The G77 and BRICS Have the Opportunity to Generate a Historical Transformation

- Miguel Díaz-Canel Bermúdez, Granma, August 31, 2023 -

Statement by H.E. President Miguel Díaz-Canel Bermúdez at the Dialogues of the BRICS Summit. Johannesburg, South Africa, August 24, 2023.Year 65 of the Revolution.

Your Excellency, Cyril Ramaphosa, President of the Republic of South Africa;

Distinguished Heads of State and Government and Heads of Delegations;

Esteemed participants;

It is for me a great honor and privilege to be able to participate in a BRICS Summit, a mechanism of integration that, due to its novelty and diversity, opens expectations and hopes, in the path to the strengthening of multilateralism, which is as much urgent as it is essential for the destiny of the human kind itself.

We highly appreciate that this event takes place in African continent, the land of our ancestors. Africa is part of the very essence of the Cuban identity.

Our satisfaction is even greater for being here in South Africa, a country we are united to by fraternal bonds.

More than 400,000 compatriots contributed to the struggle against Apartheid in African lands; 2,289 of our internationalist combatants died heroically, thus writing, with their sacrifice, one of the most beautiful pages in the history of solidarity among peoples.

A well-known African saying goes as follows: "The footprints left by those who have walked together will never fade away."

In the case of Cuba and South Africa, those footprints are so solid and indelible as the memory of the historic leaders of both nations. We could never forget the embrace of Nelson Mandela and Fidel Castro when they met here and demand each other to meet again, as it only happens between very close brothers.

I am attending this dialogue with the enormous responsibility vested in Cuba to chair of the G-77 and China, the broadest and most diverse group of developing nations.

We are its 134 nations, we account for two thirds of the United Nations membership and 80 per cent of the world's population.

We are currently facing colossal challenges. We are being witness to a post-pandemic world that is ever more unequal. Exclusion and poverty have multiplied after two years of pandemic followed by dramatic conflicts.

During the last 10 years, the foreign debt of the South nations, which has been several times paid over, has doubled. Unilateral coercive measures are increasingly implemented. More than 3 billion people are affected by ecosystems degradation. There are over 1 million endangered animal and plant species, it can be read in the Message of the Secretary General on World Environment Day.

If we do not take immediate action we will pass on our children and grandchildren an unrecognizable planet, not only for those born in the previous century, but also a planet that would irremediably become uninhabitable.

Seven years ahead of the deadline established to meet the 2030 Agenda Sustainable Development Goals, the panorama is discouraging. Half of the 169 goals agreed upon are far or very far from being met. Hardly any progress has been attained in the achievement of more than 30 per cent of them. Worse still, there have been regressions as compared to 2015, according to the most recent report of the United Nations.

Western developed countries and big transnationals have designed an international order that is hostile to the progress of our nations in the South and has proved to be effective only for exiguous minorities.

The G-77 and BRICS have the responsibility of advocating a change of the current order. This is not an option; it is the only alternative.

Nowadays no one would question the increasing authority of BRICS. We welcome its eventual expansion, which will contribute to reinforce its relevance and representativeness.

The G-77 and BRICS has historically called for a true transformation of the current international financial architecture, which is deeply unjust, anachronistic and dysfunctional.

The New Development Bank created by BRICS can and should become an alternative in the face of the current financial institutions which for almost a century have implemented Draconian formulas in order to make a profit from the reserves of the South and replicate their subjugation and domination schemes.

We welcome the appointment of Dilma Rousseff at the helm of this entity and the BRICS' initiative to create a broad-base foreign currency reserve to guarantee certainty and stability to the South is commendable. The expansion of that mechanism to other countries would contribute to palliate the imbalances of the current monetary system.

The establishment of mutual credit lines in local currencies by the banks of the BRICS countries and the possibility to create a single currency for their operations are also some of the initiatives that could be implemented in the relations with other developing countries to reduce the abusive monopoly of the U.S. currency.

BRICS' countries are world leaders in agricultural production; they account for approximately one third of the world's food production. Acting jointly with the rest of developing countries they could make a substantial contribution to the eradication of hunger, currently suffered by more than 700 million persons in the world.

When it comes to climate change, we emphasize the strategic importance of the effective coordination between BRICS and G-77 in order to safeguard the principle of common but differentiated responsibilities in the implementation of the Framework Convention and the Paris Agreement.

In the context of COP-28 to be held this year in Dubai, a Summit of the G-77 leaders will be convened by Cuba to reinforce strategic coordination.

Scientific and technical development is today monopolized by a club of countries that owns most of the patents, technologies and research centers and encourages a brain-drain from our countries.

G-77 and BRICS should do more to change such a situation. It is in that spirit that Cuba has called for the celebration of a Summit of Heads of State and Government of the G-77 and China on Science, Technology and Innovation as a premise of development, which will take place from September 15 to 16 this year in Havana. We are waiting for you there.

Now is the time for collective action if we are to advance towards a more just and sustainable development.

We strongly believe in the power of unity amidst diversity. This is the time to act together in the defense of our historic demands, which have been unattended for so long that they have multiplied the problems faced by our nations.

And since we are in "the country of the rainbow," which defeated hatred from the past by bringing together its rich diversity of cutures, languages and religious beliefs, let us be consistent with the precepts of the wise African humanist Ubuntu philosophy which, in the face of selfishness and individualism, promotes a fraternal and respectful way of life whereby no one is left behind.

The G77 and BRICS have the opportunity to generate a historical transformation. Let us take advantage of it, for the wellbeing of future generations.

Thank you, very much. (Applause)

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