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Trade Organisation (ITO). With this aim in mind, the UN convened a
conference in Havanna, attended by 53 nations from East and West,
including the Soviet Union. The so-called Havanna Charter, comprising
the statutes of the ITO, was finally signed in March 1948 but never
came into force because it was not ratified, due mainly to opposition
by the U.S. Congress. Western governments in particular feared that
developing nations might become too dominant and the United States
was afraid of losing its sovereignty. All that remained were the GATT
talks, which – although originally an interim arrangement – were continued
until the World Trade Organisation (WTO) was founded in 1995.
The Soviet Union and the countries under its control did not join
the GATT agreement, committing themselves instead to setting up
an economic bloc of their own. These developments can therefore be
regarded as being part of the Cold War.
Later, the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) came into being, initiated
first and foremost by the Yugoslavian president Tito, the Egyptian head
of state Nasser, the Indian prime minister Nehru, together with Zhou
Enlai from the People’s Republic of China as well as the host of the first
conference, which took place in the city of Bandung in 1955, President
Sukarno of Indonesia. Various resolutions, e.g. condemning the East-
West conflict and calling for disarmament, the peaceful coexistence
of nations and a ban on atomic weapons were passed by 29 nations.
They denounced colonialism and racial discrimination, and demanded
that the countries of the Third World be given the same rights and
treatment as their former colonial powers. This movement, however,
lost its significance with the disintegration of the power blocs after the
fall of the Soviet Union.
The aim of these observations is not to present a detailed historical
picture but rather to illustrate the struggle that was taking place to
establish a world order. Nothing less was at stake than the precedence
of human rights over economic interests. Those institutions which
currently set the tone, such as the WTO, World Bank and IMF, leave
us in no doubt whatsoever as to the outcome of the struggle: economic
interests have become unilaterally predominant in almost all areas of
our lives and the powers-that-be will do anything to make sure that
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