Second Global South Summit: A holistic assessment

On November 17, India hosted the second ‘Voice of the Global South Summit’ (VOGSS) in the virtual format. The first summit was held on 12–13 January 2023. Two summits within a year to advance the cause of developing nations and the announcement to convene another summit later to discuss issues relating to Artificial Intelligence and its impact on the Global South are clearly indicative of the creation of a new institutional platform for sustaining solidarity in the developing world. This is also an indicator of India asserting its leadership of a large and important grouping. How has Indian diplomacy performed so far in this regard and how it might address this complex phenomenon in the next two years will be watched with widespread interest.

From Global South to first summit

International relations experts are quite used to depicting the world as divided into certain camps or categories. The Cold War threw up the polarization between the West and the East, terming the rest of the world as the ‘Non-aligned’. The ‘Third World’ was used in the past to club together all developing countries. The Group of 77 (G77) was a more neutral and acceptable phrase to describe countries on the path of development, which advocated both North-South and South-South cooperation.

The term ‘global South’ was first used by Carl Oglesky, a leftist American author and political activist in 1969, which gathered currency in the later decades. Through his famous 1980 report entitled ‘North-South: A Programme for Survival’, former West German Chancellor Willy Brandt invented the ‘Brandt Line’ that divided the world roughly at the latitude of 30 degrees North, placing North America, Europe, Japan, and Australia in the North and showing the southern part of the hemisphere as the South.

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India, a leading light in both the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) and the G77, has always been perceived as an important pillar of the South. In contrast, China was neither a member of NAM nor of G77, though it worked as a partner of the latter, thus terming the grouping as ‘G77 and China’. Conscious of the reduced relevance of NAM in the post-Cold War era and disenchanted with the non-performing G77, India has created a new and innovative pathway suitable for the needs of the 21st century. The opportunity to host the G20 summit was the trigger for India to craft the new platform. It is designed to help the Global South address current geopolitical and economic challenges more effectively. While defining the Global South, External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar observed, “Those who are really Global South know they are Global South.”

The first VOGSS was quite a success, once the initial question as to which countries should be invited was resolved neatly. For obvious reasons, China could not be included but this exclusion required a touch of diplomacy. Therefore, no member nations of the G20 were part of the first Global South summit. This meant excluding close partners like Indonesia, Brazil, and South Africa too, but India has been in close touch with them through the medium of the G20 Troika.

The simple purpose of the January summit for India was to ascertain key concerns and needs of developing countries that could be taken up and pursued by the G20 President during its tenure from December 2022 to November 2023. The participation of 125 countries in this summit was the validation of India's decision to convene the summit. The inclusive programme and the opportunity for a sizeable number of leaders and ministers to articulate their views received considerable appreciation. The most tangible outcome was that the host obtained rich inputs that later moulded the G20 agenda.

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The second summit

The second VOGSS was structured in the same pattern as the first summit. It comprised an opening and a closing session attended by the leaders, whereas eight ministerial sessions were held where participants were minister of foreign affairs (two sessions), finance, education, environment, energy, health, and commerce. The specific theme of the inaugural session was ‘Together, for Everyone’s Growth, with Everyone’s Trust’, and for the concluding session, it was ‘Global South: Together for One Future.’

The essential purpose of the second summit was twofold: to apprise high-level representatives of the Global South of the deliberations and outcomes of the G20 summit hosted and presided over by India, and to ensure that momentum is sustained, with the support of developing countries, for optimal implementation of the G20 decisions. Prime Minister Narendra Modi underlined that the Global South priorities were fully reflected in the G20 summit outcomes. “Geographically the Global South has always existed, but it is getting a voice for the first time, and this is because of the joint efforts,” he noted adding, “We are more than 100 countries but our priorities are similar.” He was clear that the message from the Global South was that “it wants its autonomy.”

At a special media briefing, Foreign Secretary Vinay Kwatra provided details about the issues discussed, the reactions of foreign participants, and the summit’s outcomes. He conveyed that New Delhi was well on its way to implementing various initiatives that PM Modi had announced at the January summit. In particular, Modi inaugurated the Global South Center of Excellence, to be called ‘DAKSHIN’, an acronym for Development and Knowledge Sharing Initiative. It will serve as a think tank and a repository of knowledge and development initiatives that promotes greater collaboration among developing nations.

Ministerial sessions, it was disclosed, went into a deep dive on a whole gamut of India's G20 priorities ranging from Sustainable Development Goals, energy transition, climate action finance, digital transformation, debt relief, women-led development, counter-terrorism, and reform of international financial institutions as well as the UN Security Council. The mood in the conference rooms was imbued with an expression of “gratitude to Prime Minister Modi’s leadership here.” Specifically, the admission of the African Union (AU) as a member of G20 was widely lauded by the participants.

Assessment

Several observations are in order here. First, the Global South orientation of the G20 summit was fully noted at the VOGSS summit. Perhaps over 50% of the content of the G20 New Delhi Leaders Declaration (NDLD) is related exclusively to the needs of the Global South. Second, there was recognition that the success in securing a seat for the AU in G20 demonstrated that global groupings can be persuaded to respond to the changing global realities in an inclusive fashion, as Foreign Secretary Kwatra put it. Third, participants seemed clear that resolving global challenges required not confrontation but a mix of cooperation, consultation, and coordination.

Minister Jaishankar referred to India's conviction that “the success of our G20 Presidency is the success of the Global South.” But this mission will be truly accomplished when the implementation of G20 decisions gets underway and picks up momentum. For this, the Global South nations were urged “to keep our collective voices robust.”

For India, the next challenge, as a leader of the Global South, is to ensure maximum coordination with Brazil and South Africa as the next two presidents of G20. Through close engagement, deft diplomacy, and while respecting the sensitivities of its G20 successors, India can continue serving the cause of the Global South constructively.

(Disclaimer: The views of the writer do not represent the views of WION or ZMCL. Nor does WION or ZMCL endorse the views of the writer.)