Write a brief note on the 17th NAM Summit in Venezuela. (2019, 10 Marks)
The 17th Summit of the Non-Aligned Movement met on Margarita Island, Venezuela, with its leaders’ segment on 17–18 September 2016, under the theme “Peace, Sovereignty and Solidarity for Development”. Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani handed the chair to Nicolás Maduro for 2016–19. The summit is a snapshot of the post-Cold War movement: wide attendance, thin leadership and little follow-through.
Context
- The host was in deep economic crisis: the oil-price collapse from mid-2014 had brought hyperinflation, shortages and unrest.
- Maduro used the platform against Washington, asking members to reject the 2015 US order calling Venezuela a security threat; Latin American leaders denounced Brazil’s removal of Dilma Rousseff as a coup.
Participation
104 of the 120 members took part, with 18 observers and guests, but only about ten heads of state or government came, against more than thirty at Tehran in 2012. UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon sent a message instead.
Outcomes
- A Margarita Declaration of twenty-one points and a long final document reaffirmed sovereignty, self-determination, non-intervention, human rights and a world free of nuclear weapons, and pledged to revitalise the movement.
- Terrorism: groups from Al-Qaeda to Boko Haram named, with the insistence that terrorism be linked to no religion or nationality.
- Palestine, including a just settlement for refugees; West Asia; opposition to unilateral coercive measures and the Cuban embargo.
- UN reform: a more democratic, representative and transparent Security Council.
- Development and disarmament pursued with the G-77, including reform of the economic order.
India’s role
Vice-President M. Hamid Ansari led India, only the second time a Prime Minister had missed a summit. He urged that terrorism as an instrument of state policy be condemned outright and that NAM build its own counter-terrorism mechanism. He also asked whether a UN designed for 51 members in 1945 could serve 193 today, tying NAM to India’s Security Council campaign.
Significance
- C. Raja Mohan called NAM “a movement in coma” (September 2016), kept alive by a triennial ritual used mainly to air national concerns, as India did on terrorism.
- India’s low-level presence signalled its preference for multi-alignment and smaller groupings.
- Later chairs, Azerbaijan (2019) and Uganda (2024), followed the same pattern; in January 2026 US forces seized Maduro himself.
Conclusion
Margarita Island showed NAM as a forum for convening rather than acting: broad declarations, absent leaders and a host using the chair for its own quarrels. Yet 104 states still came, evidence that the Global South values a shared platform even when its largest members, India among them, invest little in it.