2023

The global south seemed to be top of mind for policymakers and diplomats this year, from the halls of the United Nations to leaders’ podiums. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has called his country the “voice of the global south,” hosting a virtual summit by that name to start the year that elevated the perspectives of dozens of countries in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. In Vietnam in September, U.S. President Joe Biden exchanged the Cold War-era phrase “Third World” for “global south” as he spoke.

For some commentators, the new politics of the global south recalls the heyday of the Non-Aligned Movement, first convened in Indonesia in 1955. The comparison may seem particularly apt when it comes to Russia’s war in Ukraine. Since February 2022, many countries in the global south have avoided criticizing Moscow, including by abstaining from or voting against U.N. resolutions to condemn aggression against Kyiv—and continuing to import Russian oil and gas despite Western sanctions.

In September, more than 18 months after the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky returned to the U.N. General Assembly, in large part seeking to bolster wider international support for his cause. At the time, FP’s Howard W. French wrote that many developing countries simply had other priorities: “Increasingly, the poor are saying to the rich that your priorities won’t mean more to us until ours mean much more to you.”

Two major meetings underscored the shifting role of the global south in world politics this year: the BRICS summit held in August in Johannesburg, South Africa, and the G-20 leaders’ summit hosted by New Delhi in September. In Johannesburg, the bloc—comprising Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa—announced it would add six new members, giving it a bigger share of the world’s GDP than the G-7 in terms of purchasing power parity. Whether the BRICS expansion will lead to more power or less cohesion remains to be seen, but the bloc has at least succeeded in making de-dollarization a talking point.

Meanwhile, Modi used the G-20 summit—and India’s leadership of the group this year—to expand the agenda to include issues of significance to the global south, such as trade, climate change, and migration. He touted the event and the resulting consensus declaration as a success for New Delhi, scoring increased World Bank funding aimed countries in the global south. But tensions and differences within the group were apparent, especially on Russia’s war in Ukraine.

The war in Gaza that began in October marked another shift, as countries in the global south pointed to Western support for Israel’s collective punishment of the Gaza Strip after the Hamas attacks on Oct. 7 as hypocritical—particularly considering the West’s insistence on a so-called rules-based global order. In November, Julien Barnes-Dacey and Jeremy Shapiro of the European Council on Foreign Relations argued that the United States and its allies are bound to lose such a “battle of narratives.”

With the global south now commanding the world’s attention, the fluidity and the imprecision of the term—once relegated to academia—have also become more clear. Even as analysts question the very concept, what is certain is that the global south will remain a central figure in diplomacy and summitry in 2024.

Below are some of Foreign Policy’s top pieces on global south politics and debates this year.

1. The World Isn’t Slipping Away From the West

By Comfort Ero, March 8

More than a year after Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Comfort Ero, the president and CEO of the International Crisis Group, reflected on an increasingly common question: Why have so many countries in Africa, Asia, and Latin America sat this one out, offering limited support to Kyiv?

It’s tempting to say that the West is losing the global south. But that is too simplistic, Ero argues, writing that Western countries should look to recent history to better understand what motivates countries with different perspectives: “It’s no wonder that many officials from countries in the global south feel that the West is demanding their loyalty over Ukraine—after not showing them much solidarity in their own hours of need.”

“[N]early all the officials I’ve spoken with seek to define their national policies on their own terms—reflecting their own sovereign interests—rather than framing them as part of a West-Russia contest,” Ero writes.

2. 6 Swing States Will Decide the Future of Geopolitics

By Cliff Kupchan, June 6

In May, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky courted the support of Brazil, India, Indonesia, and Saudi Arabia—so-called middle powers that, along with other leaders of the global south, including South Africa and Turkey, “have more power today than ever before,” Eurasia Group Chairman Cliff Kupchan writes.

These six “swing states” have already shaped optics around Russia’s war in Ukraine, namely by refusing to fall in line with Western plans for military aid to Kyiv and sanctions against Moscow. The United States needs to “up its game” with regard to these six powers and the global south more broadly, Kupchan writes. “We now have more drivers on every geopolitical issue. That makes predictions of geopolitical outcomes, already a fraught endeavor, even harder.”

3. Can the G-20 Be a Champion for the Global South?

By Darren Walker, Sept. 8

The Group of 20 includes many countries from the global south, but its wealthiest members long wielded the most influence at the table. As India hosted the annual G-20 leaders’ summit in September, Ford Foundation President Darren Walker argued that the group was now “poised to usher in an unprecedented era of not only influence, but also economic justice, for the global south.”

Walker writes that India used its year-long G-20 presidency to highlight issues that disproportionately affect countries in the global south, particularly sovereign debt, and to amplify voices from this global majority. Significant divisions remain among the G-20, but India’s leadership is part of the “establishment of a new standard” led by developing countries, he argues.

“With their upcoming G-20 presidencies, Brazil and South Africa have the chance to build on the momentum created by their predecessors,” Walker writes.

People take part in a demonstration against Israel’s military offensive in the Gaza Strip in São Paulo on Oct. 22.Nelson Almeida/AFP via Getty Images

4. Why the Global South Is Accusing America of Hypocrisy

By Oliver Stuenkel, Nov. 2

The war in Gaza exposed a new challenge to the West from the countries of the global south: accusations of hypocrisy. “Many in the developing world have long seen a double standard in the West condemning an illegal occupation in Ukraine while also standing staunchly behind Israel, which has occupied the West Bank and Gaza Strip since 1967,” Oliver Stuenkel, an international relations professor in São Paulo, writes.

Stuenkel argues that this perceived inconsistency could damage Western claims of a so-called rules-based global order, especially as civilian casualties rise and calls for a cease-fire grow. “The longer the Israel-Hamas war goes on, the greater the risk to Western credibility in the global south becomes,” he writes.

5. Is There Such a Thing as a Global South?

By C. Raja Mohan, Dec. 9

As the term “global south” has gone mainstream, so to speak, FP’s C. Raja Mohan writes that it has become a “convenient shorthand” in debates over issues as diverse as climate policy and Russia’s war in Ukraine—putting the global majority in a “single category with supposedly similar interests.” But Mohan raises a pointed question: Is there even such a thing as a global south?

Mohan points out several analytical flaws with the concept, which he calls “old wine in a new bottle.” He explains that countries of the global south have divergent economic interests and development paths, and that the group itself has much too fluid boundaries. Given these issues, is “global southism” worthwhile as an explanatory framework? Mohan doesn’t think so, but he acknowledges that it may be here to stay.

“Despite my and others’ calls to retire the category global south, it is unlikely to disappear from the international relations vocabulary anytime soon,” Mohan writes. “For many in the West, it is a way of othering the rest; for the chattering classes in the rest, it is a way of channeling deep reservoirs of resentment against continuing Western dominance.”