KAMPALA-The Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) summit has kicked off with a call to stop the Israel-Palestine war, which broke out in October last year.
At least 23,968 people in Gaza, mostly women and children, have been killed since the war began after Hamas fighters carried out an assault on southern Israel that killed 1,139 there.
Under the theme “Deepening Cooperation for Shared Global Affluence,” the summit is taking place at Commonwealth Speke Resort Munyonyo. The summit is scheduled to discuss the ongoing Israel-Palestine war.
Speaking to delegates, Gen Odongo Jeje, Minister of Foreign Affairs, said NAM remains an important organization, and given the increasingly complex international situation, the Ten Bandung Principles continue to be relevant today.
“Today, we are faced with several challenges, including armed conflicts in different parts of the world, food insecurity, migration, unemployment, health pandemics, climate change, and terrorism, among the myriad of challenges,” he said.
“We also recognize challenges in financing development and the issue of debt burden, which paints a depressing global economic outlook. It is therefore crucial for us to address existing, new, and emerging issues collectively and in the interest of our membership, for the good of mankind,” he said.
He said Uganda believes that multilateralism and solidarity are required much more than ever for us to individually prepare and collectively respond to future challenges.
“NAM was established for justice; it was established for solidarity and unity with all its components. One of the members of NAM, Palestine, is suffering aggression, so we expect NAM, as it has been, to help us put an end to this aggression,” Riyad Mansour, Permanent Observer of Palestine to the United Nations, said.
Meanwhile, there was a heavy police and army deployment in Kampala. Currently, there is a joint security deployment of police and Special Forces Command (SFC), the elite force mandated to protect the president and the army at all major roads in Kampala.
