The China-led BRICS coalition released a declaration from its annual summit. This year’s summit was themed: ”Strengthening Multilateralism for Just Global Development and Security.”
BRICS, or Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa, met in Kazan, Russia, from October 22-24. Other countries were added to BRICS in January, such as Iran, Egypt, Ethiopia, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE).
The declaration says that BRICS countries will commit to its three pillars: “political and security” cooperation, “economic and financial” matters, and “cultural and people-to-people cooperation.”
In a section titled, “Strengthening Multilateralism For A More Just And Democratic World Order,” the declaration states that the United Nations is an “indispensable cornerstone” of the “international system.”
“We reiterate our commitment to improving global governance by promoting a more agile, effective, efficient, responsive, representative, legitimate, democratic and accountable international and multilateral system,” the declaration adds.
The declaration went on to “express serious concern” over the “exponential spread and proliferation of disinformation, misinformation, including propagating false narratives and fake news, as well as hate speech especially on digital platforms fueling radicalization and conflicts.”
“While reaffirming commitment to sovereignty of States we emphasize the importance of information integrity and ensuring free flow of and public access to accurate fact-based information,” the declaration said, “including the freedom of opinion and expression as well as digital and media literacy in order to allow for meaningful connectivity, in accordance with applicable national and international law.”
BRICS countries went on to declare that they are committed to combatting “climate change.”
Interestingly, the declaration says that the countries condemn “terrorism in all its forms and manifestations,” although it did not condemn Iran’s funding of terrorist groups. “We reject any attempts at politicization of counter-terrorism issues and the use of terrorist groups to achieve political ends,” the declaration says on the issue of terrorism. “We commit to take decisive measures to prevent and disrupt the spread of terrorist ideology and radicalization, the misuse of modern technologies for terrorist purposes, cross-border movement of terrorists, terrorist financing and other forms of terrorism support, incitement to commit terrorist acts, as well as recruitment of foreign terrorist fighters.”
The declaration also called for a “ceasefire in the Gaza Strip.”
BRICS is also looking to develop an investment platform. “Regarding the investment process, this is crucial for countries such as Saudi Arabia and Russia, as well as others like China and India,” Russian President Vladimir Putin said. “It is vital to have the means to safely and securely invest in emerging markets; this is of utmost importance. This is encapsulated in our proposal to create this new investment platform.”
America Faith reported that as of September 2023, China contributed over 70% to its combined GDP to BRICS, India 13%, Russia 8%, Brazil 7%, and South Africa 2%.
