G-77 - Everything2.com

Organisation to promote the interests of developing countries within the UN. Founded 1964-06-15 in Geneva with the Joint Declaration of the Seventy-Seven Developing Countries made at the conclusion of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development. The 77 original members had become 133 by May 2001 but the "Group of 77" designation was kept for continuity.

Its first formal meeting and assembly into an organisation proper occurred in October 1967 with the Charter of Algiers. It maintains chapters in Rome, Vienna, Nairobi and Paris, where UN organisations of key interest to the G-77 headquarter. A related group, the G-24 acts as a pressure group for the IMF and World bank in Washington. The "G-" moniker is a popular shorthand form for referring to a lobby group with a particular number of members, the G-7 being the most famous.

From its inception until 2000, its highest authority and decision-making body was an annual meeting of its members on the ministerial level which convened in New York at the beginning of the United Nations General Assembly. In April 2001, the meeting was attended by heads of government for the first time. These ministerial conventions are presided over in rotation by a representative of a country in one of the organisation's three main regions: Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean, and Africa.

Recently, the group often refers to itself as the "Group of 77 and China," attaching particular significance to China due to its influence in the UN and permanent place on the UN Security Council.

List of member states (an asterisk denotes a founding member):

Of the founding members, Mexico and South Korea have left the organisation.

A number of these countries can't really be considered Third World anymore but remain part of the group nonetheless.

Source: G-77

Joint Declaration of the Seventy-Seven Developing Countries	g77	G4 Sunbathing	JUSSCANNZ
Fay Wray	Fiji	Bahrain	Zimbabwe
Theodore Olson