What is Non-Aligned Movement?

(Ahlul Bayt News Agency) - NAM is the second largest international political organization after the UN. 53 African countries, 40 Asian countries, 26 countries from Latin America and Caribbean Sea and a European country (Belarus) constitute 120 members of the Non-Aligned Movement, and 18 countries and 10 organizations including the UN, the Organization of Islamic Cooperation and Arab League are the supervisor members of this Summit.

This movement without stepping toward forming another block has tried to annihilate the blocks and choose a realistic way to ensure the independent of member states.

The Non-Aligned Movement, which conceptually means " independence from East and West" and sometimes is recalled as "positive neutrality" was first began as a political movement of anti-imperialist and anti-discrimination and then while maintaining its previous positions, got developed as a collective economic movement among Third World countries.

The following is a shorten history of the movement  and a report of the XVI summit in Tehran:

The Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) is a group of states considering themselves not aligned formally with or against any major power bloc. As of 2012, the movement had 120 members and 21 observer countries.

The organization was founded in Belgrade in 1961, and was largely the brainchild of Yugoslavia's president, Josip Broz Tito, India's first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, Egypt's second president, Gamal Abdel Nasser, Ghana's first president Kwame Nkrumah, and Indonesia's first president, Sukarno.

All leaders were prominent advocates of a middle course for states in the Developing World between the Western and Eastern blocs in the Cold War.

In a speech given during the Havana Declaration of 1979, Fidel Castro said the purpose of the organization is to ensure "the national independence, sovereignty, territorial integrity and security of non-aligned countries" in their "struggle against imperialism, colonialism, neo-colonialism, racism, and all forms of foreign aggression, occupation, domination, interference or hegemony as well as against great power and bloc politics". The countries of the Non-Aligned Movement represent nearly two-thirds of the United Nations's members and contain 55% of the world population. Membership is particularly concentrated in countries considered to be developing or part of the Third World.

The Summit Conference of Heads of State or Government is the highest decision-making authority of the Movement. The existing practice is to hold the Summit Conference every three years. The Summit should be held at least one month before the regular Session of the UN General Assembly. The programme of the Summit includes a formal ceremony for the handing over of the Chair.

The decisions of a Summit should be action-orientated. Senior Officials and Ministerial meetings, which are preparatory to the Summit Conference, precede the Summit of the Heads of State or Government. The Summit has two committees, one for political issues and another for economic and social issues. In order to facilitate finalising the Drafts of the main documents, the committees begin their work informally during the Senior Officials meeting.