Russia-Ukraine war keeps G20 ministers away from a consensus, India claims focus back on development

Though the Russia-Ukraine conflict once again prevented the G20 from reaching a consensus, India on Monday claimed to have brought the bloc’s focus back on development and termed it as the “biggest achievement” so far after it took over the presidency of the premier forum for international cooperation.

The G20 development ministers failed to reach unanimity over the outcome document at the end of a day-long meeting in Varanasi, as the representatives of Moscow and Beijing steadfastly objected to two paragraphs – one condemning Russia’s aggression against Ukraine and the other reiterating Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s “today’s-era-must-not-be-an-era-of-war” message to former Soviet Union nation’s President Vladimir Putin. The United States and other western nations insisted on including the two paras in the outcome document.

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The meeting was hosted by External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar, who had to issue a “chair’s summary” at the end of the conclave as a consensus document could not be agreed upon.

The differences over the Russia-Ukraine conflict had also stopped the G20 finance ministers and foreign ministers to adopt consensus documents after meetings in Bengaluru and New Delhi earlier this year.

Jaishankar, however, highlighted the two other documents adopted in the meeting of the development ministers of the G20 nations in Varanasi on Monday – one outlining an action plan for accelerating progress on the 17 Sustainable Development Goals adopted by the United Nations in 2015 and another laying out high-level principles on lifestyles for sustainable development. He told journalists that adopting the two documents was the “biggest achievement” of India’s G20 presidency so far. He noted that both documents were adopted unanimously and reflected the concerns of the “Global South” or the developing nations.

“Development is a core issue for the Global South”, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who will host the G20 summit in New Delhi on September 9 and 10 next, said as he virtually addressed the representatives of the different member nations of the bloc at the beginning of the meeting in Varanasi on Monday. He pointed out that the countries of the Global South were severely impacted by the disruptions created due to the Covid-19 pandemic. Without directly referring to the Russia-Ukraine conflict, he said that the geo-political tensions were responsible for food, fuel, and fertilizer crises.

The last G20 Summit at Bali in Indonesia in November 2022 was overshadowed by the western nation’s tirade against Russia for its military aggression against Ukraine. Ever since it took over the presidency of the bloc on December 1, 2022, India has been trying to save the next summit,which it would host, from the impact of the geopolitical tension triggered by the conflict.

Jaishankar told journalists in Varanasi that what India had achieved on Monday was to look at the “pressing needs” of the developing nations, small island nations and the least developed nations, which were “teetering on the edge of the abyss”. He said that India could get the G20 to look at the ways to add momentum to the efforts to achieve the SDGs, to look at what is happening with Global South, think about financing for them, look at the climate change issues, think about climate financing, look at the link between development and financing, look at the women’s issues, education. “These are the real issues of the world. We got this spotlight on these issues,” said the external affairs minister.