2.1.4. A brief overview of the Non Aligned Movement

Six years after Bandung, the Movement of Non-Aligned Countries was founded on a wider geographical basis at the First Summit Conference of Belgrade, which was held on September 1-6, 1961. The Conference was attended by 25 countries: Afghanistan, Algeria, Yemen, Myanmar, Cambodia, Sri Lanka, Congo, Cuba, Cyprus, Egypt, Ethiopia, Ghana, Guinea, India, Indonesia, Iraq, Lebanon, Mali, Morocco, Nepal, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, Tunisia, and Yugoslavia.

In 1960, in the light of the results achieved in Bandung, the creation of the Movement of Non- Aligned Countries was given boost during the Fifteenth Ordinary Session of the United Nations General Assembly, during which 17 new African and Asian countries were admitted to the UN. A key role was played in this process by the then Heads of State and Government Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt, Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana, Jawaharlal Nehru of India, Ahmed Sukarno of Indonesia and Josip Broz Tito of Yugoslavia, who later became the founding fathers of the movement and its emblematic leaders.

The Bandung Principles were adopted later as the main goals and objectives of the policy of non-alignment. The fulfilment of those principles became the essential criterion for Non- Aligned Movement membership; it is what was known as the "quintessence of the Movement" until the early 1990s.

The Founders of NAM have preferred to declare it as a movement but not an organization in order to avoid bureaucratic implications of the latter.