President John Evans Atta Mills has called on members of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) to re-appraise the role of the Movement on the world stage and adapt it to the new realities.
President Mills made the call when he addressed the 15th Summit of Heads of State and Governments of the NAM in the Egyptian resort city of Sharm el Sheikh today.
According to the 1979 Havana Declaration, the NAM was established to assist member states in their ''struggle against imperialism, colonialism, racism, and all forms of foreign aggression, occupation, domination, interference or hegemony as well as great power and bloc politics''. The President observed that with the end of the cold war and the attainment of independence by many countries however, the remit of the Movement has somewhat become obsolete and rather brought to the fore new challenges which make the global solidarity of NAM even more relevant.
Touching on the global financial crisis, President Mills pointed out that initially it was thought that developing countries, particularly those in Africa, because of their largely weak integration with the rest of the global economy, would not be affected that much. The reality, he said, is that the knock-on effects from the financial instability and economic recession in industrialised nations are having a compounding toll in terms of high fuel costs, rising food prices, loss of jobs, drying credits and many others, on the economies of developing countries.
President Mills observed that another set of challenges to member states of the NAM are the rapid depletion of forests, fauna, fish stocks, increasing desertification, rising sea levels, flooding, altered patterns of rainfall, and climate change, all resulting from global warming. 'He said 'we may have defeated colonialism, apartheid and many forms of racial discrimination, but our plight as the world's poor is not likely to change unless the NAM, among others, comes out with new solutions to these challenges''.
According to President Mills, it is the conviction of Ghana that the Movement should continue to play its role as a moral force in international politics, adding that it should endeavour to entrench in the international system the ideal that international controversies and disputes must be resolved by principled dialogue and not military might.
Signed:James AGYENIM-BOATENG,
Deputy Minister for Information
[Sharm el Sheikh, Egypt, Wednesday July 15, 2009]
<<Print>>