The Cold War period means almost nothing to young people, but it was exciting and sometimes scary for us parents who experienced it. At that time, the United States, representing democracy and the market economy, and the Soviet Union, representing the socialist planned economy or communism, competed for world domination and the minds and hearts of people – and especially in the so-called third world. It is already hard to believe that such a world was only a short time ago, bipolar, when today India, China, Brazil, South Africa, Indonesia, the powerful states of the Persian Gulf and many other ”middle powers” have appeared on the world stage in a way that was once hard to even imagine. At the same time – combined with ongoing wars and conflicts – the world has become a more complex dynamic entity compared to what it was before. It means sharper political and economic changes – for better and for worse – compared to the past, as well as increasing uncertainty affecting individuals, companies and states.
A new kind of uncertainty requires us to structure the world differently than we had before. That’s why it’s also worth talking about the global south, even though it’s not a new term. The term was introduced in the 1960s, but now it is reheated to reflect the geopolitical change we are currently experiencing, although there is no precise definition of what the global south means. According to the UN’s Finance Center for South-South Cooperation, the global south includes 78 countries, and according to some other definitions, it would include more than 100 countries. The exact number of countries is not as important as the fact that the importance of the global south for the Nordic countries has grown and is growing, and that’s not all: the global south is an essential part of the future of the Nordic countries, because we need it for many reasons and because people in the global south have to feel so well and safely as possible.
The Nordic South Forum has been established to monitor the development of the global south and to increase knowledge of related issues. It is done because our future with many countries in Asia, Africa, the Persian Gulf and Latin America will be very different from what our past has been, not to mention the days of colonialism. In Finland, for example, it means that later in the future hundreds of thousands of people who have moved to Finland from the countries of the global south will work in the country. It’s about significant structural changes, not margins anymore.
Jyrki Karvinen