G20 heads of state and government meet Monday and Tuesday in Rio de Janeiro (Brazil) amid deep divisions over wars in Ukraine and the Middle East, on the proposal to create a tax on the very rich and on differences to resolve a problem. just an energy transition.
Delegations from 55 countries and international organizations will meet at the Museum of Modern Art in Rio, armored for the occasion by a few 20,000 soldiers and police who transformed the Flamengo district of Rio into a bunker.
The Brazilian president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, as hostyou will receive a long list of leadersincluding Joe Biden (United States), Xi Jinping (China), Claudia Sheinbaum (Mexico), Javier Milei (Argentina), Narendra Modi (India), Emmanuel Macron (France) and Olaf Scholz (Germany).
Still without Putin
Russia will be represented by its Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov. Brazil, which holds the rotating presidency of the G20, a forum bringing 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 present at the last summit in New Delhi, weighs one international arrest warrant for the war in Ukraine.
The Russian invasion of Ukrainian territory, which will last three years, This is one of the thorny questions this may 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 represents approximately 45,000 dead in the Gaza Strip and 3,500 in Lebanon due to the Israeli offensive.
“We are negotiating with other countries on the issue of paragraphs on geopolitics”said Mauricio Lyrio, head of the Brazilian delegation to the G20, during a press conference on the eve of the summit.
For Brazil, the message should be: “We must achieve peace”but this reference is too lax for Western powers, such as the United States, the United Kingdom and the European Union (EU), hostile to Russia and suspicious of China.
Lula will not have difficulty 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 with BRICS, a group led by Russia and China, and to which it joined Iran.
Objective: eradicate hunger
Anyway, Brazil will focus the summit on three axes: eliminating hunger, the reform of international organizations (UN, IMF, World Bank, WTO, etc.) and the energy transition.
For the first, will formalize the launch of the Global Alliance Against Hunger and Poverty on MondayLula’s big bet with which he seeks to accelerate the fight against growing global inequalities.
According to the FAO, hunger levels remained high in 2023 for the third year in a row, with around 733 million people suffering from chronic undernourishment worldwide. They have already subscribed to the new mechanism 39 countries and 30 organizations.
Another goal is to approve a global tax on the super-richan initiative that faced resistance from countries like the United States and Germany, and which did not go beyond a simple declaration of intentions at previous ministerial meetings.
THE the energy transition will be the subject of a third plenary session Tuesday, in a context where emerging countries are demanding fair funding from the developed world for environmental preservation.
‘Milei effect’ earrings
With uncertainty over Republican Donald Trump’s line when he assumes the US presidency in January, the Rio summit could also be marred by Milei, declared enemy of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development of the United Nations.
Argentina refused to sign a ministerial declaration on women’s empowerment within the G20 and withdrew on the third day of the COP29 climate summit in Baku.
He also did not sign the agreements adopted concerning womenthe strengthening of democracy and sustainable development, during the XXIX Ibero-American Summit, which was held last week in Ecuador. This position now threatens to entangle the negotiations in Rio.
