Vice-President Hamid Ansari will be representing India at the upcoming 17th Summit of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) to be held at Margarita Island in Venezuela from September 17-18. This will be the second time that the Prime Minister of India will not be representing the country at the Summit. India is one of the founding members of the Non-Aligned Movement and it hosted the 7th NAM Summit in 1983 in New Delhi.

The last NAM Summit was hosted by Iran in 2012. “The Summit is expected to deliberate on issues of contemporary relevance and concern such as terrorism, UN reform, the situation in West Asia, threats to peace and security, UN peacekeeping operations, climate change, and sustainable development,” stated a press release by the Ministry of External Affairs.

Non-Aligned Movement (NAM)

The Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) is a group of states which are not formally aligned with or against any major power bloc. The organization was founded in Belgrade in 1961, and was largely conceived by India’s first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru; Indonesia’s first president, Sukarno; Egypt’s second president, Gamal Abdel Nasser; Ghana’s first president Kwame Nkrumah; and Yugoslavia’s president, Josip Broz Tito.

All five leaders were prominent advocates of a middle course for states in the Developing World between the Western and Eastern Blocs in the Cold War. As of 2012, the movement has 120 members.