60th Anniversary of Non-Aligned Movement

• 13 Oct 2021

Recently, a two-day (11-12 October 2021) summit was organized at Belgrade, the capital of Serbia to observe the 60^th anniversary of Non-Aligned Movement.

• Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev chaired the summit via a video link.
• The last summit was held in the capital Baku in 2019, hosted by Azerbaijan, which was included in the Non-Aligned Movement in 2011 and is the current secretary-general.

About NAM

• The 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.
• The movement originated in the 1950s as an effort by some countries to avoid the polarized world of the Cold War between the pro-Soviet communist countries belonging to the Warsaw Pact, and the pro-American capitalist countries belonging to NATO.
• Drawing on the principles agreed at the Bandung Conference in 1955, the Non-Aligned Movement was established in 1961 in Belgrade, Yugoslavia through an initiative of the Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, Yugoslav President Josip Broz Tito, Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser, Ghanaian President Kwame Nkrumah and Indonesian President Sukarno.

Objective of the Organisation

• 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."