The G77+China summit concluded on Saturday in Havana with a call for “unity” to have weight against rich countries, and Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva asked to reinforce “claims” in the areas of digital technology and energy transition.
“Global governance remains asymmetrical. The UN, the Bretton Woods system and the WTO are losing credibility. We cannot divide ourselves,” declared the Brazilian president when participating in the two-day summit.
For Lula da Silva, the “two great transformations underway” are the “digital revolution” and the “energy transition.”
These areas “cannot be modeled by a handful of rich economies, re-editing the relationship of dependency between the center and the periphery,” he stressed.
“The climate emergency imposes new imperatives on us, but the just transition gives us opportunities,” said the Brazilian head of state.
“Deep concern”
At the start of the conclave on Friday, Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel, whose country has held the rotating presidency of the group since January, called for a “change in the rules of the international economic game,” which he described as “hostile to the progress” of the countries. from the south.
The G77+China, made up of a hundred countries from Asia, Africa and Latin America that represent 80% of the world’s population, was created in 1964 by 77 countries, but later expanded to 134 nations. China participates as an external actor.
Representatives from a hundred nations participated in this extraordinary summit, whose theme was the “role of science, technology and innovation” in development.
About thirty heads of state and government participated in the debate, among them the president of Argentina, Alberto Fernández, the president of Colombia, Gustavo Petro; that of Angola, João Lourenço; from Rwanda, Paul Kagame; the emir of Qatar, Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani, and the Palestinian president, Mahmud Abbas.
The Secretary General of the UN, Antonio Guterres, was present, who defined the G77 as “the voice of the Global South.”
Several speakers referred to the global inequalities highlighted by the Covid-19 pandemic and the need to reduce the debt of the poorest countries to finance the climate transition.
In their final declaration, the members of the G77+China reaffirmed their “commitment to strengthening the unity” of the group to “consolidate its role on the international scene.”
The text expresses its “deep concern” about “the main challenges generated by the current unjust international economic order for developing countries” that “have reached their most acute expression.”
It mentions obstacles to development such as “the pressure on food, energy, the displacement of people, the volatility of markets, inflation, monetary tightening, the growing burden of external debt” and the increase in poverty.
All this, “without so far there being a clear roadmap to address these global problems,” adds the declaration, which underlines the “urgent need for a comprehensive reform of the international financial architecture,” with a more inclusive approach with “the representation of developing countries in global decision-making bodies.”
The members of the G77+China, who will meet at a summit in January 2024 in Uganda – next pro tempore presidency -, adopted another declaration for Mexico to return to the group, reported the director of Multilateral Affairs of the Cuban Foreign Ministry, Rodolfo Benitez.
Mexico, which left the group in the 1990s, expressed its desire to rejoin in the voice of its foreign minister, Alicia Bárcena, on Saturday.
