Think you know what the Third World means? Think again

Histories of the Cold War tend to talk about two factions - the US-led Western bloc and the Soviet-dominated Communist grouping. But there was a third, countries which refused to commit to either side. 

The countries allied with Washington became known as the First World, those which aligned with Moscow were described as the Second World. The Third World was anyone who stayed out.

The terms were coined in 1952 by the French demographer Alfred Sauvy. He was consciously alluding to the "Third Estate" of the French Revolution, which represented the ignored and exploited majority. So from the start it carried a sense of marginalisation and perhaps manipulated deprivation as well as non-alignment.

Some of those countries were not content with just sitting on the sidelines, and sought a way to ensure they could wield influence as players on the global stage. They went on to form the Non-Aligned Movement, an international organisation that was officially established in 1961 but whose future members had been coordinating with one another for years prior.

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Jawaharlal Nehru of India, Josip Broz Tito of Yugoslavia, Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt, Sukarno of Indonesia and Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana spearheaded the movement. The five developed the central philosophy that recently independent nations should be allowed to determine their own political leanings without having to take sides in the battle between the world’s two superpowers.

Most of the nations that joined NAM were from Asia, Africa and the Middle East. A majority had recently gained independence from European powers. India, Egypt, Indonesia, Ghana, Cuba and Yugoslavia were founding members and were influential in its early years.  Despite their differing political structures and international relationships, the countries had enough in common to make NAM a functional organisation.

Central to the movement was the principle of national independence and sovereignty. The group advocated for peace, taking a stand against colonialism and neocolonialism, and promoted economic and cultural cooperation between countries of the Global South. That helped member nations have a unified voice in international politics at a time when the US and USSR were making most of the decisions that affected them.

The Non-Aligned Movement is still around today.  Many countries want more independence when dealing with foreign policy and more opportunity to form alliances with nations other than their traditional partners. While the division of the world between US and USSR has long disappeared, NAM continues to allow member states to band together around common interests.