The G20 heads of state and government meet this Monday and Tuesday in Rio de Janeiro (Brazil) amid deep divisions over the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East, over the proposal to create a tax on the super-rich and over differences to address a just energy transition.
Delegations from 55 countries and international organizations will meet at the Museum of Modern Art in Rio, armored for the occasion by some 20,000 military and police that have turned the Rio neighborhood of Flamengo into a bunker.
The Brazilian president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, as hostyou will receive a long list of rulersamong them Joe Biden (United States), Xi Jinping (China), Claudia Sheinbaum (Mexico), Javier Milei (Argentina), Narendra Modi (India), Emmanuel Macron (France) and Olaf Scholz (Germany).
Again without Putin
Russia will be represented by its Foreign Minister, Sergei Lavrov. Brazil, which holds the rotating presidency of the G20, a forum that brings together the largest economies on the planet, invited Vladimir Putin, who declined the invitation.
About the head of the Kremlin, who He was also not at the last New Delhi summit, weighs one international arrest warrant for the war in Ukraine.
The Russian invasion of Ukrainian territory, on its way to being three years old, It is one of the thorny issues that can derail Brazil’s efforts to carry out a final agreed statement.
Added to this is the worsening conflict in the Middle Eastwhich in one year adds up to about 45,000 dead in the Gaza Strip and 3,500 in Lebanon due to Israel’s offensive.
“We are negotiating with other countries on the issue of the paragraphs on geopolitics”said Mauricio Lyrio, the head of Brazil’s delegation to the G20, at a press conference on the eve of the summit.
For Brazil, the message should be that “peace needs to be achieved”but that reference is too lax for Western powers, such as the US, the United Kingdom and the European Union (EU), at enmity with Russia and suspicious of China.
Lula will not have an easy time convincing his partners. Matias Spektor, professor of International Relations at the Getulio Vargas Foundation (FGV), believes that Brazil’s ties with the West are “deeply compromised” by increasingly aligning itself with the BRICS, a group led by Russia and China, and which it joined Iran.
Objective: eradicate hunger
Even so, Brazil will focus the summit on three axes: eliminate hunger, the reform of international organizations (UN, IMF, World Bank, WTO…) and the energy transition.
For the first one, will formalize on Monday the launch of the Global Alliance against Hunger and PovertyLula’s great bet with which he seeks to accelerate the fight against growing global inequality.
According to the FAO, hunger levels remained high in 2023 for the third consecutive year, with around 733 million chronically undernourished people in the world. They have already subscribed to the new mechanism 39 countries and 30 organizations.
Another objective is to approve a global tax for the super-richan initiative that has met with resistance from countries such as the US and Germany, and which did not go beyond a mere declaration of intentions in previous ministerial meetings.
The energy transition will be the topic of a third plenary session on Tuesday, in a context in which emerging countries demand fair financing from the developed world for the preservation of the environment.
‘Milei effect’ earrings
With the uncertainty of what Republican Donald Trump’s line will be when he assumes the US Presidency in January, the Rio summit may also be marred by Milei, declared enemy of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development of the UN.
Argentina refused to sign a ministerial declaration on female empowerment within the G20 and withdrew on the third day of the COP29 climate summit in Baku.
Nor did he sign the agreements adopted regarding womenstrengthening democracy and sustainable development, at the XXIX Ibero-American Summit, which was held last week in Ecuador. That stance now threatens to entangle the negotiations in Rio.
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