The international order is undergoing a tectonic transformation. For the Global South, this process carries the promise of a new path of dignity and peace long denied to our people. But it also carries the risk that this tectonic shift will once again squeeze, sink or swallow our nations.
The war in Ukraine has already claimed many thousands of lives, destroyed livelihoods and critical infrastructure and created fear, loss and displacement.
But it has also had a marked impact on the nations and peoples of the Global South. From dramatic increases in the prices of food and fuel to the stifling pressure to choose sides, we have all felt the impacts of this war.
That is why we choose the path of non-alignment.
We choose peace at the diplomatic table over victory on the battlefield, because humanity is the first victim of war.
We choose not to impose sanctions, because economic warfare is still war — and cannot be the basis for solving humanity’s collective dilemmas.
We choose cooperation, because our common resources must be used to better our societies and halt the irreversible destruction of our climate, not accelerate their demise.
The Global South represents over 80 percent of the world’s population and more than 70 percent of global economic growth. Yet, we face relentless economic exploitation, political exclusion, and cultural erasure.
From the Sahara to the Sierra Maestra, from Bandung to Yan’an, our peoples have waged a long struggle for liberation from the indignities of that order.
For daring to seek our own path, we, too, have faced sanctions, interventions, and invasions — and the repeated demand of our involvement in conflicts not of our making.
Our history demands that we choose a different path — one that is pragmatic, that brings prosperity to our societies, and that recovers peace from the frictions of geopolitical antagonism.
We welcome the proposals advanced by the government of Brazil to form a Peace Club on Ukraine, and the 12-point position paper published by the People’s Republic of China, which calls for respect for the sovereignty of all countries and presents a positive vision for peace, collective security, and reconstruction.
These initiatives represent a starting point for a renewed project of non-alignment — a politics that is often mistaken for apathy or neutrality. It is neither. It reflects, instead, the continued struggle to chart a new world order — to create new political institutions that reject the zero-sum mentality of the Cold War and build a foundation for cooperation and peace.
As the architects of the non-aligned movement, Yugoslavia’s Josip Broz Tito and India’s Jawaharlal Nehru, wrote in 1954, non-alignment is a “positive, active, and constructive policy that, as its goal, has collective peace as the foundation of collective security.”
That is why we, progressive forces from around the Global South, reaffirm our commitment to non-alignment — and reject attempts to rob us of the capacity to chart our own futures.
