The Brazilian president warned this Saturday, November 22, that the functioning of the G20, a group of developed and emerging countries, is threatened, following attacks by the United States on the bloc’s summit, which began today in Johannesburg, South Africa.
“The very functioning of the G20 as a broad coordination space is threatened,” said Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva in the plenary session, after the inauguration of the summit at the Nasrec Exhibition Center, in Johannesburg, without directly mentioning the United States.
“It is necessary to preserve the capacity of this forum to address the main problems of our time. If we cannot find a solution within the G20, it will not be possible to do so in an idealized world”, emphasized the Brazilian president.
These words resonated strongly on the first day of the summit marked by the absence of the United States from the debates, after its president, Donald Trump, decided to boycott the meeting.
Trump claimed, on November 7, that Afrikaners – white South Africans descended from the first European settlers – “are being killed and massacred” and that their lands are being “illegally confiscated” in South Africa, which Pretoria vehemently denies.
“It is a real shame that the G20 summit is being held in South Africa,” Trump declared.
However, South African President Cyril Ramaphosa confirmed on Thursday that he had received a last-minute notification from Washington about a change of position regarding his country’s participation, which will now be limited to the presence of the charge d’affaires of the US embassy in Pretoria, Marc Dillard, at Sunday’s ceremony, in which South Africa will hand over the rotating presidency of the G20 to the United States, which will assume it on December 1.
In his speech, Lula also highlighted that “conflicts such as the one in Ukraine over gas, in addition to the tragic human and material consequences, generate significant impacts on the energy and food supply chain.”
The Brazilian leader also stated that “the historical socioeconomic problems of Latin America and the Caribbean persist without any prospect of a solution”.
“These problems”, warned Lula da Silva, “will not be solved with threats [de utilização] of strength.”
“Without meeting the needs of developing countries, it will not be possible to restore global balance or guarantee long-term sustainable prosperity. Extreme inequality represents a systemic problem for all economies”, assessed the Brazilian president.
Lula emphasized that 90% of the world’s population lives “in countries with high income inequality” and that, in this context, the G20 should “promote the adoption of innovative mechanisms for exchanging debt for development and climate action.”
On the other hand, he added, it is time to “declare inequality a global emergency and reformulate the norms and institutions that perpetuate asymmetries.”
Furthermore, the global public debt problem is “ethically unacceptable and economically unsustainable. Almost half of the world’s population lives in countries that spend more on debt servicing than on health care or education,” he emphasized.