Context
Recently PM Modi addressed the inaugural session of the third Voice of the Global South Summit (VOGSS).
About
- India hosted the inaugural Voice of Global South Summit (VOGSS) in January 2023, and the second edition in November 2023.
- Both the sessions were held digitally.
- The theme of the third Voice of Global South Summit is “An Empowered Global South for a Sustainable Future”.
What is Global South?
- The term “Global South” was coined by Carl Oglesby, an American political activist, in 1969.
- He used the term to describe nations tormented by political and financial exploitation by developed nations of the Global North.
- In the simplest sense, Global South refers back to the countries of Asia, Africa, Latin America, and Oceania.
- Most of these countries, wherein 88 per cent of the region’s population lives, experienced colonial rule and traditionally lagged in accomplishing significant levels of industrialisation.
- According to the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, Global South countries commonly showcase lower levels of development, high income inequality, rapid population increase, agrarian-dominant economies, lower quality of life, shorter lifestyles expectancy, and more external dependence.
- According to a World Bank report, “the gross domestic product (GDP) of the South, which represented approximately 20 percent of world GDP between the early 1970s and the late 1990s, doubled to about 40 percent by 2012.”
India as the voice of Global South
- India, with its history of a main position within the Non-Aligned Movement and G77 since the Cold War, has taken a significant lead in assuming a leadership position and representing the collective pursuits of the Global South countries.
- During the G20 Summit in Delhi in 2023, India succeeded in its efforts to induct the African Union as a permanent member of the essential economic bloc.
- The growth, the first because the formation of G20 in 1999, permits the African nations to voice their financial issues directly to the region’s most influential nations.
- During the COVID-19 pandemic, India disbursed around 163 million doses across 96 nations under the ‘Vaccine Maitri’ humanitarian drive between January 2021 and February 2022.
- India’s digital public property like UPI, RuPay, and India stack, which might be helping this sort of massive part of the Indian population, may be an effective instrument for the digital transformation of different developing nations.
Challenges
- India’s own beyond experience with the Non-Aligned Movement and the Group-77 developing countries points to the real issue of uniting the Global South in pursuit of common desires.
- The dual crises produced by the Covid-19 pandemic and the Russian war in Ukraine have had a devastating and disproportionate impact on the Global South.
- Possible overlook of Africa: In the rise of Asia, the continuing forget about Africa has been puzzling as well.
- Many developed countries inside the Global North have objected to China and India’s exclusion from the Global South, given their developing industrialisation.
Conclusion
- The current resurgence of the Global South reflects the evolving geopolitical panorama and the developing effect of developing nations in worldwide affairs.
- It is a platform to present a voice to the needs and aspirations of those who’ve been unheard until now at a time when international governance and monetary establishments fashioned in the closing century had been unable to fight the challenges of this century.
- The world ought to respond to the priorities of the Global South, understand the principle of commonplace but differentiated responsibilities for global challenges, admire sovereignty of all nations, rule of law and reform global establishments like the United Nations.
Source: News on AIR
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