Foreign Secretary Vinay Mohan Kwatra on Friday said the Voice of the Global South forum did not dilute India’s engagement with the initiatives such as the Non Aligned Movement and the G-77 and captured the concerns of developing nations in a purposeful and meaningful way.

Addressing a press conference here after the conclusion of the two-day Voice of the Global South Summit, Kwatra said India felt that the initiative would be the most appropriate forum to meet the objectives to have a common platform for a developing world.

“This summit does not dilute in any way how India engages proactively and robustly with other fora, whether it is the Non Aligned Movement or the G-77,” the foreign secretary said.

“But, given the current global context, we felt that it is important for us to shape a platform which captures this voice of the Global South in a purposeful and meaningful way and carry it forward to other international institutions including to the G-20,” he said.

The foreign secretary was responding to questions on whether the forum was going to be a bigger movement than the Non Aligned Movement.

The Voice of the Global South Summit was attended by leaders of 125 developing countries, including 47 from Africa, 31 from Asia, 29 from Latin America and the Caribbean, 11 from Oceania and seven from Europe.

Truly a #VoiceOfGlobalSouth Summit. pic.twitter.com/WYK0I88X68

— Arindam Bagchi (@MEAIndia) January 13, 2023

The Non Aligned Movement was started in 1955 as a forum of 120 countries that were not aligned with any major power bloc.

The NAM was started by Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, Yugoslav President Josip Broz Tito, Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nassar, Ghanaian President Kwame Nkrumah and Indonesian President Sukarno.

Responding to a question, the foreign secretary said terrorism figured in the deliberations in the context of the developmental challenges.

“When the specifics of the developmental challenges were contextualised it was clearly admitted that one of the key context of the development challenge that the world faces is the challenge relating to terrorism and the global political uncertainty including the derivative impact of the ongoing conflict between Russia and Ukraine,” Kwatra said.

In a sharp critique of the United Nations, External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar described the multilateral forum as “a frozen 1945-invented mechanism” which was “simply unable to articulate the wider concerns of its membership”.

“Some powers have been singularly focused on their own advantage, to the exclusion of the well-being of the international community,” he said.

Jaishankar also called for working collectively towards a “new globalisation paradigm” and said a more democratic and equitable world can only be built on greater diversification and localisation of capabilities.