Non Aligned Movement? Why now!

Non Aligned Movement? Well thats some thing we read it in our Social Studies text book long time ago. But today, is the world interested in it? Well the right question should have been - "Does the world remember that an organisation called "Non Aligned Movement" exists today?

NON ALIGNED MOVEMENT

NAM is the largest grouping of countries (114 member states) apart from UN, but its voice is hardly heard in international affairs now. NAM was the result of the efforts put in by JawaharLal Nehru, Tito, Nasser, Nkrumah, Sukarno(called as the Initiative of Five) and other prominent leaders of that time to create an organisation which is neither pro-USA nor pro-USSR. But today it is almost non existent except for the summit meetings which are held every year.

Failure of NAM: Failure of NAM can be attributed mainly to the five main countries who got involved themselves in power struggle i.e. India, Indonesia, Ghana, Egypt and Yugoslavia. But apart from the above reason, many of the member countries alligned with either USA or USSR e.g. Cuba and Vietnam with USSR, India to a greater extent was more comfortable with USSR than USA, Singapore got alligned with USA making the NAM no longer non alligned. But what's in a name? The United Nations are no longer united, NATO is no longer for the North Atlantic countries, SAARC is no longer an association for South Asian nations, ASEAN is no longer an East Asian Organisation ...................and the list goes on. So where did NAM fail? Why are people now interested in NAM?

NAM is more relavant now than before as it is an organisation of over a 100 countries with no country having a veto power, a flaw in the UN which gives extreme powers to five countries and thereby removing equality amongst member states. The relevance of NAM is evident from the fact that observers from various countries such as Brazil, China and organisations such as UN, league of Arab States, African Union etc have participated in the summit meeting.

Future of NAM

NAM should seek to play a major role at the United Nations, where the NAM as one has the majority. NAM can be an obstacle for the member states of UN from hijacking the UN for their personal needs.