Remaking an international financial system

On Wednesday at the Egypt meetings of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM), Raul Castro called for the creation of a new international financial system that better takes into account developing countries’ interests, and “that relies on the participation of all countries.”

It’s a goal that makes a lot of sense, frankly, even if implementation is a logistical and consensus-achieving nightmare. The global economic downturn has posed great problems for developing countries, especially those engaged in projects to lift large portions of their populations from poverty. Many nations of the Non-Aligned Movement and beyond argue that their growth and stability is being undercut by a crisis that they had no part in creating. And they certainly have a point.

“This crisis, the worst in living memory, emanated from the advanced industrial economies, but the developing economies, the members of our movement, have been the hardest hit,” said Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh at the NAM meetings.

After Raúl’s speech Wednesday, Cuba officially handed the presidency of NAM over to Egypt. The challenge in the organization’s next steps will be to move from simple rhetoric to concrete plans: how should the new global financial system function? How will NAM (a group that was created during the Cold War by countries unaligned with either the United States or the Soviet Union and that therefore lost much of its relevance with the fall of the latter—see this Al-Jazeera video) seek to exert influence and achieve its goals on this important issue and others?

One idea: NAM could work through India and Saudi Arabia, both of whom are members of whose growing economic influence has been noted by the West; or through China, who was an observer at these most recent NAM meetings and could contribute to advancing the group’s agenda at the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, for example…