Lula Opens BRICS Plenary with Call for Humanity To Change Its Course
July 7—Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, as host of this year’s BRICS summit, delivered a clear, sharp warning of the dangerous direction the world has taken, which it falls to the BRICS to change, in his address yesterday opening the plenary session in Rio de Janeiro of the ten full members of the BRICS nations—Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa, Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Indonesia, and the U.A.E. He did not mince words in pointing to the danger of “nuclear catastrophe,” and calling out the “genocide being carried out by Israel” against the Palestinian people, as well as NATO’s rearmament drive.
“This is the fourth time that Brazil has hosted a BRICS Summit,” President Lula began. “Of all of them, this is the one that takes place in the most adverse global scenario. The UN celebrated its 80th anniversary on June 26, and we are witnessing an unprecedented collapse of multilateralism.” Trade and climate agreements, the global health system, are all threatened, he said. “With multilateralism under attack, our autonomy is once again in check...
“International law has become a dead letter, along with the peaceful settlement of disputes. We are facing an unprecedented number of conflicts since World War II. NATO’s recent decision fuels the arms race. It is easier to allocate 5% of GDP to military spending than to allocate the promised 0.7% to Official Development Assistance. This shows that the resources to implement the 2030 Agenda exist but are not available due to a lack of political priority. It is always easier to invest in war than in peace.”
“Old rhetorical maneuvers are recycled to justify illegal interventions,” Lula said. He drew a pointed parallel between today’s “orchestration” of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), meant to serve the cause of peace, to what was done with the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) earlier—a reference to how the G.W. Bush administration drove Brazilian diplomat José Bustani out of his post as head of the OPCW, because he refused to repeat the WMD lies used to set up the invasion of Iraq.
The result: “The fear of a nuclear catastrophe has returned to everyday life,” as the failed actions in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and Syria are being repeated. It is out of the fertile ground created by such unresolved crises that terrorism grows, he argued, not from any religion or nationality. Terrorism, wherever it occurs, in Kashmir or by Hamas, must be rejected, he stated, but “we cannot remain indifferent to the genocide practiced by Israel in Gaza and the indiscriminate killing of innocent civilians and the use of hunger as a weapon of war.”
Ten years after the United Nations was founded, the Bandung Conference of 1955 “rejected the division of the world into zones of influence and advanced the struggle for a multipolar international order. The BRICS is the heir to the Non-Aligned Movement….
“If international governance does not reflect the new multipolar reality of the 21st century, it is up to the BRICS to contribute to its updating. Its representativeness and diversity make it a force capable of promoting peace and preventing and mediating conflicts….
“Postponing this process makes the world more unstable and dangerous. Every day we spend with an archaic and exclusionary international structure is a day lost in solving the serious crises plaguing humanity.”
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who spoke next, applauded President Lula for his “vision and unwavering vitality” and commented that “the energy we’ve received isn’t just an espresso; it is a double espresso shot!”