The term "Third world' drew attention to the parts of the world that, during the Cold War, did not fall into the capitalist so-called 'First World' or the communist so-called 'Second world'.
The formerly colonized and newly independent countries of Africa, Asia and Latin America were 'third' in the sense that they were made economically and militarily dependent on the 'first' and 'second' world, and often suffered from wide spread poverty and famine as a result.
The term also implied that they were 'non-aligned', the third world often being the battleground on which the geopolitical struggle between the first and second world was conducted.
Some anti-racism movements and Black Liberationists in 'first world' countries such as Stokely Carmichael, situated their movements as connected or conjoined with the third world, highlighting parallel forms of subjugation on non-white peoples at the national and global levels.
The term 'Third World' has largely been abandoned since the 1970s due the its pejorative ideological implications, the receding significance of a shared colonial past and economic development in Asia in particular.
The term "Third World' was used for Africa, Asia and Latin American countries who were: