BAKU, Azerbaijan, March 9. Azerbaijan tried to to revitalize the Non-Aligned Movement, President of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev said during his speech at the opening of the 10th Global Baku Forum themed “The World of Today: Challenges and Hopes”, Trend reports.
"I want to share my views and some information with respect to some of the topics of the discussions, which you will have. I was very happy to see one panel on multilateralism, especially taking into account that Azerbaijan this year completes its chairmanship in Non-Aligned Movement, which started in 2019 and was extended by unanimous decision of 120 member states for one more year until the end of 2023. We tried to, if I may use this word, to revitalize the Non-Aligned Movement, which had great traditions, but unfortunately during some period of time was a little bit passive. And for that, we organized international events, three summits. We initiated a Special Session of the UN General Assembly on COVID. We worked hard and created a database with respect to fight against pandemic, which was lately used by the World Health Organization. We dedicated one of the summits to fight against pandemic. We were very vocal against the vaccine nationalism and unequal distribution of vaccines in the first months of the pandemic. We address the issue of post-COVID development. In the meantime, we provided financial and humanitarian assistance to more than 80 countries, most of them members of Non-Aligned Movement. We provided 10 million US dollars direct donations to the World Health Organization to help them to fight the coronavirus," President Ilham Aliyev said.