The 19th Summit of the NAM in Uganda
Deepening cooperation for shared global affluence
The Nineteenth Summit of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) was held in Kampala, Uganda on January 19-20, 2024; with the slogan “Deepening cooperation for shared global affluence.” NAM has 120 member states; eighteen countries and ten organizations participated in the Summit as observers. The 120 member states together comprise 58.35% of the world's population.
The Non-Aligned Movement is rooted in the Bandung Conference of April 18-24, 1955, which was held in Bandung, Indonesia, and attended by delegations of twenty-nine governments from Asia and Africa. The conference was convened to discuss the challenges of economic development confronting newly independent nations in the context of the ongoing process of decolonization and the Cold War East-West ideological confrontation.
The Non-Aligned Movement was formally established as an organization of governments during its First Summit, held September 1-6, 1961, in Belgrade, Yugoslavia. Most notably present were Algeria, Cambodia, Cuba, Egypt, Ghana, India, and Yugoslavia; as well as Afghanistan, Burma (Myanmar), Ceylon (Sri Lanka), Congo-Leopoldville (DRC), Cyprus, Ethiopia, Guinea, Iraq, Lebanon, Mali, Morocco, Nepal, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Sudan, Tunisia, and Yemen.
From the outset, the Movement stressed the need for the newly independent nations to be truly sovereign in order that they would be able to mobilize human and natural resources to attain economic development, which they understood as the most important human right. They criticized the structures of the world-economy and the policies of the Western imperialist powers for creating obstacles to their economic development, as the powers sought to control the world-economy in accordance with their particular interests. NAM also criticized the United Nations for violating the principles of the UN Charter in establishing undemocratic structures that restricted the influence of the newly independent nations on world affairs. The process culminated in the Non-Aligned Movement proposal for a New International Economic Order, which was approved by the UN General Assembly in 1974.
In the period 1983 to 1999, in the context of the imposition of neoliberal economic policies on the nations of the Third World, the leadership of the Non-Aligned Movement was taken over by accommodationists who advocated adaptation to Western neoliberal policies and ideology. However, in the wake of the strong reaction of the peoples to the negative socioeconomic consequences of neoliberal policies for the majority, the Non-Aligned Movement retook in the twenty-first century the classic principles of the Movement. The return was particularly evident in the 2006 Declaration of Havana, emitted by the Summit held during the inaugural year of the second Cuban presidency of the Movement from 2006 - 2009. The renewal of the founding principles is evident in subsequent chairmanships of the Non-Aligned Movement: Egypt, 2009 – 2012; Iran, 2012 – 2016; Venezuela, 2016 – 2019; and Azerbaijan, 2019 – 2023.
The Website of the Non-Aligned Movement created for the Uganda Chairmanship of 2024 to 2027 puts forth the Ten Bandung Principles that have guided the work of the Movement.
Respect for fundamental human rights, and for the purposes and principles of the Charter of the United Nations
Respect for the sovereignty and territorial integrity of all nations
Recognition of the equality of all races and of the equality of all nations, large and small
Abstention from intervention or interference into the internal affairs of another country
Respect for the right of each nation to defend itself, singly or collectively, in conformity with the Charter of the United Nations
Abstention from the use of arrangement of collective defense to serve the particular interests of any of the big powers, and abstention by any country from exerting pressures on other countries
Refraining from acts or threats of aggression or the use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any country
Settlement of all international disputes by peaceful means, such as negotiation, conciliation, arbitration, or judicial settlement as well as other peaceful means of the parties’ own choice, in conformity with the Charter of the United Nations
Promotion of mutual interests and cooperation
Respect for justice and international obligations
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On January 19, Yoweri Kaguta Museveni, President of Uganda, expressed words of welcome to the heads of state and the heads of delegations, as well as to Antonio Guterres, Secretary-General of the United Nations, and Denis Francis, President of the 78th Session of the UN General Assembly. Museveni remembered the “far-sighted elders” of the Bandung Conference and the founding Summit in Belgrade: Sukarno of Indonesia, Nehru of India, Nasser of Egypt, and Chou en Lai of China. He described the emergence of NAM as “a necessary antidote to the irrational polarization of the World of that time between the Capitalist Western countries and the Communist, mainly Eastern countries.”
The President observed that he belongs to the third generation of “African anti-colonial fighters.” The first generation consisted of the African-American Pan Africanists Marcus Garvey, George Padamore, and W.E.B. DuBois plus the African National Congress of South Africa. The second generation consisted of freedom fighters that had emerged in the 1940s, such as Kenyatta, Nyerere, and Mandela. The President declared that he belonged to the generation that emerged in the 1960s. His generation, he noted, seriously studied the interplay of forces that ultimately led Africa to calamity.
Museveni noted that unique among the creatures of the earth, human beings have the capacity to improve their quality of life by taming nature through the invention of tools and machines. With the domestication of animals 12,000 years ago and the domestication of plants 10,000 years ago, humans made significant advances in the taming of nature and in liberation from the forces of nature, but it also led to the oppression of human beings. Conquest, wars of aggression, slavery, colonialism, and imperialism defined the human condition, propelled by greed.
In accordance with this universal human tendency, “Europeans used their progress in the technology of shipbuilding and the use of gunpowder to conquer Africa, the Americas, Asia and the Pacific. European looting of the rest of humanity through slavery, imperialism, colonialism, semi-colonialism, conquest and extermination of the indigenous people in some cases, went on for 500 years.” This has made necessary 500 years of anti-colonial struggle.
There is in this history of colonialism and anti-colonial struggle a lesson for oppressors, Museveni maintains. Oppressors use their temporary advantage in science and technology, mistakenly believing that they can indefinitely oppress other people. But invariably the oppressed learn, catch up, and defeat the oppressor. This is why empires always fall.
Museveni declared that the resistance fighters of Uganda are sometimes flabbergasted by “the philosophical, ideological, and strategic shallowness of some of the actors of the world,” who fail to understand that action invites counteraction, and that oppression invites resistance that will succeed. The modern African resistance struggle has won everywhere, in Kenya, Algeria, Mozambique, Angola, Guinea-Bissau, Namibia, South Africa, and Zimbabwe.
It is a history that teaches us that we should have free associations of nations with interactions of mutual benefit. “Our stand is that the World should concentrate on the common human problems ─ prosperity through trade, the advance of science and technology to deal with human problems, the environment, crime and terrorism. The future is bright if we act right,” in accordance with the Bandung principles.
In Uganda, the government uses the free market, combining it with selective State intervention in some sectors; and in addition, there is an effort to renew some aspects of pre-capitalist institutions from traditional culture. We have had very good results, the President declares. We have had growth rates of 6.2% per year for the last 37 years, although we started at a very low base.
The Non-Aligned Movement should use its considerable influence for seeking “effective transformative process for a better common future,” particularly through the United Nations. In particular, “in the negotiations for the Pact of the Future, the outcome document of the upcoming United Nations Summit of the Future to be held in New York in September 2024, we should clearly define priorities that favour developing countries by maintaining unity, solidarity and collective coordination among our Member States, in line with the Bandung principles.”
Yoweri Kaguta Museveni was born in 1944 in a peasant pastoralist family in Ankole, western Uganda, a region in which most people were displaced from their traditional lands by colonial land policies, with the support of local collaborators, and later sustained by politicians after independence. In 1966, Museveni led a successful campaign in northern Ankole of resistance to land policies, in which peasants refused to vacate their lands. From 1967 to 1970, he studied at the University of Dar es Salaam, where he was chair of the University Students African Revolutionary Front, an ideological study group, which included students from Kenya, Zambia, Malawi, Zimbabwe, Ethiopia, Sudan, Tanzania, and Uganda. Museveni’s readings included Fanon, Lenin, Marx, Rodney, and Mao, as well as liberal Western thinkers like John Kenneth Galbraith. The Front supported African liberation movements, and it produced pamphlets for the publicity campaigns of Frelimo in Mozambique. Museveni graduated from the University of Dar es Salaam in 1970 with a B.A. in Economics and Political Science.
Following Idi Amin’s coup in 1971, Museveni was instrumental in forming FRONASA (the Front for National Salvation), one of the key anti-Amin resistance groups, which were able to topple the Amin regime in 1979, with the support of the People’s Defence Forces of Tanzania. Museveni served briefly in subsequent governments as a high military official.
In December 1980, the country’s first general elections in twenty years were held. The elections were won by Milton Obote, but it was widely believed that the elections were rigged. On February 6, 1981, Museveni organized the National Resistance Army, beginning a guerrilla struggle with only twenty-six guns. The guerrilla force took power with limited external support and without a base of operations in a neighboring country in 1986.
The triumphant National Resistance Movement implemented the Ten-Point Programme that had been developed through debate and emitted in 1984. It stressed personal freedoms as well as the improvement of the socioeconomic conditions of the people. The new government sought reconciliation and national harmony, and it therefore stressed political, social, and religious tolerance and diversity.
A Constitutional Commission was organized, which formulated a draft constitution on the basis of two years of work traversing the country and listening to the views of the people. The Constituent Assembly was opened on May 18, 1994. Museveni addressed the delegates, stressing the need to modernize and industrialize the economy. He maintained that the responsibility of the Constituent Assembly is to lay the foundation for development and prosperity. In addition, the new Constitution should not have the stamp of any one individual or political faction. Museveni advised the delegates to be flexible with respect to contentious issues, and to be cognizant of the objective conditions of the country.
In 1996, Museveni was a candidate for President under the new Constitution. In an election consisting of three competing candidates, Museveni won 75% of the vote. Presidential, parliamentary, and local elections have been held every five years.
Museveni has initiated programs in education, health, safe water, agriculture, women’s emancipation, and tourism. He was elected Chairman of the Organisation of African Unity for the year 1990-1991.
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