Global South

The Global South is a geopolitical shorthand for the roughly 130 developing and middle-income states concentrated in Africa, Asia, Latin America, and Oceania that emerged from colonialism in the twentieth century and have historically positioned themselves outside the Cold War blocs. The term gained currency in the 1970s as an alternative to the value-laden Third World label and has been revived since the 2022 Ukraine war as shorthand for the group of states that declined to align with Western sanctions pressure on Russia. The Global South is not a formal institution with defined membership, but its principal collective vehicles are BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa, plus newer members), the G77 (a UN negotiating bloc of over 130 developing states), and the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM). These bodies share overlapping memberships and often coordinate bloc positions at the UN General Assembly and multilateral forums, though bilateral divergence is common.

The concept's analytical utility lies in the convergence of interests across otherwise heterogeneous states: scepticism of Western-led sanctions regimes, preference for multipolarity, concern about the dollar's dominance in trade settlement, and demand for greater representation in international financial institutions such as the IMF and World Bank. These shared positions do not translate into a coherent Foreign Policy -- India and China, both major Global South voices, are strategic rivals -- but they do create a consistent pattern of abstentions and qualified-support votes in UN bodies when the question involves Western-led interventions or sanctions. The Global South's weight in multilateral forums has grown as the group now accounts for roughly 60 per cent of world GDP at purchasing-power parity and a larger share of future growth.

In the context of the 2026 Iran conflict, Global South forums became the principal diplomatic theatre where Iran sought to frame the Hormuz crisis as Western aggression against a developing country. BRICS meetings in particular served as platforms where Iranian officials argued that the US naval blockade and secondary sanctions amounted to economic coercion of the entire Global South, and where they solicited political solidarity from India, China, Brazil, and South Africa. The bloc's actual response was fractured: China supported Iran diplomatically while purchasing discounted oil; India maintained pragmatic commercial ties with both Iran and the United States; Brazil and South Africa issued general statements of concern without taking positions on the blockade. The divergence illustrated the bloc's structural limitation: shared anti-hegemonic rhetoric does not reliably translate into coordinated action when members have conflicting bilateral interests at stake.