CHAPTER FOUR: ECONOMIC GOVERNANCE AND MANAGEMENT Box 6: Algeria – pioneer of southern solidarity: the New International Economic Order Between 1955 and 1964, 32 countries became independent, particularly in Africa. The liberation of Algeria, acquired at the cost of a colonial war, marks this country as a symbol and standard bearer of other political, economic and sociocultural struggles in Africa and the rest of the world. It was during the time of the Cold War that the Non-Aligned Movement was formed, with Algeria soon becoming one of its leading members. Still feeling the effects of its political war of liberation, and of its efforts to achieve economic independence, Algeria, then under the leadership of President Houari Boumedienne, convened the 75 heads of state and government of the Non-Aligned Movement at the Conference of Algiers in 1973 where calls were made for a New International Economic Order (NIEO). The Conference called for a programme aimed at reversing the status quo of the domination of the North over the South and for a more equitable world order, a programme aimed especially at reducing inequalities suffered by developing countries in international trade. The NIEO proposed the lowering of protectionist measures against products coming from the South, and for countries of the Third World the right to nationalise their natural resources. The countries of the South wished to control the processes involving the raw materials of which they were the major producers, from the production stage right through to marketing and pricing. The Algiers meeting, using the fact that Third World countries were now in the majority in the United Nations, forced the convening of an extraordinary meeting of the UN General Assembly in May 1974 to hear the demands of the South. The Algerian president, as a true leader and representative of the Third World, attended a special meeting of the UN General Assembly on raw materials in New York in 1974. As the spokesperson for the Conference of Algiers and standard bearer of the demands of the Non-Aligned Movement, he gave a speech in which he set out an economic doctrine that called, among other things, for the establishment of a more equitable new international economic order that took the interests of the Third World into account. The UN, by consensus, adopted this programme of action on the establishment of a NIEO with the right to nationalise and be compensated for damages suffered under colonisation. By the end of 1974, the demand for a NIEO was supplemented by the Declaration on the Economic Rights and Duties of States in their Mutual Relations. This declaration affirmed the right to nationalise – which was to translate into the nationalisation of oil wealth – the submission of transnationals to the laws of the host state, regulation of foreign investment, the right to control capital and financial flows, the right to expropriate foreign assets, the right to natural resources and the right to development. Algeria has therefore played an active role in promoting the NIEO. Current discussions on fair and beneficial globalisation for all and equity in World Trade Organisation (WTO) regulations flow from the spirit of the NIEO of which Algeria remains one of the greatest pioneers. In political terms, the solidarity, initiated by Algeria and shared by countries of the South continues to this day. Thus, in September 2003, 20 countries of the South, headed by the trio of Brazil, India and South Africa, were responsible for the collapse of the WTO Conference in Cancun. Known as the G20, these countries of the South are demanding that subsidisation of farmers in developed countries, as practised by the European Union and the United States, be abolished. 136