THE PEACE AND JUSTICE REPORT: Why peace and nuclear disarmament are at the heart of non-alignment

CND leader KATE HUDSON highlights how the countries of the global South are at the forefront of of the struggle for a nuclear-free world

Friday, 10 June 2022 | Morning Star

AS OUR world spirals toward the catastrophe of nuclear war, there has never been a greater need for a new global balancing, a rejection of great power war, exploitation and aggression.

Now, more than ever, we need to reject the brutal unipolar agenda of the US, the dividing up of the world between hostile powers and the suppression of the rights of the many in the interests of the few.

Nowhere is this clearer than the possession of nuclear weapons: only nine states possess these ultimate weapons of mass destruction, yet they can hold the rest of the world to ransom with their nuclear terror.

The struggle for a genuinely multipolar world, aligned only with the world’s people, not military blocs, has peace and disarmament at its heart: this is as true now as it was 60 years ago when the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) was founded.

As well as opposition to colonisation and economic subjection, those founding the movement championed self-determination and equality in states’ relations and they also agreed on their opposition to military blocs, their commitment to world peace and a very strong advocacy of global nuclear disarmament.

That thread has remained a constant ever since and today we continue to see the countries of the global South leading global disarmament initiatives.