Over the past year, Western officials and analysts have become aware of the existence at the UN of an amorphous but discernible force called the global south. This is, in part, a side effect of Russia's aggression against Ukraine. American and European diplomats have repeatedly pressured their African, Asian and Latin American counterparts to condemn Moscow in the General Assembly and other forums. Most non-Western countries have sided with Kyiv in key UN votes, but they have also expressed their own concerns and criticism of the current multilateral system, knowing that they have the attention of Western capitals.
The debates that have emerged have shown that there is no single southern global vision of world politics or even of the UN. Non-Western countries have divergent and sometimes incompatible interests. Emerging major powers such as India and Brazil want seats at the UN's highest tables, including permanent seats on the Security Council. African members want more influence and resources for the African Union and other regional bodies. Small island states are rightly focused on the existential risks they face from climate change and rising sea levels.
However, non-Western countries of all types are particularly interested in collaborating as much as possible in multilateral forums to maximize their collective influence. They also tend to agree on three themes.
The first is that Western countries have failed to deliver on their promises to help the developing world escape poverty and adapt to the effects of climate change. And a particularly sensitive point is the failure by rich countries to live up to promises made at the 2009 UN summit in Copenhagen to provide poorer countries with hundreds of billions of dollars in climate adaptation funds. climate change.
A second common theme is that the European Union and the US hoarded Covid vaccines as soon as they became available in 2021, causing the pandemic to claim more lives in less wealthy countries.
Third, they also agree that it is time for the West to relax its control over decision-making at the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. Currently, for example, G-7 countries hold around 40% of voting rights in international financial institutions, while African countries together hold well under 10%. This lack of representation is a particularly acute concern for many developing countries that are burdened by heavy debt, as well as the economic fallout from Covid and Russia's war against Ukraine, and would like easier access to finance.
If there is a coherent global south in the UN, the unifying element is the need to change the balance of power of the multilateral system in favor of the non-Western world. However, there are clear differences between non-Western countries in how to do this. Some, like Cuba and Pakistan, take an assertive approach toward the West, often allying themselves with China and Russia in UN debates. Others take a much more conciliatory approach. Some Pacific island countries, such as Nauru, have worked closely with European countries on climate change issues. Latin American states such as Brazil and Ecuador have condemned the Russian invasion of Ukraine as a violation of international law, although raising questions about the way the US and NATO are approaching the conflict. One of the most prominent voices from the global south in recent years has been Barbadian Prime Minister Mia Mottley, who has called for reparations for slavery and worked pragmatically with Western states to reform international financial institutions. The global south is, at best, a very varied coalition.
However, there are basic structural reasons for Asian, African and Latin American states to unite at the UN. The organization has been a platform for non-Western countries to coordinate positions and defend common causes for most of its history. During the Cold War, non-Western countries united under the banner of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) to fight colonialism and apartheid. They also created the Group of 77 (G-77), a parallel group to challenge Western dominance in the global economic system. The UN provided an adequate framework for states emerging from colonial domination to pool their diplomatic resources (and their votes in bodies such as the General Assembly and the Security Council) in an attempt to influence debates over the future of the world order. .
The NAM and the G-77 lost momentum with the end of the Cold War, when the US and its allies attempted to define international institutions along liberal lines. In 2002, David Malone and Lotta Hagman, two experts on multilateralism, noted a “relaxing of tensions along the north-south divide” in the UN system, although they warned that it could be “short-lived.” Some countries, such as Mexico and South Korea, left the G-77 in the 1990s, but non-Western missions continued to meet and criticize Western policies in New York and Geneva.
In the years before the Ukraine war, there were signs that non-Western states were coordinating more effectively around common concerns. G-77 members made a concerted effort to raise the West's inability to meet climate change adaptation financing at the 2021 UN climate summit in Glasgow. Western governments have paid relatively little attention to that trend. The main concern of American and European officials at the UN has been China's growing influence in the institution. Focused on Beijing's efforts to seize more senior positions in multilateral organizations and promote the Belt and Road Initiative in UN forums, Western analysts have paid less attention to the concerns and interests of others. non-Western members of the organization.
Russia's assault on Kyiv (and the urgent need to win over Asian, African and Latin American votes in support of Ukraine) has caused Western officials to take the concerns of their non-Western counterparts much more seriously. It hasn't always been an easy process. In the first months after Russia's general offensive, European officials often miscalculated at UN meetings and insisted on condemning Moscow in meetings on issues unrelated to Ukraine, such as the drought in the Horn of Africa and the rise in sea level in the Pacific. This gave rise to non-Western diplomats to respond by exposing their own national priorities and points of disagreement with the West.
I witnessed this dynamic at an event organized in New York by a European think tank during the second half of 2022. The topic was “Threats to the rules-based world order,” and a delegation of respected European officials participated in the meeting. who clearly came with the idea that the event would be dedicated entirely to debating Russia's misdeeds. Instead, a series of non-Western diplomats (mostly from pro-Ukraine countries) took the floor to discuss the deeply embedded power imbalances in the international system. Thanks to those kinds of exchanges, Western officials in New York have a better appreciation of what motivates members of the global south.
Many non-Western diplomats have also responded to Russia's war against Ukraine by referring to the heights of the NAM and the G-77 during the Cold War. There has been much talk of a new era of non-alignment in the context of a new East-West cold war. However, some of that rhetoric needs to be treated with skepticism. The NAM has not yet regained the sense of political purpose it demonstrated in the 1960s, when leaders like India's Jawaharlal Nehru and Ghana's Kwame Nkrumah led the battle to end colonialism. Although some non-Western leaders, such as Brazilian President Lula da Silva, have attempted to act as peacemakers between Russia and Ukraine, there has been no coordinated NAM position on how to resolve the war.
Therefore, for the moment it seems likely that the global south will find common ground in the UN on issues of development, climate change and global economic governance, rather than in the realm of geopolitics. In September 2023, the organization's non-Western members have been focused on a leaders' summit in New York convened to try to accelerate progress in achieving the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), in which they have put highlight underlying tensions between Western and non-Western states. It is clear that, following the recent global economic crises, UN members will not meet the SDGs (such as eradicating extreme poverty worldwide) by the 2030 deadline. For developing countries, this year's summit is an opportunity to pressure rich countries to provide more aid.
Non-Western countries will also have the opportunity to lobby for greater decision-making power at the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank over the next year. Starting in 2021, UN Secretary General António Guterres encourages his members to rethink the configuration of multilateral institutions to reflect new challenges and global power dynamics. This process will culminate in September 2024 in an intergovernmental conference baptized with the bombastic name of the Future Summit. Guterres has argued that governance reforms of international financial institutions must be a central pillar of that reform process, and that the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank must also make it easier for developing countries to obtain loans.
The UN secretary general and ambassadors in New York have no power to rewrite the rules governing international financial institutions. Ultimately, this must be done by the boards of directors of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank themselves. However, the process leading up to the Future Summit gives southern countries the opportunity to politically defend the reform.
Western countries will have to decide how far they are willing to compromise on these issues to win friends in the global south. Some are already trying it. The Biden administration has called on the World Bank to invest more in climate change adaptation projects. France has advocated unlocking new sources of development finance, while the UK is pushing for international financial institutions to review their lending rules. It may be more difficult to reach an agreement on the governance of these institutions. It is necessary for the US to ratify any changes to the decision-making structures of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, as Washington remains the main partner of both. Although the Obama administration agreed in 2010 to a small redistribution of voting powers at the World Bank (giving more say to countries like China and India), it took five years for the US Congress to approve the initiative. It is hard to believe that today's more polarized Congress will pass bolder reforms supported by President Biden.
Although African, Asian and Latin American countries have good reasons to coordinate ahead of next year's SDG Summit and Future Summit, their long-term unity is not guaranteed. There are obvious fissures in the global south coalition. Among them, the deep-rooted tensions between China (which remains part of the G-77 at the UN and exercises broad influence over developing countries) and some of its neighbors, such as India and Vietnam. India has used its current G-20 presidency to try to position itself as an alternative global south leader to China and has invited representatives from developing countries to consultations on the G-20 agenda. Beijing, in turn, retains the power to block India from achieving some of its objectives at the UN, since it holds a permanent seat on the Security Council.
Rather than representing a powerful, unitary bloc at the UN, the global south is likely to remain a fluid coalition of states; states coordinated to challenge the West in some situations, but divided on many other issues. Given the areas in which there is cohesion among non-Western countries, the challenge for Europe and the US is to argue convincingly that they remain committed to promoting economic development and opening economic decision-making to a wider group. increasing number of states. While this is something that many Western diplomats accept, officials in Western finance ministries are generally reluctant to cede influence in organizations such as the International Monetary Fund. Western governments will also face major challenges in the coming years in maintaining aid spending, making it more difficult to meet southern demands for economic assistance.
Despite all this, Western states should not consider the sudden relevance of the global south in the UN as a threat to their interests. On the contrary, Russia's war against Ukraine has been a necessary reminder that, in a more diverse world, the West must do more to build understandings with the rest of the planet.
Richard Gowan, director para la ONU de International Crisis Group.
