Consensus on outcome document eludes G20 as summit day nears

India on Monday hosted one of the last few G20 meetings of its presidency, but failed to forge consensus on the outcome document as Russia and China objected to the inclusion of a paragraph criticising the war in Ukraine.

India on Monday hosted one of the last few G20 meetings of its presidency, but failed to forge consensus on the outcome document as Russia and China objected to the inclusion of a paragraph criticising Moscow's war in Ukraine – just as they did during the earlier conclaves.

The G20 Chief Science Advisors’ Roundtable was held in Gandhinagar. It was one of the last remaining meetings to be hosted by the Government of India before leaders of the G20 nations travel to New Delhi for the intergovernmental forum’s 18th summit, which will be chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on September 9 and 10.

There are only three more G20 meetings scheduled to be held before the summit. The G20 Sherpas will to have a meeting in New Delhi from September 3 to 6, when they will make a last attempt to iron out differences over the outcome document or the New Delhi Declaration proposed to be adopted by the leaders of the member nations at the end of the summit. The finance deputies – the Secretary (Economic Affairs) of the Government of India and his equivalents – will meet between September 5 and 6 and again join the G20 Sherpas in a joint meeting on September 6.

The roundtable of the Chief Science Advisors of the G20 nations could not escape the long shadow of the Russia-Ukraine conflict. The meeting, like all the G20 conclaves held during India’s G20 presidency, ended without consensus on the outcome document.

The Western nations insisted that the document must have a paragraph, noting that most of the G20 members strongly condemned Russia’s war in Ukraine and stressed that the conflict was causing “immense human suffering and exacerbating existing fragilities in the global economy – constraining growth, increasing inflation, disrupting supply chains, heightening energy and food insecurity, and elevating financial stability risks”.

Russia, however, objected to the inclusion of the paragraph, arguing that it did not conform to the G20 mandate.

China too did not support the inclusion of the paragraph on the Russia-Ukraine conflict, stating that the G20 Chief Science Advisors’ Roundtable was not the right forum to discuss geopolitical issues.

Even the meeting of the G20 Culture Ministers in Varanasi last week saw the representatives of the US, the UK and other western nations insisting on the inclusion of the paragraph on the Russia-Ukraine conflict, and Russia and China objecting to it.

The same had happened in all the G20 meetings India hosted following the transfer of the forum's presidency from Indonesia on December 1, 2022.

Though the West made India include the paragraph in all outcome documents, Russia got its objection recorded. Russia underlined that the content referring to its ‘special military operations’ in Ukraine was a part of the “chair’s summary” and not a part of a document adopted through consensus.

The ‘Bali Declaration’, adopted after the 17th G20 summit at Bali in Indonesia in November 2022, also had a similar paragraph on the Russia-Ukraine conflict. Russia and China had distanced themselves from the references to the war in Ukraine in the ‘G20 Bali Declaration’.

India has been trying to push the Russia-Ukraine conflict down the G20 agenda. It has been underlining that the priority for its presidency has been leading the G20 to focus on developmental issues, inclusive and sustainable growth, gender equality, finances from multilateral institutions for accelerated development and transition to clean energy, mitigation of the impacts of climate change, and the reform of multilateral financial institutions and technological transformation.

However, the US, the UK, Canada and other western nations made it clear that they would use the forum, particularly the summit in New Delhi, to condemn Russia’s military aggression against Ukraine.