Thursday marked the fourth and final day of the 16th Summit of the BRICS bloc, held this year in Kazan, Russia. Packed with dozens of high-level meetings and bilateral talks and summarized in a 134-point joint declaration, the summit also had plenty of symbolic meaning, which observers unpacked for Sputnik.
“The BRICS Summit in Kazan is undoubtedly one of the most important global political and diplomatic events of this year as it brought together the leaders of the expanded BRICS family for the first time,” Professor Alexis Habiyaremye, a senior researcher with DSI/NRF, South African Research Chair in Industrial Development, University of Johannesburg, told Sputnik, summarizing the summit’s results as the long-anticipated event reached its final day.
“The grouping has now become the global growth engine and its economic muscle is by any measure stronger than that of the old hegemonic grouping. One can say that it's the official launch of the multilateral world order, the twilight of the US hegemony,” Habiyaremye said.
The Kazan Declaration, published Wednesday and featuring 134 provisions aimed at "creating a more just and democratic world order," "enhancing cooperation for global and regional stability and security," “fostering economic and financial cooperation” and "strengthening people-to-people exchanges for social and economic development."
Specific provisions include consensus among bloc members on the need for a reform of the Bretton Woods system and the United Nations, further expansion of the use of national currencies in trade, commitments to strengthen cooperation in high-tech and medicine, agreement to continue talks on the ambitious BRICS Clear cross-border settlement and depository system, support for the Russia-proposed BRICS Grain Exchange platform, and an array of proclamations related to international emergencies, from the conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East to crises in South Sudan, Haiti and Afghanistan.
“The most important outcomes are not simply the initiatives contained in the declaration, but above all, the strategic alignment of a such diverse group, and the gleam of the power it radiates by attracting new candidates such as Turkiye. Given the strategic role of Turkiye in the old hegemonic order, the presence of its leader at the summit reflects the measure of BRICS' future in leading the global affairs,” Habiyaremye said, referencing Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s attendance of the bloc’s BRICS Outreach/Plus format meeting on Thursday, alongside nearly three dozen other leaders and senior officials.
Unlike that ‘old hegemonic order,’ the new one represented by BRICS highlights "the rejection of dominance and unilateralism," and initiatives which "reflect a more balanced distribution of power and responsibilities," the researcher said.
“Western international structures have used hidden tools such as ISDS (investor-state dispute settlement mechanism) and technology secrecy to keep colonial exploitation in place and loot the most vulnerable countries. The proposed new institutional structures” in the Kazan Declaration “are hopefully going to contribute to dismantling this unfair old arrangement,” Habiyaremye said, citing the BRICS Business Council’s New Technological Platform for technology sharing, and exploration of new dispute resolution tools.
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