G20 Foreign Ministers Meeting: Session I – The G20 and ongoing international tensions
21 February 2024
Ministro Mauro Vieira, muito obrigada pela calorosa recepção,
Excellencies,
We confront a world where critical tides have begun to retreat. Many here have mentioned the cascading crisis we have gone through – the pandemic, climate change, the cost of leaving crisis, the increase in interest rates that have deepened debt vulnerabilities in so many countries the rise in war, and its impact on development and, not least, in the trade routes that feed and enrich the world.
In these past few years, even as some countries have recovered, most have not. We have – and we are – leaving people behind.
3.3 billion people now live in countries that spend more in servicing their debt than in paying for schools or hospitals.
Growth, trade, public and private investment performance is very weak and with them the prospect of sustainable development by 2030 is retreating.
Trust in our institutions, societies and among countries is retreating, eroded by inequality and the perception of unjust and asymmetric systems. Hope that beyond the geopolitics solutions are possible, that multilateralism still offers our best chance – that, too, is retreating.
This triple deficit – of growth, of trust and of hope – is leading us to fragmentation. And a fragmented world cannot live in peace and shared prosperity. The Brazilian presidency’s three priorities for this G20 cycle – fighting poverty and hunger, the energy transition and sustainable development and governance reform – could not be more urgent.
Dear Ministers,
Outside these halls there are 173 countries whose only interest is that in this G20 meeting, discord does not prevail. To fail or not to fail them is a choice.
Some solutions, it is true, require deep reforms that will take time. But there are things that the G20 can already do today. And the UN Deputy Secretary-General Amina Mohammed has clearly outlined them.
We cannot become complacent and we cannot continue thinking that anything can be a security risk (trade, renewable energy, even humanitarian assistance), except the failed development prospects of the developing world.
Your Excellencies,
Two years ago, the breakthrough of the Black Sea Initiative and Memorandum of Understanding, signed in Istanbul in July 2022 (and I am happy to see here Minister Hakan Fidan from Turkiye, that was so central to this achievement), showed that international cooperation can deliver real solutions even in the most difficult of circumstances.
In April 1945, when the United Nations was created, there was no growth – but unprecedented destruction. There was no trust, but a world war that would last six more agonizing months. And yet, that April in San Francisco, there was hope and visionary leadership.
It has been that hope and that leadership that has brought us here. In this changing world order, we need to do it again.
Thank you.
