Issue 1, 2014 celebrates the fiftieth anniversary of the establishment of the Group of 77 at the United Nations, with a focus on the negotiations leading to the 15 June 1964 signing of the "Joint Declaration of Seventy-Seven Countries", as well as the Group of 77 role as a catalyst for international development.
The UNDP report is correct—the Global South has begun to rise. What is in question, however, is which agenda from the South will be most able shift the suffocation of neoliberalism for an alternative direction.
The immediate interests and specific negotiating priorities of many of its many members—the great number in itself makes it difficult to achieve consensus—are different from those of the others.The individual countries differ vastly from one another with respect to their cultural, ideological, political, and economic systems.
The 50 years of celebrations should be the starting point for a new phase, in which the G-77 plays a public role for the good of man and woman all over the world.
