By Alejandra Garcia on August 24, 2023
world leaders attending the BRICS Summit in South Africa. photo: Alejandro Azcuy
The BRICS group, an alliance of leading emerging economies formed by Brazil, Russia, India, and China in June 2009 with South Africa coming on board in 2010, concluded its first face-to-face meeting on Thursday after three years of impasse due to the health crisis caused by COVID-19. From August 22-24, Johannesburg, South Africa, was the scene of key discussions in an ever-changing geopolitical landscape.
Presidents of the five member countries and invited leaders from other regions, as well as prominent business and international figures, sought consensus on how to strengthen the multipolar world and change the unfair, colonialist, and imperialist economic model. Leaders from 67 other countries accepted the invitation to come to begin pursuing in earnest these new international relations with the distinct possibilities of making trade agreements without accumulating more debt from the parasitic International Monetary Fund.
Clearly BRICS is what is trending with even Bloomberg News, a voice of Wall Street, having to admit in this evening headline that “BRICS Goes Big”.
The summit also outlined strategies to achieve the ‘de-dollarization’ of global trade by using other currencies. In an uncertain world, cooperation among emerging economies could play a key role in mitigating the negative effects of underdevelopment, according to the leaders.
“We are an equal partnership of countries that have differing views but a shared vision for a better world. As the five BRICS members, we have reached agreement on the guiding principles, standards, criteria and procedures of the BRICS expansion process,” South African President Cyril Ramaphosa said on the final day of the group’s 15th Summit of Heads of State and Government.
Among the main results of the summit was the measured expansion of the BRICS group
“We also have consensus on the first phase of this expansion process. We have decided to invite the Argentine Republic, the Arab Republic of Egypt, the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia, the Islamic Republic of Iran, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates to become full members of BRICS beginning on January 1, 2024,” Ramaphosa added.
BRICS nations will now comprise 46% of the world population, and their economies will constitute 37% of the world GDP.
Cuban President Miguel Diaz Canel. photo: Alejandro Azcuy
Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel, speaking for Cuba and in his capacity as the current chair of the G77+ China said during the closing of the BRICS summit said, “surely the extension of that mechanism to other countries will contribute towards alleviating the imbalances of the current monetary system.”
“The G77+China and the BRICS can make a historic transformation. For the sake of future generations, let’s do it. Several of our initiatives could reduce the abusive monopoly of the US currency, which reinforces and guarantees a damaging hegemony for the rest of the world,” the Cuban leader stressed.
In the final declaration of the event, the leaders reiterated their commitment to inclusive multilateralism and the defense of international law, including the purposes and principles enshrined in the United Nations (UN) Charter, as well as the central role of the UN in the international scenario in which sovereign states cooperate with mutual respect to guarantee peace and security.
“The G77+China and the BRICS have the responsibility and the possibility to act for a change of this unfair world order. It is not an option. It is our only alternative,” concluded the Cuban president.
Source: Resumen Latinoamericano – English