Building a New Economic World Order

Non-Aligned Movement, that was born within a polarised world in order to create balance amidst global tension and making an outbreak of war unlikely if not impossible, has actively participating in international affairs promoting world peace, harmony and cooperation.

With the great vision of the founding fathers of NAM to encourage and strengthen the developing countries, its set objectives were to eliminate all causes that could lead to war, protect the freedom of the newly-independent countries, oppose world domination and colonialism, encourage friendly relations among countries, advocate peace and oppose use of nuclear weapons, protecting human rights and environment, sustaining and supporting UN as an organ of world peace and most importantly building a New International Economic Order (NIEO) based on equity, equality and justice.

All these objectives have been worked on since then but at present the last objective needs to be revamped and looked into with seriousness as the world faces a huge economic depression.

With the Western economy entering recession, it is bound to have negative effects on economies of the South that are already experiencing a fall in exports, GDP and in certain cases weakening of their balance of payments which might lead to new debt crisis. And if predictions are to be taken seriously, it is going to be worse than the setback nations faced in 2009-10, lasting longer with lesser policy tools or space to counteract the depression.

This coming recession might be a blow that certain developing countries won’t be able to take thus calling for a new world economic order, with new economic division of labour and financial power. There is a need and demand to establish a new international financial and economic structure that relies on the participation of all countries.

NAM also needs to set up a work programme and an expert and working group to deal with the crisis which threatens the progress made up till now.

The NIEO definitely had progressive ideas because of it restricting of North-South economic relations which have been framed and brought into focus at the present time. Also before NAM, the G77 and the UNCTAD, available for the developing countries was not sufficient enough to voice their opinion and be heard on international forums providing them with scarce opportunities. Since NAM, things have changed and thus these developing countries now have a chance to survive the upcoming depression if tackled deftly.

NAM countries require a new framework in the wake of this outbreak which won’t depend solely on one single country for its economic stability and the political decision. As the challenges for these countries are serious and numerous with growing inequity and inequality, the Movement’s capacity for resistance has also rose to applaudable levels.

NAM which in the present century has been termed as the “sleeping beauty” can prove its worth and relevance by tackling this issue proposing to help developing countries in trouble with emergency funding, provincial suspension of debt servicing, reforming a new system for debt restructuring, modification of IMF, altering global currency reserve system etc.

NAM’s creation of an expert group in 1994 to solve the developing countries problem of external debt crisis led to the formation of debt relief programmes of IMF and World Bank for low income countries. This very initiative and its success prove the efficiency of NAM back then in the 90’s and its relevance and importance in the globalized world today and thus how efficient it can be in saving these countries from plunging back into a state of crisis.