1st Summit of the Non-Aligned Movement

Summit Conference of Heads of State or Government of the Non-Aligned Movement (Serbo-Croatian: Конференција шефова држава или влада несврстаних земаља / Konferencija šefova država ili vlada nesvrstanih zemalja, Macedonian: Конференција на шефови на држави или влади на неврзани земји, Slovene: Konferenca voditeljev držav ali vlad neuvrščenih držav) on 1–6 September 1961 in Belgrade, Yugoslavia was the first conference of the Non-Aligned Movement.[1] A major contributing factor to the organization of the conference was the process of decolonization of a number of African countries in the 1960s.[1] Some therefore called it the ″Third World's Yalta″ in reference to 1945 Yalta Conference.[1]

Summit Conference of Heads of State or Government of the Non-Aligned Movement
Meeting at the House of the National Assembly
Host countryYugoslavia
Date1–6 September 1961
Venue(s)House of the National Assembly
CitiesBelgrade
Participants Afghanistan

 Algeria
 Burma
 Cambodia
 Ceylon
 Congo-Léopoldville
 Cuba
 Cyprus
 Ethiopia
 Ghana
 Guinea
 India
 Indonesia
 Iraq
 Lebanon
 Mali
 Morocco
   Nepal
 Saudi Arabia
 Somalia
 Sudan
 Tunisia
 United Arab Republic
 Yemen

 Yugoslavia
ChairJosip Broz Tito
(President of Yugoslavia)
FollowsBandung Conference
Precedes2nd Summit (Cairo, United Arab Republic)

Twenty-five countries in total participated in Belgrade Conference, while 3 countries, Bolivia, Brazil and Ecuador, were observers.[2] The preparatory meeting of Non-Aligned Countries took place earlier that year in Cairo June 5–12, 1961.[3] One of the issues was division of the newly independent countries over the Congo Crisis which led to a rift and creation of the conservative and anti-radical Brazzaville Group and radical nationalist Casablanca Group.[1] All members of the Casablanca Group attended the conference, including Algeria, Ghana, Guinea, Mali, Morocco and the United Arab Republic, while none of the Brazzaville Group was present.[1] The summit was followed by the 2nd Summit of the Non-Aligned Movement in Cairo in 1964. The 1962 Cairo Conference on the Problems of Developing Countries was a direct follow-up of the Belgrade Summit at which Brazil, Ethiopia, India, Senegal and Yugoslavia will work on preparation for the upcoming UNCTAD conference of the ECOSOC.[4]

The Conference
Participating states.

Brijuni Islands, an archipelago in the Socialist Republic of Croatia, were initially considered to host the summit after they hosted the Brioni Meeting of 1956, yet the City of Belgrade was ultimately selected due to Brijuni's insufficient venues and concentration of the international communication and media facilities in the capital city of Yugoslavia.[5]

Vladimir Popović was the head of the Yugoslav State Committee for the Preparation of the Conference. The conference brought together 25 independent states. In addition to them, there were three states that had observer status, eleven socialist parties, trade unions from Japan and four other organizations. Socio-economic differences between participants were great and from the beginning participating states often showed different interests. Yugoslavia attached special importance to Latin American countries participation. The participation of these countries, along with the representatives of Europe, should have given the conference the character of a gathering where all parts of the world are represented, and avoid reduction to Afro-Asian meeting as it was case with some meetings before.

President Tito only partially succeeded bringing together all parts of the world to the conference. From Latin America, only Cuba was a full participant, while Bolivia, Brazil and Ecuador had observer status. The reason for that was the inability of these states to resist some pressure from the United States which wanted to preserve its role in the Western Hemisphere. The representatives of Yugoslavia were especially disappointed with Mexico's last minute cancelation. Of the European countries, only Cyprus and Yugoslavia as a host participated in the meeting.

The conference was followed by 1,016 journalists of which 690 were from abroad from 53 different countries and with the New York Times' Paul Hofmann describing the event as a "paradise for cameramen".[6] Together, four Indian newspapers (The Times of India, The Hindu Madras, Indian Express and The Patriot) and four American newspapers (The New York Times, The Washington Post, Los Angeles Times and The Christian Science Monitor) published 177,265 words about the conference in 7 days before, during and 7 days after the conference.[6]

Participants

Observers

Guests

See also

References
  1. Ancic, Ivana (17 August 2017). "Belgrade, The 1961 Non-Aligned Conference". Global South Studies. University of Virginia.
  2. Pantelic, Nada (2011). "The First Conference of Heads of State or Government of Non-Aligned Countries (in Serbian and English)". Exhibition Catalog. Archives of Yugoslavia. ISBN 978-86-80099-35-4.
  3. "2011.- "The first conference of the Heads of state or Government of Non-aligned countries, Belgrade 1961"". Archives of Yugoslavia. Retrieved 28 July 2020.
  4. James Mark; Yakov Feygin (2020). "The Soviet Union, Eastern Europe, and Alternative Vision of a Global Economy 1950s–1980s". In James Mark; Artemy M. Kalinovsky; Steffi Margus (eds.). Alternative Globalizations: Eastern Europe and the Postcolonial World. Indiana University Press. pp. 35–58. ISBN 978-0-253-04650-5.
  5. Mila Turajlić (2023). "Film as the Memory Site of the 1961 Belgrade Conference of Non-Aligned States". In Paul Stubbs (ed.). Socialist Yugoslavia and the Non-Aligned Movement: Social, Cultural, Political, and Economic Imaginaries. McGill-Queen's University Press. pp. 203–231. ISBN 9780228014652.
  6. Jürgen Dinkel (2014). "'To grab the headlines in the world press': Non-aligned summits as media events". In Nataša Mišković; Herald Fischer-Tine; Nada Boškovska (eds.). The Non-Aligned Movement and the Cold War: Delhi — Bandung — Belgrade. Routledge. pp. 207–225. ISBN 978-0-415-74263-4.
  7. Rakove, Robert B. (2014). "Two roads to Belgrade: the United States, Great Britain, and the first nonaligned conference". Cold War History. 14 (3): 337–357. doi:10.1080/14682745.2013.871528. S2CID 153513441.
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