President Museveni is Wednesday expected to address the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) midterm review meeting that kicked off on Monday at Speke Resort Munyonyo under the theme ‘Deepening Cooperation for Shared Global Affluence.’
The appraisal summit started with the nineteenth meeting of senior officials on Monday and Tuesday to thrash out the finer details of the midterm report, the Kampala Declaration, which is set for adoption by the NAM countries’ Ministers of Foreign Affairs meeting starting Wednesday and closing Thursday.
NAM is an alliance of 121 developing countries. The alliance was established 69 years ago at the Bandung Conference as a foreign policy instrument to ally with neither superpower in global geopolitical rivalry during the Cold War. It has since become a collective voice for poor and developing countries.
Uganda’s Foreign Affairs Minister, Gen Jeje Odongo, opened the midterm review on Monday to assess the progress made in implementing the outcomes of the NAM Heads of State summit held in Kampala twenty-one months ago when Uganda assumed the NAM chairmanship.
‘Uganda remains fully committed to revitalizing NAM, reinforcing its unity and solidarity, and ensuring that our voice continues to influence international dialogue and decision-making,’ Gen Odongo said.
He added: ‘It is only through unity, solidarity, and a common purpose that we can project a clear, strong, and coordinated voice on the issues that affect our nations in today’s increasingly complex and volatile global environment.’
Delegates, Foreign Affairs ministers, deputy ministers, and ambassadors to the United Nations in New York where NAM activities are coordinated, and others in different capacities, from over eighty countries are attending the midterm review meeting in Kampala.
Uganda’s Ambassador to the UN, Adonia Ayebare, highlighted several ‘mutually reinforcing priorities, including defending multilateralism and the UN Charter, insisting on inclusive, intergovernmental decision-making, and resisting practices that would dilute participation or undermine established mandates since the country assumed chairmanship.
‘In this context, the Movement has consistently emphasized equity, transparency, and the sovereign equality of States across the General Assembly’s revitalization track and related working methods discussions. The Coordinating Bureau provided a platform to consolidate positions on resourcing the Office of the President of the General Assembly, parameters for the selection and appointment of the Secretary-General, and the preservation of in-person, inclusive modalities for intergovernmental negotiations,’ Ayebare said during plenary on Monday.
Echoes of wars
As during the Heads of State summit last year in January, the reverberations of the humanitarian catastrophe arising from the Israeli-Palestinian conflict loomed large over the midterm review meeting falling before US President Donald Trump’s Gaza ceasefire deal.
As part of the ceasefire deal, Hamas, which runs Gaza, agreed to release the remaining living Israeli captives held since the October 7, 2023 attack, which triggered Tel Aviv’s ruthless military response that killed more than 67,000 Palestinians, including more than 18,000 children. Israel, in return, agreed to release 2,000 Palestinian prisoners.
President Trump flew to Israel on Monday as part of enforcing the peace deal and later joined other world leaders in the Red Sea resort town of Sharm el-Sheikh in Egypt to sign the peace deal, guaranteed by Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi, Recap Tayyip Erdogan, Trkiye’s Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and the Emir of Qatar, Tamim bin Hamad Al-Thani.
But nearly 3,000 miles away in Kampala, the Palestinian question once again took center stage during the first two days of the NAM midterm review.
NAM recognises Palestine as an independent country and treats the Palestine question and quest for global recognition as a standing issue.
During negotiations of text for the midterm review report, some hardline NAM member states such as Iran, Cuba, and Venezuela vehemently opposed crediting Washington, alongside Egypt and Trkiye, for Monday’s peace deal that President Trump hailed as ‘historic.’
Representatives for Iran, Cuba, and Venezuela argued that Washington has supported and reinforced Tel Aviv’s blitzkrieg of Gaza for two years ‘to wipe out’ Hamas, a Palestinian liberation group, said to be a proxy of the Islamic Republic of Iran, which is opposed to Israel’s existence.
Iran and Israel went to war in June, which ended after Washington intervened by bombing three Iranian nuclear sites at Fordow, Natanz.
Meanwhile, delegates from Sudan and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) also traded barbs over the latter’s alleged support of the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), which have been fighting the national army, plunging the country into civil war.
In the 434-page draft Kampala Declaration to be adopted, the NAM Foreign Affairs Ministers expressed concerns at the growing resort to unilateralism and unilaterally imposed measures, including their over-compliance and extraterritorial effects on the enjoyment of human rights.
They underlined that globalization continues to present opportunities, challenges, and risks to the future and viability of developing countries, and trade liberalization has produced uneven benefits among and within States while the global economy has been characterized by slow and lopsided growth and instability.