NIEO 50th Anniversary in NYC

We, the Members of the United Nations, solemnly proclaim our united determination to work urgently for the establishment of a New International Economic Order based on equity, sovereign equality, interdependence, common interest and cooperation among all States, irrespective of their economic and social systems which shall correct inequalities and redress existing injustices, make it possible to eliminate the widening gap between the developed and the developing countries and ensure steadily accelerating economic and social development and peace and justice for present and future generations.

Five decades later, however, that gap has failed to narrow. On the contrary, the old crises of debt, dependency, and under-development have combined with an accelerating crisis of climate to threaten not only the developmental prospects of the South, but also — in the case of many small island states — their very existence.

The shape of the world economy has certainly undergone a profound transformation in the past 50 years, both in the institutional architecture of globalization and the distribution of its gains. The BRICS+ nations today, for example, account for a greater percentage of global GDP than the G7. But the line that Willy Brandt once drew across the map of the world — demarcating a developmental divide between North and South — is still visible today: an affront to peace and justice for present and future generations.

On its 50th anniversary, the NIEO thus merits revival, but also requires renovation. How might we adapt this vision to the conditions of the twenty-first century? How might we confront the crises of climate change, viral pandemics, and extreme poverty that threaten billions of lives and livelihoods across the planet? And how might we seize the opportunity of the present conjuncture — with the tectonic plates of the global economy drifting toward a multipolar formation — to ensure the success of such a program of action where its predecessor failed?

Over the past two years, the Progressive International has convened scholars, diplomats, and policymakers from over 50 countries to answer these questions. From Brussels to Kampala and beyond, these deliberations have called on representatives from across the Group of 77 to reimagine the New International Economic Order, and the tactics to win it.

At the 5th International Conference for World Equilibrium in Havana, these collective deliberations yielded a strategy to ‘assert Southern power’ to secure sovereign development, as set out in the Havana Declaration presented to the Conference presidium in January 2023:

Since then, a collaborative effort has advanced a comprehensive Program of Action on the Construction of a New International Economic Order: a handbook for an insurgent South in the 21st century, with measures that combine clarity and audacity to drive sustainable development in turbulent times.

The Program of Action is divided into five main issue areas, each of which articulates both their objectives and the concrete measures to reach them. Such measures are neither instructions for Southern states nor pleas for the benevolence of their Northern neighbors. Rather, they offer a set of clear and concrete proposals for shared institutions and coordinated actions that Southern governments can take immediately, collectively, and unilaterally to transform the global economic architecture in the service of peace, justice, and shared prosperity.

The publication of the Program of Action coincides with the 50th anniversary of the original NIEO, and concludes the two-year phase of the Progressive International’s NIEO commemoration. But it remains a living document: a draft to be amended and adapted to the conditions of the nations and peoples that seek to implement its measures. The task of the Havana Group now is to accompany them on that historic journey toward the realization of a New International Economic Order.

The accelerating collapse of the conditions of life on earth is humanity’s foremost challenge, requiring a radical reconfiguration of our economies, energy systems, and ways of life. But these processes of climate restoration and reparation will require a confrontation with the system that bears responsibility for its breakdown. For centuries, the world’s dominant powers have depleted the soil, poisoned the air, cut down the trees and displaced the caretakers of the fields and forests. Today, the trajectory of the global ‘green transition’ is set to reproduce the same colonial dynamics that first caused the crisis. The North seeks to divert attention from its broken climate commitments, pinning the burden of adjustment on those most vulnerable to its effects. Meanwhile, the South confronts increasing pressure to compensate for the North’s rapacious overconsumption at the expense of adaptation, transition, and the social imperative of sustainable development. A new path is needed — a path of collective action to regain full and permanent sovereignty over land, food, and resources, while delivering a fair and rapid green transition across the world.

Full Permanent Sovereignty
That peoples and nations exercise full and permanent sovereignty over their natural wealth and resources as a fundamental constituent of their right to self-determination and a precondition to their collective flourishing.

Clean Energy Abundance
That all peoples enjoy an abundance of clean renewable energy through an international system that minimizes inequalities of nation, class, and exposure to harmful externalities of production and consumption.

The End of Dependency
That the states and corporations of the North no longer exercise domination over global systems such as energy, agriculture, and food, and the technologies that produce them, guaranteeing the South greater independence, resilience, self-sufficiency, and prosperity.

Ecologically Equal Exchange
That the terms of ecological exchange, defined for centuries by extreme inequality, are brought into balance, replacing a system of exploitation — in which the South serves as a source of cheap resources and a sink for expensive waste — with a system of sovereign equality.

Environmental Justice
That the era of environmental impunity is brought to its final end, not only ensuring accountability for the crimes committed against peoples and the territories they inhabit, but also establishing equity in the distribution of influence over the climate system.

Climate Reparation
That the ecological debt is finally repaid, providing ample and urgent reparations to the nations of the South that suffer the greatest consequences for the reckless, cumulative carbon emissions and ruthless resource extraction of their Northern neighbors.

Resource Export Clubs

For natural resource and primary commodity exporters to establish multilateral clubs to coordinate production and prices.

The history of North-South relations is defined by the former’s plunder of the latter’s natural wealth. The gifts of the land — those which can and should bring prosperity to the people who call that land home — are instead looted for profit, trapping Southern nations in the dependent position of commodity exporters, on unequal and declining terms. But this dependence runs in both directions. Northern reliance on the flow of cheap resources — and growing appetite for critical minerals in the age of climate crisis — endows Southern exporters with an untapped power to take back what is owed and reorder economic relations. By coordinating the production and sale of agricultural, mineral, and other primary goods, export clubs might serve to stabilize prices, improve the bargaining power of sellers, align sustainable production practices, and — in recognition of the inequality of natural endowments and the urgency of the ongoing ecological collapse — establish solidarity funds to invest in industrial advancement, human development, and ecological restoration across the South. Such export clubs would be entrusted with a dual mandate to ensure proper remuneration for Southern resources in the present, and the conservation of resources for the benefit of both the environment and future generations. The natural wealth of the South should benefit the people of the South; through primary commodity export clubs, Southern nations might unite to reclaim what is rightfully theirs.

Global Ecological Emergency
For a coordinated declaration of global emergency in order to respond to the global climate crisis.

The institutional response to catastrophic global warming and ecological collapse remain tepid at best. It is the South that bears the greatest cost for the carbon-driven development of the North, but the vast resources required for mitigation and adaptation are inaccessible to Southern nations. A coordinated declaration of global emergency by Southern countries would help to unlock these resources, and provide the legal and political backing for a range of measures – on trade, finance, investment, and technology – necessary to respond to the global ecological crisis, including the triggering of force majeure clauses and automatic compulsory licensing of intellectual property restrictions. While a declaration of global emergency alone would not address the drivers of ecological breakdown, it would establish a powerful legal and political precedent for Southern nations to take necessary actions. These terms could provide the shared institutional basis on which a long-term, multilateral “sustainable development plan” could be constructed and implemented across the South. The collective existential threat of the climate crisis must be declared as such — and addressed accordingly.

Common Framework for Extraction
For the development and implementation of a shared policy framework for the management of extractive industries across the South.

Under the banner of “free trade”, multinational corporations domiciled in the North are granted carte blanche to pursue rapacious and unending extraction of natural resources across the South, with devastating consequences and few channels for recourse or regulation. A coordinated regulatory framework for the operations of these corporations across the South — including common tax policies, labour regulations, and redistributive mechanisms — could end race-to-the bottom regulatory regimes that drain value from Southern communities and aggravate the ecological crisis. Specific mechanisms could include standardized contracts with common taxation clauses that formally exclude recourse to arbitration in Western-led forums, while providing alternatives in institutions led by the South. These contracts could also include common labour and community protections — collectively determined by state, labor, and civil society leaders — to ensure fair compensation, adequate labour protections, and ecologically sustainable practices. Sector-specific royalties, taxes, and legal mechanisms would guarantee investment in the diversification of development pathways and a sustainable future (e.g., by investing rents from non-renewable resource extraction into ecologically oriented and transparent sovereign wealth funds, allowing non-renewable resource wealth also to benefit future generations). No longer can extractivism control the South; it is time for the South to control extraction.

Energy Authority of the South
For the creation of Southern energy authorities to reduce energy dependence and coordinate the development of green alternatives.

The future of Southern societies depends on reliable, affordable, renewable energy. Yet today, access to this essential component of development is far from assured. While the South remains a key source of natural resource extraction, it is Northern nations that typically reap the benefits. Northern nations are among the top polluters, consume inordinate and unsustainable quantities of the world’s energy, and monopolize essential energy technologies. As long as this dynamic continues, Southern nations will be forced to rely on traditional energy sources as they chart their own transition, rather than footing the bill for the North’s overconsumption. In pursuit of a transition to green energy, Northern nations are already coordinating efforts to maximize the exploitation of Southern critical minerals and shift the burden of carbon price adjustment onto the South. At this pivotal juncture, Southern energy sovereignty depends on Southern cooperation. Regional or pan-Southern energy authorities could pool resources and capacities to develop alternative energy sources, leverage economies of scale of regional energy infrastructure, develop common standards to mitigate the impacts of energy projects on the environment and local communities, reduce vulnerabilities to Northern energy overconsumption, and distribute the benefits of energy production equitably across the South — to serve development and the public good rather than private profit. Northern nations can no longer be allowed to extract and consume without limit while leaving the people of the South in the dark. The future of energy must be one of sustainability, equity, and shared abundance; this future can only be realized through Southern unity.

Farming Framework
For the development of a coordinated policy framework for small-scale, cooperative, and family farming in order to defend food sovereignty, promote sustainable agroecological practices, and sustain crop diversity across the South.

The extreme concentration of land in the hands of the few, the domination of the global food systems by a handful of multinational corporations, the erosion of peasant livelihoods and devastation of peasant communities, the deterioration of Southern food sovereignty in favor of monocrop exports, the persistence of hunger in a world capable of providing abundance, the degradation of land, water, and air — these are the combined consequences of a global food system designed for the profits of capital rather than the needs of peoples. From financialization to trade liberalization to monopolization, the causes of the global food system’s dysfunction are many, but the solutions are clear: the empowerment of peasants to defend their land, invest in agroecology, and attain food sovereignty. Southern nations can help to promote these goals across borders by establishing common policy frameworks and regional coordination bodies for cooperative, family, and small-scale farming — pooling expertise, capacities, and investments, coordinating in the development of agricultural and environmental standards, and constructing regional programs that promote local agricultural production using a range of tools from peasant land protections laws to coordinated subsidies, tax credits, import tariffs, and export quotas. Through the development of bodies and frameworks for agricultural policy coordination, Southern nations can ensure that peasants and agricultural workers do not labour to feed Northern capital — but labour to feed their fellow citizens.

Seed Bank Network
For the formation of a network of seed banks to promote agricultural diversity and foster food sovereignty and food system resilience across the South.

The South is home to the majority of the world’s biodiversity. Yet multinational corporations and other Northern institutions control the preservation of and access to agrobiodiversity across the world. Southern food systems are thus left underfunded, unreliable, and dependent on the North in times of scarcity or crisis. The establishment of an international seed bank or network of regional or national seed banks can enable nations of the South to promote agricultural diversity and progress toward objectives of food sovereignty and food system resilience by protecting and preserving indigenous seeds. Such seed banks could issue seeds to Southern nations seeking to diversify their agricultural production, thereby offering a pathway to move beyond the limitations of agricultural specialization and the resulting dependence on Northern imports. These seed banks could also issue grants and loans of seeds in times of acute need, protecting and promoting the survival and security of nations in the wake of natural or anthropogenic crises of malnutrition, famine, and starvation. In this way, a multilateral Southern seed bank operating for the public good would help to ensure that the world’s biodiversity is protected, not exploited; its natural wealth put in service of global needs and local development.

Circularity Strategy
For the creation of a resource recycling program that repurposes waste into material inputs for future production.

The South has become a dumping ground for Northern waste: a cause and consequence of the systemic inequities built into the international economic order. Industrial production in the existing international economic order is characterized by waste at all stages — from raw material extraction to manufacturing to consumption to disposal. Each year, billions of tons of resources are extracted in service of industrial commodity production, and billions of tons of waste are produced as a result of mass commodity consumption in the North, placing disproportionate ecological burdens upon the South. In addition to planning industrial production around human needs as opposed to corporate profit, nations of the South can address the dual threats of extractivism and waste by establishing infrastructure to recycle waste produced by processes of industrial production and mass consumption, process and repurpose this waste, and reuse it as a material input for future productive activities. Such a program would promote more sustainable and regenerative forms of industrialization by transforming the nature of transnational production from a linear model—in which the resource extraction and waste disposal at the starting and end points are peripheralized as afterthoughts or externalities—into a circular model, wherein the final material outputs flow back into the production process as future inputs. A program to promote resource circularity and materials recycling across the South can spur industrial growth while curtailing resource extraction and mitigating resource wastage.

The rules of trade have trapped Southern economies in a permanent position of subordination and commodity dependence. Far from mutually beneficial exchange, these systems extract commodities and labour for the North while blocking the path to industrialization for the South. The NIEO identified the “fundamental problem” of the South’s declining terms of trade; five decades later, those unequal terms continue to sustain the South’s dependency. But now, Southern nations must also contend with a regime of institutions and agreements designed to erode their sovereignty under the guise of “free trade,” even as their Northern neighbors betray these common rules with impunity. Nations of the South can and must break these fetters, challenging the systems of unequal exchange with the North, prioritizing the development of their own productive capacities, coordinating with one another to ascend the value chain, and orienting trade and industrial production toward human and ecological harmony.

Common But Differentiated Rules

That all nations enjoy a universal, rules-based, open, non-discriminatory and equitable multilateral trading system, responsive to the particular demands of development, as a vehicle for international cooperation, peace, and shared prosperity across the world.

Balanced Terms

That the international trading system yield an enduring improvement in the terms of trade between North and South, supporting knowledge transfer and adaptation of technical standards and greater global integration on terms that favor the sovereign development of the world’s poorest nations.

Fair, Stable Prices
That the institutions of global economic governance proactively reduce volatility, prevent shocks, and protect vulnerable populations from crises that destabilize commodity prices and damage their producers or their consumers in the process.

Feminist Economies

That the global economy is no longer defined by asymmetries of gender and the enduring exploitation of women in all arenas of their labor, but that all workers enjoy equal rights irrespective not only of nationality, but also of gender.

Rights Redistributed

That the international economic order reorder the priorities of people and profit, redistributing the rights afforded to transnational corporations to the communities impacted by their practices and the collective voice of the workers they employ.

Race to the Top
That the institutions of the international trade system guard against deregulatory dynamics that seek to attract foreign investment at the cost of workers, their communities, and the environment, promoting instead the fortification and harmonization of standards based on their equal rights.

Commodity Buffer Stocks

For a multilateral buffer stock system to stabilize essential commodity prices.

Locked into the role of non-diversified commodity producers, forced by the rules of trade into food import dependence, and lacking the resources to safeguard against the vagaries of global prices, Southern producers and consumers alike are buffeted by the volatility of commodity markets. In the case of certain agricultural goods, the consequences of this volatility can mean starvation. A new framework for regulating commodity markets based around a multi-layered buffer stock system for essential commodities at the global, regional, and national levels would help to stabilize international prices and markets for select commodities, while carving room for sovereign promotion of resilient provisioning systems. Such a buffer stock system, established as one or more multilateral organizations at the regional or global levels, would be supported by equitable contributions, and managed by an expert body tasked with monitoring markets, estimating risk, and designing and updating commodity-specific intervention strategies. Entrusted with a dual mandate of reducing extreme price fluctuations and stock viability, this system would be prepared in the event of imminent global or regional price spike or collapse to raise the alarm, call on nations to pursue joint measures to stabilize supply and demand, and, as needed, buy from or sell to reserves. The sovereign development route is a necessary but arduous one; a global buffer stock system to reduce price volatility would help smooth the path and provide a global public good that the “free market” alone cannot deliver.

Southern Content Requirements

For the requirement of minimum quotas for production and trade within and between Southern nations to promote and protect industrial productive capacities across the South.

After a half-century of the ‘Washington Consensus’ — which saw the forceful promotion of trade liberalization across the world — economic protections are coming back in fashion. But the opportunity for new trade policy is spread unevenly across North and South. While economic protections have become common practice in the developed nations of the North — disregarding the rules they once wrote into the World Trade Organization — developing nations in the South are left vulnerable to domination by multinational corporate interests under the pretext of “free trade.” As countries in the North revert to local content requirements to sustain domestic productive capabilities (e.g. Buy American), Southern countries too can collectively defy international constraints on industrial policy to develop their own requirements to develop Southern production. Unlike Northern measures, Southern nations might define their content requirements regionally, or as pan-Southern measures, allowing for mutual benefit even when individual nations may lack sufficient pre-existing production networks domestically or the individual bargaining power to impose such requirements. “Buy Southern” requirements, alongside Southern investment and production clubs, would help to foster coordinated production networks prioritizing the fulfillment of regional needs with affordable, quality products, develop diversified industrialized economies, and address persistent trade imbalances. By coordinating local content and technology transfer requirements for public procurement, Southern countries can catalyze industrialization while creating sustained demand for products from across the South and incorporating nationally determined social and environmental imperatives in economic policy, such as elevating the economic participation of gender and ethnic minorities. Coordinated local content requirements can stimulate national economies, create jobs, and foster green industrial development across the South.

Procurement Clubs

For the coordination of public procurement to secure fairer prices in the purchase of Northern goods.

Southern nations are forced by their subordinate global position not only to export their primary goods cheaply, but also to import Northern goods dearly, stretching the balance of payments constraint, straining public budgets, and fueling a vicious cycle of financial, ecological, and technological dependency. As isolated buyers, Southern nations must accept unequal terms and monopoly prices; united, buyers might wield collective leverage for fairer prices. Just as Northern nations, while espousing “free market” rhetoric, have developed buyers’ clubs for critical materials, so might Southern buyers’ clubs reduce the costs of certain imports from the North such as vaccines and other lifesaving medicines, and green technologies, easing access to essential goods and helping to rebalance the terms of trade. While the South remains committed to the development of productive capacities that reduce dependence on Northern imports, by pooling resources for public procurement, Southern nations can collectively bolster buying power, extract better terms of procurement, and mitigate the influence of oligopolistic sellers of goods in areas where productive capacities cannot yet be readily developed. Pooled procurement clubs might at the same time align technical specifications and regional scientific, technological, health, and environmental standards, thereby driving industrialization, bolstering economies, and improving the quality of life of Southern peoples. Southern nations aspire to be more than importers of Northern products. But until that time, Northern goods should come at a fair price. Southern procurement clubs help to realize that goal.

Value Chain Coordination

For regional coordination of industrial policy in strategic sectors and critical technologies.

Through the period of rapid and reckless globalization, the project of international cooperation has been distorted into one of international competition: neighbors who might work together for mutual benefit are instead pitted in a rivalry to attract footloose foreign capital. The task of coordinating production, in this context, is ceded to multinationals, which pursue their own profits rather than the long-term development needs of the nations in which they operate. For Southern nations, the result is the misallocated resources, supply chain redundancies, and the continued deference to the interests of foreign capital. A coordinated approach offers an alternative path. Together, Southern countries can coordinate industrial policy — aligning investment, infrastructure development, export controls, and more — across borders, unlocking the benefits of scale, reducing productive redundancies, and ensuring that limited resources are more effectively targeted. Southern nations could form regional networks of state-owned or strategically critical enterprises that focus on the key industries required to support human life but which are presently dominated by the profit imperative — including clean energy, vital infrastructure, healthcare technologies, and food production — to reclaim sovereignty over the processes of production required for our survival. These enterprises could then develop coordinated plans of action to ensure that the benefits of industrialization are equitably distributed throughout the region and equitably reinvested in traditionally undervalued sectors such as care. By prioritizing strategic industries and critical supply chains, these coordinated efforts can reduce dependence on Northern imports, ensure vibrant and resilient regional production networks, and advance a just green transition. Forging the industrial policy path alone risks reducing development to a zero-sum game. But by coordinating productive efforts, Southern nations can share in benefits that far exceed the sum of their parts.

Southern Labour Commission

For the establishment of a transnational labour commission in order to halt the race to the bottom and defend against the exploitation of Southern labor.

To multinational corporations, the South exists as a near-limitless pool of workers — cheap, exploitable, and expendable. Courageous struggles to resist this pattern of exploitation have been undermined at every turn: by direct intervention, by systematic attacks on workers’ movements and their allied governments, and, in the neoliberal era, by the ability of footloose global capital to force Southern nations to vie for their investment, fueling a race to the bottom in wages and labour standards that harms workers everywhere. In the age of globalized supply chains, the forces of organized labour must build power across borders. When such movements are weak, absent, or disunited, Southern nations might coordinate to build the infrastructure for their coordination. A new Southern Labour Commission — a forum for the development of common policy composed of representatives of major stakeholders in each productive sector, including workers, employers, impacted communities, and national governments — would allow for a form of collective bargaining in contexts where traditional labour unions have been weakened or cannot easily function. Catalyzing the unification of workers across borders, this Commission could institute minimum sectoral wages and labour standards in coordination with national governments that could enforce those standards. In this way, Southern labour might begin to win adequate remuneration and labour protections across borders, address stark labour market inequalities along the lines of gender and race, put an end to the race to the bottom, and unite against the impoverishement of the workers of the South.

Southern Trade Alternative

For the coordinated withdrawal from harmful North-South trade and investment agreements, and the development of South-South alternatives.

To the nations of the South, “free trade” agreements have proved to be the antithesis of freedom. Modern modes of unequal exchange are underpinned by a vast and tangled network of bilateral and multilateral trade and investment agreements that are designed not to facilitate mutually beneficial trade, but to render Southern economies more readily exploitable by multinational corporations. Eroding labor, environmental, and health regulations, these agreements fuel the mutually destructive race to the bottom which pits Southern nations against one another in competition to attract foreign investors by maximizing the vulnerability of their nations, while restricting their ability to regulate capital flows, protect domestic industries, or promote national development. To break these shackles, Southern nations might establish pacts of refusal to enter into new trade and investment agreements containing certain deleterious provisions, and coordinate their withdrawal from, or renegotiation of, harmful existing agreements, wielding collective power for better negotiating terms and for “safety in numbers” against the threat of unilateral retaliation. In the place of the current, onerous agreements, Southern nations might develop amongst themselves alternative models of trade and investment agreements that, while facilitating the expansion of South-South economic exchange, ensure that trade is a means to an end of shared prosperity, rather than the end in itself. Such alternative agreements could enshrine firm labor, environmental, and other regulatory standards, with defined and increasing floors, uphold the rights of governments to enact industrial policy and establish capital controls, and deepen regional trade networks. Through the development of firmer standards in South-South economic exchange, such agreements could not only act as models for the proliferation of a new type of trade policy, but also strengthen the hand of Southern nations in renegotiating or replacing existing agreements with the North. In place of the extractive North-South trade and investment agreements, South-South agreements can help end the race to the bottom and ignite a new climb to the top.

Globalization promised a flat and frictionless world economy, blind to color and continent. Unbridled finance would be the agency of change. Yet the old colonial structure of the international economic order endures today. Shaped by the dominant interests of the North, the architecture of the international financial system serves to suffocate Southern economies in debt, drain their resources, and maintain a monetary hierarchy between the most and least ‘privileged’ economies. Nations across the South remain burdened by untenable levels of debt with little control over the terms of loan agreements and virtually no accountability for creditors. Attempts to break free of this architecture have been met with economic coercion, political pressure, legalistic suffocation or military violence. From the repudiation of untenable sovereign debts, to the rejection of unilateral coercive measures, to the development of a just international taxation regime, a comprehensive reconstruction of the international monetary and financial systems is a precondition for shared prosperity.

Monetary Multilateralism

That the international monetary system bestow no exorbitant privilege upon any of its members, enshrining instead the effective monetary sovereignty of all states as a precondition of their self-determination, and the combination of their currencies as the system’s international standard.

Financial Insubordination

That the long-term tendency of Northern finance to dominate Southern development reverse course, taming international financial flows and asserting the primacy of planned investment rather than accommodating the risks of footloose foreign capital.

Disarmed Interdependence
That all states exercise collective control over the circuitry of the global economy, stripping the excess power granted to developed nations and their private corporations to surveil, choke, and profit from shared financial infrastructure.

Abundance, Not Austerity

That no state be forced to choose between caring for its people and fair access to finance, supporting all states with strong social programs instead of punitive structural adjustment packages that privilege returns to Northern capital over the well-being of Southern peoples.

Debt Redefined

That unpayable sovereign debts go unpaid, not only freeing Southern nations from the enduring burden of unjust and illegitimate debt, but also redistributing that burden to the Northern nations that bear greatest historical responsibility for the underdevelopment of their neighbors.

Fiscal Justice
That the international tax system be refounded on principles of disclosure, equity, and justice, terraforming the global archipelago of tax havens into a common terrain of regulation and redistribution of hidden profits to the peoples from which they have been extracted.

Payment Systems for the South

For the development of multilateral, Southern-based payment systems as alternatives to the Northern-controlled global economic architecture.

Cross-border payments are overwhelmingly facilitated through institutions based in and dominated by Northern countries. These systems of messaging, clearing, and settlement — critical functions of the global economic architecture — endow the North with a unique structural power that has been weaponized through unilateral coercive measures, violating Southern sovereignty, undermining Southern development, and punishing those who dare challenge the global hierarchy. A new payment architecture is needed. Alternative regional or multilateral payment systems, based on the principles of sovereign equality and noninterference, would facilitate cross-border payments while preventing their cooptation for geopolitical ends. The beginnings of such a project exist today; alternative financial messaging, clearing, and settlement systems are already eroding the monopoly of Northern payment systems. Linking, expanding, and fortifying these systems would create the basis for the replacement of Northern-based systems altogether without losing the benefits of centralization and scale. Southern-created and Southern-controlled payment systems would neutralize the threat of exclusion from current systems while creating the infrastructure necessary for South-South economic integration to flourish. Digital extensions of this infrastructure to local economies could reduce the costly reliance on cash and liquidity issues in crisis situations, such as the ongoing siege of Gaza, providing a lifeline to the most marginalized populations.

Alternative Currencies

For the development of alternative units of account and common currencies to challenge the hegemony of the US dollar.

The US dollar sits atop a global currency hierarchy. The unique structural power of the dollar, with other Northern currencies playing a supportive role, subjects Southern nations to the vagaries of foreign monetary cycles, constrains their ability to pursue independent monetary policy, and renders them vulnerable to unilateral coercive measures imposed by the dominant currencies’ issuers. While measures can be taken individually to insulate against certain effects of dollar dominance, ending the hegemony of Northern currencies in the long term will require Southern nations to cooperate in the development of alternatives. Agreements to denominate regional trade in existing local currencies or new common units of account, the expansion of the use of Special Drawing Rights or other multilateral currency alternatives, the more ambitious aspirations to develop common, circulatable, and commercially-used currencies — each of these measures, some of which are already in formation, marks a step toward de-dollarization. The US dollar will not be dethroned without a challenger; while such an alternative cannot be created overnight, these cooperative steps, taken regionally and across the South, would help to erode the dollar’s singular power and lay the foundation for stable, sovereign, development-oriented alternatives. There is no Southern sovereignty without monetary sovereignty, and there is no monetary sovereignty without the development of credible alternative currencies.

Multilateral Credit Ratings

For the creation of Southern-led multilateral credit rating agencies (CRAs) to challenge the structural power of the dominant CRAs.

Northern-based and privately-owned, the major Credit Rating Agencies hold the unique and undemocratic power to define the “creditworthiness” of Southern nations. Access to finance, whether affordable or not, is thus granted or denied according to the whims of an unaccountable triumvirate, which wields its definition of risk and worthiness according to the needs of Northern capital and its rapacious drive to exploit Southern wealth, even at the expense of long-term stability and returns. An alternative, Southern-based multilateral CRA, or several such CRAs, established at the regional level or under UN auspices, would challenge this oligopoly, assessing creditworthiness within the context of the long-term goals of shared prosperity and sustainable development, mitigating the speculative and procyclical tendencies of private CRAs, aligning credit assessment timelines with development timelines, countering structural biases against developing nations and state-led sovereign development paths, and incorporating climate and social needs within the calculation of credit risk. While multilateral Southern CRAs alone are insufficient to unseat the major existing CRAs, the adoption of alternative assessments would serve to blunt their weaponization of “creditworthiness” and open the door to financing for sovereign development on Southern terms.

Debtors’ Clubs

For the formation of a “Club” of debtor nations to strengthen collective bargaining power and renegotiate the terms and conditions of borrowing and servicing sovereign debt.

Today, the nations of the South confront a deepening debt crisis, with another lost decade looming on the horizon. Together, the South now pays out more in debt service than it receives in development assistance. This debt burden will not be lifted voluntarily; rather, it must be rejected collectively. While some individual nations have courageously repudiated odious debts, solitary action leaves vanguard nations vulnerable to retribution. As creditor nations have formed common bodies to further their leverage over debtors, so might debtor nations cooperate to mitigate the risks of targeted retaliation and shift the balance of power between sovereign debtors and creditors. As the saying goes: "If you owe the bank a million dollars, the bank owns you. If you owe the bank $100 million, you own the bank." The debtors’ club applies this logic at world scale. Through the sharing of information, alignment of negotiating positions, and the threat of coordinated default, a debtors’ club or clubs would not only extract better terms of debt restructuring, but could help to spur the realization of Southern demands for an independent permanent sovereign debt workout mechanism, and shift the wider balance of power between North and South across domains such as trade and technology.

Tax Framework

For the coordination of taxation across the South to protect against tax avoidance, tax evasion, and the global race to the bottom.

Trillions of dollars are lost annually to tax avoidance and tax evasion. A fractured global tax system designed by and for Northern capital allows the wealth of the South to be siphoned into hidden coffers, while competition to attract footloose capital fuels a race to the bottom on tax rates, eroding public revenue globally. The North is home to the majority of corporate avoiders and evaders, the networks of legal and financial institutions that enable them, and many of the most harmful secrecy and low-tax jurisdictions. Influence over global tax policy remains concentrated in the hands of the rich countries’ club, which is resisting efforts to democratize the process of global tax coordination. Southern-led initiatives to seize the reins of tax policy and build equitable, global alternatives through the United Nations system are invaluable. The present push for a Framework Convention, led by the African Group, promises a new and more comprehensive tax regime, one in which developing countries would have equal status and full participation. Alongside these efforts, Southern nations can move toward a just tax system by strengthening information-sharing efforts to identify and crack down on tax evasion, establishing multilateral registries of beneficial ownership to track down hidden wealth, and developing regional and international agreements to standardize tax policy, harmonize revenue collection across all jurisdictions of significant economic presence, and align minimum tax rates.

Southern Development Banks

For a flourishing ecosystem of Southern development banks and liquidity provision agreements as alternatives to the World Bank and International Monetary Fund.

The Bretton Woods Institutions will not be reformed; they must be supplanted. The World Bank and IMF use their unique position in the global economic architecture to impose the will of their Northern backers on the economies of the South. Indebtedness, austerity, privatization, deregulation — the monopolistic reign of these Northern-dominated institutions have wrought decades of destruction across the South. While efforts to reform the governance of these institutions are worthwhile, the interests of Northern capital will continue to prevail until true alternatives exist. The seeds of such alternative Southern development banks, swap lines, and reserve agreements have already been sowed: the birth of the New Development Bank, for example, represents a historic step forward not only for the BRICS countries, but also for the Southern countries that its development financing aims to uplift. But such efforts have remained constrained in scope and by resource. To construct true alternatives to the Bretton Woods institutions — alternatives rooted in economic sovereignty and mutual cooperation — Southern-led multilateral institutions for development financing and liquidity provision must multiply, driving out the old conditionalities of Northern institutions and decoupling from the imperatives of Northern capital. While constructing credible alternatives to the IMF and World Bank will require considerable financial contributions from fellow Southern nations, such contributions will offer a return on investment that can be found nowhere else: the end of the singular dominance of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund.

Sovereign Remittance Services

For the creation of a public, multilateral institution to cheaply and securely facilitate the flow of remittances.

Every year, hundreds of billions of dollars flow from North to South in the form of remittances. Hard-earned by migrants — separated from their Southern homelands, and frequently exploited as cheap labour for Northern employers — global remittance flows are today three times as great as those of foreign “assistance,” in many cases performing an indispensable function in their home economies. Yet this lifeblood of Southern economies flows through unreliable arteries. Money orders, cash transfers, electronic transfers — the functions that facilitate the flow of remittances — are dominated by Northern-based, private financial institutions. These institutions both charge exorbitant fees and fully cooperate with Northern powers in the weaponization of global finance. A public, Southern remittance institution, however, could provide an alternative. Acting for the public good rather than private profit, a multilateral Southern institution could facilitate the flow of remittances at little or no charge, funded through public contributions and benefitting from the scale that no singular domestic institution could achieve. While such an institution may yet comply with the financial regulations of remittance-sending countries, it could seek to limit the overcompliance with their sanctions policies — overcompliance that today plagues Northern institutions fearful of jeopardizing profits by running afoul of coercive measures. Remittances are not a fringe financial activity, but a core component of many Southern economies, and may hold the key to unlocking increased and equitable participation in the economy by all sectors of society. A multilateral, Southern remittance institution would put this Southern activity in the hands of the Southern public.

Knowledge is the engine of human prosperity. But in the present era of monopoly power and multinational conglomerates, the production, diffusion, and application of knowledge is constrained by a regime of ‘intellectual property’ and secrecy that concentrates innovation capacity and the profits of globally co-produced knowledge in a narrow sector of the North. The South must develop its own institutions for knowledge production and technological innovation in service of social and ecological wellbeing. Nations of the South can work collectively to counteract the barriers presented by intellectual property laws and trade secrets, facilitate free transfers of emergent and critical technologies across borders, pursue ambitious universal public education and literacy programs, establish publicly funded research and training institutions, and share the gains realized by these institutions in order to foster a robust environment for innovation in service of the public and planetary good.

Knowledge Decolonized
That the system of knowledge production facilitate shared and even development, reversing the drain of Southern talent to Northern institutions to build resilient and robust local ecosystems of knowledge development, nurturing rather than suppressing their Indigenous forms.

Innovation Democratized
That all nations and peoples have the tools to drive technological innovation, unfettered by the system of “intellectual property” that hyper-concentrates innovative capacity and perverts its priorities for lethal ends.

Data Solidarity
That the institutions of the international scientific system facilitate greater collaboration between states, universities, and peoples, sharing the fruits of discovery across borders rather than restricting them on the basis of “national security” or private profits.

Technological Sovereignty
That all states secure technological sovereignty as a precondition of their self-determination, as a tool for their sustainable development, and as a means to manage geopolitical risks in an age of weaponized interdependence.

Ecological Harmony
That the pursuit of innovation never come at the cost of the planet and its biosphere, but instead bring into harmony the systems of technological development, application, and management with the shared ecosystems of all nations and peoples.

Research & Development

For the elimination of corporate monopolies on essential knowledge and the coordinated development of Southern alternatives.

Technology has the potential to help to liberate humanity. But today, as the Covid-19 pandemic and the ongoing climate catastrophe have clearly demonstrated, technologies with the power to fuel development and save lives are instead hoarded for the sake of private profit. In the name of incentivizing innovation, international intellectual property law — as embodied in the work of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), the World Trade Organizations Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) agreement and a multitude of “free trade” agreements at the regional and bilateral levels — segregates access to critical technologies between those who can and those who cannot afford to pay monopoly prices. When these technologies are needed to address global crises, it is not only the South that suffers. To decolonize this knowledge, the “intellectual property” system as it exists today must be transformed; Southern nations might advance this goal by collectively demanding reform, and by coordinating withdrawal from key legal constraints such as TRIPS and WIPO’s Patent Cooperation Treaty. In place of Northern monopolies, Southern nations may work together to pool resources and capacities for the development of critical technologies for the public good, including medicines and medical equipment, green technologies, disaster preparedness technology, and frontier technologies such as artificial intelligence. One or multiple multilateral Southern critical technologies organizations might identify evolving domains of knowledge to be made public, invest in alternative solutions that meet Southern needs, develop coordinated policies to dissuade the harboring of harmful trade secrets and incentivize the transfer of technology from North to South, and design mechanisms to facilitate the disclosure, dissemination and sharing of benefits. Together, Southern nations can reject the hoarding of essential technology, and ensure that innovation serves human liberation, not corporate profit.

Public Digital Infrastructure

For the coordinated development of public digital infrastructure against the monopoly of multinationals.

Digital infrastructure is as critical to the economies of the twenty-first century as physical infrastructure was in the twentieth. Roads, bridges, pipes, and power lines are joined by software, hardware, and data centers as essential public goods. These latter, however, are at present overwhelmingly controlled by a small handful of Northern-based corporate giants. In addition to creating exorbitant costs, this reliance on Northern digital infrastructure renders Southern nations vulnerable to Northern interference and deepens dependencies that hinder technological growth. While the development of alternative infrastructures may be prohibitively expensive for individual nations, coordination would allow for the benefits of scale, the reduction of redundancies, and the sharing of costs. Publicly-owned, multilaterally managed, and, where possible, open source, a Southern public digital infrastructure would distribute the costs of the massive investment required and ensure sufficient processing power, storage, and availability of other computing services. It could also ensure connectivity for populations in occupied territories, such as Palestine, insulating them against the vulnerabilities of Northern coercion. At the same time, the South can adopt a combined set of actions to foster data solidarity, which involves sharing data for public research and the common good as an alternative to profit-driven data surveillance. Individual freedoms require collective goods, which can be realized through the proper regulation, governance, and sharing of data. For example, anonymized health data could help address pandemics and other global health crises. Just as ceding physical infrastructure to an oligopoly of Northern multinational corporations would present an unacceptable threat to Southern independence, so should Southern digital infrastructure not be left in private Northern hands. The struggle for sovereignty must include digital sovereignty.

Accreditation & Training

For the creation of an international system of labour accreditation and training across the South, including standardized credentials, research networks, paid apprenticeships, labour training centers, and public funding for small entrepreneurs.

Talent has no borders. Yet horizons for educational advancement and industrial development in the South are restricted. Without domestic options for advanced education and employment, many skilled workers and scholars are forced to emigrate to the North in search of prestigious accreditations — often never to return and contribute to the national project. A South accreditation, certification, and training institution could stem the “brain drain” by easing the transferability of certifications and professional credentials, advancing the global credibility of Southern educational institutions, encouraging skill development, and promoting investment in Southern educational institutions and economic enterprises, with a particular focus on women and vulnerable minorities. These institutions can develop their capacities further through the establishment of South-South research networks, pooling resources, coordinating research agendas, sharing research findings, and disseminating the benefits for the public good rather than private profit. These institutes could also establish labour training centers wherein skilled workers in each host country would train workers across the South in specific industries (e.g., healthcare, clean energy, agroecology, and construction) with the aim of transmitting this knowledge to facilitate economic growth in less-industrialized nations. In this way, new networks of education and training can promote development across the South and stem the drain of skilled workers and scholars by investing in homegrown alternatives to dominant Northern institutions — Southern education, for Southern peoples, by Southern peoples, for Southern benefit.

Health Regulation Agency

For the creation of a Southern health and biosecurity agency to save lives and reduce reliance on Northern health institutions.

The development and evaluation of health standards for foods, medicines, crops, and other biochemical products is an essential function of both public health and technological innovation. But prohibitive costs, the benefits of scale, and entrenched interests have left the reins of health regulation nearly entirely in Northern hands, distorting incentives and consolidating biases against Southern actors. While developing alternatives may strain the budget and capabilities of many individual nations, a transnational Southern health and biosecurity agency built through the collective effort of Southern nations could work for the collective Southern benefit. Such an agency, or a network of regional agencies, could serve the interests of all people by pooling resources and capacity, coordinating standards, and gaining the scale necessary for adequate evaluations of health and security impacts. This agency would draw upon pooled knowledge, skills, and resources to issue occupational and public health standards, protocols, and regulations across industries and throughout supply chains — from extraction, to production, to consumption, to disposal. The agency would also facilitate joint investment and innovation in, and production and dissemination of, critical medical and healthcare technologies to protect and promote the wellbeing of infants, children, mothers, sexual and gender minorities, the elderly, and the disabled throughout the South. As such, a joint health regulation agency would ensure that Southern peoples and ecologies are kept safe, while facilitating the development of Southern biotechnologies — saving lives, advancing the aspirations of sovereign development, and dismantling existing global hierarchies.

Sustainable Innovation Incubator

For the administration of a multilateral, pooled fund to issue loans, grants, and subsidies to support research and implementation of emerging, ecologically sustainable technologies.

The horizons of technological innovation today transcend the limits of previously imagined possibilities. Yet this innovation, its control, and its benefits are concentrated in the hands of a select few corporations housed in the North, stifling the knowledge production potential of the South. This Northern monopoly on global knowledge production — from artificial intelligence to clean energy — has exacerbated ecological crises across the South while restricting Southern nations’ abilities to respond effectively to these crises. To reclaim sovereignty over knowledge production, nations of the South could establish a pooled fund to promote research and implementation of innovative technologies that promote human development alongside ecological restoration and sustainability. Such a fund would offer grants, loans, and prizes to emergent technology researchers and producers across the South to investigate and implement effective climate mitigation, adaptation, and resilience strategies. By promoting indigenous production of knowledge and development of sustainable technologies, nations of the South can collectively exert their sovereignty while also protecting themselves against climate crisis: decarbonization by decolonization.

The existing international order betrays the universal and egalitarian principles it claims to uphold. The UN enshrined the principle of sovereign equality, but the multilateral system today concentrates power in the hands of Northern countries that abuse their veto power and military might to erode the tenets of international law. Nations of the South can and must act collectively to reconstruct the multilateral system and resurrect the principles enshrined in the UN Charter, exercising their collective leverage both to force democratic reforms of international institutions and to forge alternative institutions that enhance the sovereign resilience of Southern nations to respond to foreign aggression.

Sovereign Equality
That the new international economic order be founded on full respect for sovereign equality among states and the self-determination of all peoples as a precondition for their social development and the peace of present and future generations.

Legal Integrity
That the system of international law flourish on the basis of equality and universality, subject to no state of exception, privilege or exemption, but applied rigorously and fairly for the purpose of development of all nations, and peace between all peoples.

Democratic Multilateralism
That the institutions of global economic governance not only count on the full and effective participation of all countries in solving world economic problems, but also do so on the basis of their equity of voice and vote in the pursuit of those solutions.

ISDS Eradication

For the coordinated withdrawal from Investor-State Dispute Settlement systems and the creation of an alternative treaty to bind the behavior of multinational corporations.

The ISDS system is one of the purest forms of neocolonialism today, enshrining the interests of transnational capital at the expense of state sovereignty, ecological wellbeing, and human needs. Even Northern nations have increasingly recognized the dangers of its precepts, removing themselves from under its burden. But as is often the case, the same liberties are not afforded to the South. As a few trailblazing governments have shown, it is possible to unilaterally withdraw from the ISDS system, leaving its conventions and terminating or renegotiating the trade and investment treaties in which it is found. Yet solitary action leaves such vanguard nations vulnerable to being singled out for both legal retribution and the discipline of the market. Coordinating the timing of withdrawal, however — through private agreement or via multilateral withdrawal pacts — would help to shield any one country from being singled out for retaliation, while maximizing the impact of the blow to an expiring system. Freed from ISDS’s burden, Southern nations might develop in its stead a new, binding treaty on the behavior of multinational corporations, as many are already working towards within the UN system. Such a treaty would invert the broken profit-above-sovereignty logic of the ISDS system, barring the excesses of profit-seeking, enshrining the primacy of sovereign policymaking, and subordinating corporate interests to the long-term wellbeing of people and planet.

Unified Disarmament Agenda

For the wielding of the South’s collective leverage to advance a global disarmament agenda.

An inordinate percentage of the world’s scarce resources — human, fiscal, and ecological — are consumed each year in the attempt to keep up in the runaway global arms race that no one can win. Militarization in the South is fueled in turn by the desperate attempt to defend against the overwhelming dominance and unhesitating violence of the North. The South can, and should, construct within itself a zone of peace; but it cannot disarm unilaterally. Instead, the South can peacefully wield its collective might, at all available pressure points, to advance an agenda of global disarmament. Article 26 of the UN Charter, for instance, mandates the “least diversion for armaments of the world's human and economic resources” and assigns the regulation of armaments as a key responsibility of the UN Security Council, a principle that has been flouted on countless occasions, including most recently the ongoing assault on Gaza. To counter the ongoing arms race, South states elected as non-permanent members of the UN Security Council can unite in placing Article 26 back on the Council's agenda and pressuring permanent members to fulfill their obligations under this article. A unified disarmament agenda might also advance the mutual reduction of nuclear arsenals, the equitable enforcement of prohibitions on indiscriminate weapons such as cluster munitions and white phosphorus, and the establishment of treaties preventing the militarization of outer space. Achieving the aspirations of global demilitarization is perhaps a distant hope, but it is a hope on which the realization of any true agenda for a more equitable, prosperous, and peaceful world order depends.

Southern Legal Services

For the coordination of legal capacities and interventions to uphold, and transform, international law.

“No nation is above the law,” though a common refrain and worthy aspiration, is not the reality of the international legal system today. While preaching the gospel of rules-based orders, the few, powerful nations of the North, and their clients and allies, violate international law with impunity. As recent events have demonstrated, however, the South can intervene to demand accountability. Rather than ad hoc measures in extreme cases, the South can proactively develop the institutions and capacities to make such legal interventions forceful and systematic. Strengthening ties between legal training institutions to develop human capital and end the reliance on Northern barristers, pooling resources and capacities and coordinating solidaristic legal interventions in cases of infringements of Southern sovereignty, and establishing a permanent multilateral legal force designed to leverage existing fora to hold Northern nations accountable for their flagrant violations of international law — while even these may not eliminate Northern impunity, the united force of the South may yet expose the North’s wanton violations of international law and exact a measure of much-needed accountability.

Disobedience for Democratization

For the consolidation of Southern voting blocs to demand democratization of multilateral fora.

The vast majority of the world’s citizens hail from its South. Yet the institutions that shape our world are dominated by a handful of governments in its North. Despite lofty rhetoric of democratic decision-making and rules-based orders, the rules continue to be fashioned in the North, for the North. Yet this inequity of voice and vote is exacerbated by Southern divisions. As history has shown, the South can exert its power even in a tilted playing field — but only if it acts as one. A reinvigoration of existing fora such as the G77 in the UN, the consolidation of more steadfast voting blocs capable of blocking Northern agendas in institutions such as the IMF, the development of solidaristic agreements for Southern UN Security Council members to only act on behalf of the consensus of the South, the coordinated disobedience of Security Council vetoes that contravene global consensus, and beyond — if united, Southern nations can not only extract greater outcomes of existing fora of global governance today, but can exert their collective strength to demand the democratization of the institutions themselves. While the interests of the South are not homogenous, all have an interest in developing a global governance that cannot be usurped for the few, but instead represents the needs of the world’s many.

Southern Fund for Social Protections

For the establishment of a fund to close the social protection financing gaps in the South.

The International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights (ICESCR), negotiated in the wake of decolonization and brokered through South diplomacy, obligates all states to protect their populations from extreme poverty and social insecurity and ensure that all people can live with dignity. Yet the legacies of colonialism have left many Southern nations with under-resourced states and limited capacity to fulfill these promises. Article 2 of the ICESCR acknowledges this historical injustice and mandates international cooperation to provide material and technical assistance to developing nations — a provision to empower Southern nations to demand not just development loans, but entitlements. This obligation remains largely ignored by Northern nations, with many rich countries contributing far less than the levels of official development assistance they committed to in 1970. The creation of a Southern Fund for Social Protections would operationalize the spirit of Article 2 by providing predictable, multi-year financial support to Southern nations. The fund would help Southern nations establish and maintain nationally determined social protection floors, ensuring access to basic income security, old-age pensions, maternity benefits, child allowances, and healthcare for their people. This Fund would rely on well-resourced members of the Global South to provide targeted financing for protections, producing benefits that transcend borders. A truly democratic governance structure and independent management would incentivize participation by a broad coalition of actors in the South. Through international cooperation and solidarity, the Southern Fund would offer a pathway to repairing from the devastation of colonialism and neocolonialism, including support for the reconstruction processes of devastated territories such as today’s Gaza Strip, by empowering Southern nations with expanded fiscal space and the resources needed to uphold social protections for their people.

Coordinated Universal Jurisdiction

For coordinated use of universal jurisdiction to hold perpetrators of genocide and other crimes against humanity to account.

The international legal system, despite its aspirational commitments to justice, continues to fail in holding powerful states and their allies accountable for egregious violations of international law. Structural biases remain pervasive within its institutions, processes, and mechanisms. Even when international legal institutions adjudicate in favor of Southern states, international legal enforcement mechanisms remain unable to stop Northern states from shielding themselves and their allies — as the International Criminal Court’s latest ruling on the ongoing genocide in Palestine demonstrates. Arrest warrants issued by the International Criminal Court against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant have not led to their arrests and have done little to prevent the Israeli onslaught. Nations of the South can leverage universal jurisdiction — a legal principle that helps overcome jurisdictional gaps in the international legal order to bring perpetrators of crimes against humanity, genocide, and grave breaches of the Geneva Convention to account — as a coordinated mechanism to prosecute war criminals on their soils. Several governments have demonstrated that it is possible to unilaterally exercise universal jurisdiction to prosecute violators of international law, ensuring that no violator escapes justice, regardless of political power or geography. However, acting alone exposes these states to political pressure, economic retaliation, and diplomatic isolation. A coordinated, multilateral strategy by Southern states to exercise universal jurisdiction — particularly in cases involving horrific violations of fundamental rights such as those the world has recently witnessed in Palestine, Sudan, and the Congo — would strengthen the impact of these efforts, while providing protection from retaliation. Through a collective commitment to exercise universal jurisdiction to transcend the limitations of international law, which remains hampered by geopolitical interests, Southern nations can operationalize their solidarity with the Palestinian people and other peoples of the world resisting colonial powers.