“Global South” is a term coined in 1969 by Carl Ogelsby, an American writer and activist of the New Left. Global South was initially used as a synonym for the Third World, which replaced the original term after publication of the Brandt Report in 1980. Authored by an international commission led by former West German Chancellor Willy Brandt, the Brandt Report distinguished between those countries with comparatively higher per capita GDP, concentrated in the Northern Hemisphere ~ and poorer ones in the Southern Hemisphere.

An imaginary boundary, the ‘Brandt line,’ running from the Rio Grande into the Gulf of Mexico, across the Atlantic Ocean, through the Mediterranean Sea, and over the vast expanses of Central Asia to the Pacific Ocean, demarcated the division. How ever, anomalously, many “southern,” nations like India, lie in the Northern He misphere, while “northern” countries like Australia and New Zealand are located in the Southern Hemisphere. Presently, the Global South is synonymous with the Group of 77 (G-77), an inter-governmental organisation of developing countries founded in 1964 to promote the collective economic interests of its members, and to enhance their negotiating power in international forums. Today, G-77 has 134 members, and the UN has launched multiple bodies and initiatives for them, including a UN Office for South-South Cooperation (UNOSSC).

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The Global South spreads across vast expanses of Africa, the Middle East, Asia, Oceania, Latin America, and the Carib bean. Its members range from Barbados to Bhutan, Malawi to Malaysia, Pakistan to Peru, and Senegal to Syria, making for huge economic, political, and cultural diversity. The Global South encompasses major emerging powers, like Brazil, India, and Nigeria, as well as smaller states like Benin, Fiji, and Oman. Some members of the Global South, like India, recorded impressive growth in the last few decades, while most plodded on. From a purely economic perspective, it is not proper to lump poor countries of SubSaharan Africa with the rich countries of the Arabian Peninsula.

Political systems and the quality of governance in the Global South vary from monarchies and dictatorships in the Middle East, to partially free countries like Pakistan, and genuine democracies like India. The first Bandung Conference, which gave birth to the Nonaligned Movement (NAM) and South-South co-operation ~ was organized by India, Indonesia, Burma (now Myanmar), Ceylon (now Sri Lanka), and Pakistan ~ between April 18 and 24, 1955, in Bandung, Indonesia. Most of the participating countries had become independent recently; after supplying men and material for their colonial masters in the Second World War, they had no desire to be drawn into super-power ri – v alry. Rather, participating countries decided to join together in support of national self-determination, against all forms of colonialism and imperialism.

Thus, the Non-Aligned Movement was born, which held its first conference at Belgrade in 1961. G-77, which metamorphosed in the Global South, was a direct offshoot of the Bandung and Belgrade conferences. However, solidarity of the Global South evaporated, much before G-77 came into existence; erstwhile colonial masters had left behind limping economies, and undefined borders for their former colonies, resulting in hostile relations between protagonists of the Bandung Conference and Non-aligned Movement. For example, India and China, fought a bitter war in 1962. India also fought a number of wars with Pakistan (1965, 1971 and 1999). There were a nu mber of wars in Asia and Africa ~ again, between NAM members. Many newly independent countries like Myanmar and Bangladesh imploded ~ regional and tribal rivalries, kept in check by colonial powers, broke out, destroying the entire country in the process.

So, less ambitious goals were set: South-South cooperation was the buzzword now. One hundred and thirty-eight UN Member States gathered in Argentina, on 18 September 1978 to adopt the Buenos Aires Plan of Action for Promoting and Implementing Technical Cooperation among Developing Countries (BAPA). The Plan es tablished a scheme of collaboration among least developed countries; South-South cooperation promoted a large number of knowledge and expertise exchanges through program mes, projects and initiatives that helped solve specific problems in the countries of the Global South. The UN Office for SouthSouth Cooperation (UNOSSC) published a document in November 2016, listing more than 100 successful instances of South-South cooperation that contributed to the development of countries around the world, such as Cuba’s support in the fight against Ebola in West Africa; Mexico’s experience in diversifying corn products to improve health and nutrition in Kenya; the knowledge of strategies to reduce hunger shared by Colombia to Mesoamerican countries (a region comprising parts of southern North America and Central America); and the lessons from Chile to the Caribbean countries on product labelling as a measure to end obesity, among many others.

Later on, one hundred and thirty developing countries came together to establish a South Centre in Geneva in 1995. The South Centre is the intergovernmental think tank of the Global South, undertaking research on various international policy areas relevant to the protection and promotion of the interests of developing countries. The most successful instance of South-South cooperation is BRICS, comprising Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa, Egypt, Ethiopia, Indonesia, Iran, and the United Arab Emirates ~ of which China and Russia cannot be said to strictly belong to the South. In its sixteen years of existence BRIC expanded from the initial four countries to ten ~ with a substantial waiting list. A BRICS Bank, and a BRICS Contingent Reserve Arrangement (CRA) have come into existence, with a common currency “R5” (renminbi, rouble, rupee, real, and rand), under consideration.

US President Trump was sufficiently rattled by the idea of a common BRICS currency to threaten a 100 per cent tariff (later revised to 150 per cent) on countries that pursued a BRICS currency, or moved to favour another currency to replace the U.S. dollar. Almost immediately, BRICS countries quickly disavowed the move for a common currency, with FM Jaishankar going to great lengths to clarify that there was no plan to develop a reserve currency as a rival to the dollar. That the Global South is fading as a concept became obvious, when in sharp contrast to the celebrations marking its fiftieth and sixtieth anniversaries, the seventieth anniversary of the Conference of AfroAsian Solidarity (Bandung Conference) ~ the germinator of the Global South concept ~ passed unnoticed in April 2025.

Undeniably, much water has flown under the bridge in the last seventy years; divisions in the Global South have overwhelmed its unity; Asia’s share of global GDP has gone up from 17 to 44 per cent, while Africa’s share has stagnated at around 3 per cent. China which was a struggling third world country in 1955, is rivalling the US in military and economic might, and emerging Asian countries like India and Indonesia are being counted among the high and mighty. Today, economic prosperity, rather than political posturing, is more important for countries of the Global South, with sustained development and economic growth taking precedence over geopolitical questions of world order. All countries, not of the Global South alone, are more preoccupied with their own economic upliftment rather than collective bargaining, leading to a doubt ~ whether the primary aim of the Global South was an equitable and inclusive global economy, or a more multipolar international system ~ the original goal of the Bandung Conference, NAM and G-77? In this scenario, leaders of the Global South have developed their individual foreign policies, not necessarily in sync with the rest of the Global South.

For example, while China is confronting the US on( tariffs, In donesia and India are engaging with Trump for individual tariff concessions, with the reciprocal promise of buying more American oil and fighter jets, leaving other countries of the Global South to their own devices. Also, Nehruvian policies, particularly non-alignment, that guided the Global South, are no longer in favour, even in India. With PM Modi making no secret of his admiration for Mr Trump, the current Indian foreign policy establishment has dropped use of the word ‘nonalignment,’ in preference to ‘multi-alignment,’ which allows India to have close ties with the US.

Probably, the spirit of the Global South is gone and buried ~ bar the shouting. All said, the potential of the Global south is undisputed, but still untapped. As neuroscientist and author Abhijit Naskar has written:

The global south is not a charity case,

it’s rich with both mind and minerals.

Human poverty in the global south is manufactured by the northern apes.

Awake, Arise, O Children of South, you got more brain,

heart and backbone than all old and new colonials combined.

(The writer is a retired Principal Chief Commissioner of Income-Tax)