The Non-Aligned Movement finds new purpose

Foreign ministers from around the world gathered in Algiers on May 28-29 for the 17th Ministerial Conference of the Movement of Non-Aligned Countries. With representatives from Africa, the Middle East and Asia present, the outcomes of the meetings barely made international headlines.

The Non-Aligned Movement (NAM), formed in Belgrade in 1961, was the brainchild of several national leaders who, like India’s Jawaharlal Nehru, Egypt’s Gamal Abdel Nasser and Indonesia’s Sukarno, were part of a new generation of political leadership brought to power as colonial regimes crumbled in the 1960s. Designed as an alternative to the competing US and Soviet-led alliance structures of the Cold War, the Non-Aligned Movement has struggled to define itself since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. The bloc has found new life in recent years, however, as a platform for individual states’ regional ambitions.