Geneva in 1995, we have worked closely with NAM and its member states in many areas such as economic, social and environmental issues, in order to promote and make a real contribution to the key challenges facing developing countries and to a more just and equitable international order. We have also worked closely with NAM to highlight the importance of the right to development which commemorates 30 years of the adoption of its Declaration this year. We have supported and will continue supporting NAM in its efforts to defend a world in peace and solidarity for the development of all’s wellbeing.
Development and poverty eradication continue to be the main challenges that face the South. While the past three decades have seen great strides in the development of the South, that progress has not been widespread. It is also increasingly becoming more difficult to do so because of the many crises that developing countries are now facing such as climate change and other environmental crises, wars that impact on the peace and stability of developing countries, adverse global economic conditions arising from the responses of developed countries to the global financial crisis and, continuing structural economic deficiencies in international trade, investment, intellectual property, health and other policy regimes that make it difficult for developing countries to maintain their policy space for development.
In the face of these continuing development challenges to the South, the NAM together with other developing groupings such as the G77 and China and the many regional organizations that have emerged as an expression of south solidarity in the past decades inspired by the Bandung and NAM spirit, are more important than ever in fostering real development-oriented South-South cooperation, unity, and progress. The South Centre is committed to these objectives as well and we look forward to working closely with the NAM and its Member States in this regard.
Thank you for your attention.
