India, China, other BRICS nations make a joint push for reform of multilateral system

India, China, Russia, Brazil and South Africa on Tuesday came together to make a push for reform of the multilateral institutions.

External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar and his counterparts in other BRICS nations – Brazil, Russia, China and South Africa – had a virtual meeting and issued a joint statement on strengthening and reforming the multilateral system.

The joint statement reiterated the BRICS nations’ call for reforms of the principal organs of the United Nations. The Foreign Ministers of the five nations recommitted to instil new life in the discussions on the reform of the UN Security Council and continue the work to revitalize the General Assembly and strengthen the Economic and Social Council.

The statement, however, had no reference to India’s pursuit for a permanent seat in the security council.

The ministers acknowledged that the current interconnected international challenges should be addressed through a reinvigorated and the reformed multilateral system, especially of the United Nations and its principal organs, and other institutions like International Monetary Fund (IMF), World Bank (WB), World Trade Organization (WTO) and World Health Organization (WHO), with a view to enhancing its capacity to effectively address the diverse challenges and to adapt them to 21st-century realities.

Though reform of the multilateral systems has long been on the agenda of the BRICS (a bloc comprising Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa), this is the first time the five nations issued a joint statement on it.

Jaishankar, Sergey Lavrov of Russia, Wang Yi of China, Carlos Alberto Franco França of Brazil and Grace Naledi Mandisa Pandor of South Africa called for making instruments of global governance more inclusive, representative and participatory to facilitate greater and more meaningful participation of developing and least developed countries, especially Africa, in global decision-making processes and structures and make it better attuned to contemporary realities.

They stated that the reform of the multilateral system should be based on inclusive consultation and collaboration for the benefit of all while respecting sovereign independence, equality, mutual legitimate interests and concerns to make the multilateral organizations more responsive, effective, transparent and credible.

It should make multilateral organizations more responsive, effective, transparent, democratic, objective, action-oriented, solution-oriented and credible, so as to promote cooperation in building international relations based on the norms and principles of international law, and the spirit of mutual respect, justice, equality, mutual beneficial cooperation and realities of the contemporary world.