Group of 77

• 1. Introduction

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  The Group of 77 began with a single document signed on the 15th of June 1964. Seventy-seven nations, most of them newly independent, put their names to what they called the Joint Declaration of the Seventy-Seven Countries at the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development. The number 77 stuck as the group's name even as membership kept growing. Today the coalition counts 134 member countries, nearly double the founding roll call. What did those original seventy-seven nations want? How did a declaration at a trade conference turn into one of the largest intergovernmental coalitions on the planet? And why does a country called China insist it is not a member while providing consistent political support and financial contributions since 1994?

• 2. The Algiers Moment

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  Three years after the founding declaration, the group convened its first major meeting in Algiers in 1967. There, the member nations adopted the Charter of Algiers and began building permanent institutional structures under the leadership of Raul Prebisch. Prebisch was not new to this kind of work. He had previously served at the Economic Commission for Latin America, known as ECLA, where he developed ideas about the structural disadvantages facing developing economies in global trade. His presence in Algiers signaled that the G77 was not simply a political gesture but an attempt to anchor collective bargaining in serious economic thinking. The charter gave the group a framework that would support decades of negotiation across multiple UN bodies, from Geneva to Rome to Vienna to Paris to Nairobi.

• 3. South-South Solidarity

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  The G77 draws its members from a deliberately broad base, united by what the group calls a South-South ideology. The coalition took common stances on major political questions, including a shared position against apartheid and in favor of global disarmament. It also threw its weight behind the New International Economic Order, a set of proposals aimed at reshaping global trade and finance in favor of developing nations. That breadth of membership creates genuine diversity: the group includes small island states in Oceania alongside large continental economies, oil exporters alongside landlocked nations. Tuvalu and Palau are the only two Oceanic microstates explicitly excluded from the group, sitting outside alongside the members of the OECD, the Council of Europe except Azerbaijan, and the Commonwealth of Independent States Free Trade Area except Tajikistan.

• 4. Climate and the Poverty Argument

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  At the 1992 United Nations Conference on Environment and Development in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, the G77 criticized wealthier nations for what it saw as insufficient attention to poverty eradication. That confrontation crystallized the group's enduring position on environmental matters: developed countries bear historical responsibility for greenhouse gas emissions, and per capita emission disparities between rich and poor nations make binding reduction commitments on developing countries unjust. Critics have pointed to what they describe as the G77's lukewarm support, and sometimes outright opposition, to pro-environmental initiatives. The group's own framing is that economic development and poverty eradication must come before emissions constraints, a sequence that keeps the G77 at odds with many climate negotiating coalitions.

• 5. The China Question

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  China appears on the G77 membership list, but the Chinese government does not consider itself a member. Since 1994, China has made financial contributions to the group and provided consistent political support, yet official statements from the coalition are delivered under the title The Group of 77 and China, or G77+China, precisely to preserve that distinction. The arrangement is unusual but durable: China benefits from association with the developing-country bloc without formally accepting the obligations or identity of membership. The result is that the G77 effectively speaks for 134 nations plus one very large observer.

• 6. A Shifting Roster

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  Several founding members have quietly left the G77 over the decades. One departed after joining the OECD in 1994. Another left the same way in 1996. A third was a founding member but had already signed the original Joint Declaration of the Developing Countries in October 1963, then pulled out before the group formally formed in 1964, eventually joining the OECD in 1973. Romania's case is particularly instructive. Because the G77 divides itself into geographical regions and had no European area, Romania was classified as a Latin American country after it joined in 1976. It later left following its accession to the European Union. One small island state joined in 2002 but withdrew in 2004, having decided it could better pursue its environmental interests through the Alliance of Small Island States. As of 2023 the membership sits at 134 countries, with Uruguay holding the chairmanship for 2026, succeeding Iraq.

• 7. The Group of 24

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  Within the G77 sits a smaller body with a sharper focus. The Group of 24, known as the G-24, was established in 1971 specifically to coordinate developing-country positions on international monetary and development finance questions. Its chapter is located in Washington, D.C., next to the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, the two institutions whose decisions it exists to influence. Every member of the G-24 is also a member of the G77, making the smaller group a kind of specialist committee nested inside the larger coalition. The G77 also maintains chapters in Geneva, Rome at the FAO, Vienna at UNIDO, Paris at UNESCO, and Nairobi at UNEP, spreading the coalition's presence across the full breadth of the UN system.