India chairs BRICS MENA meeting

• India chaired the meeting of BRICS Deputy Foreign Ministers and Special Envoys for the Middle East and North Africa (BRICS MENA) in Delhi on April 24.

• They exchanged views on the current situation in the region. 

• Members expressed deep concern on the recent conflict in the Middle East and offered views and assessments on the matter. 

The discussions covered:

i) The Palestine issue and the Gaza situation, including provision of humanitarian aid, the role of United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), zero-tolerance approach to terrorism.

ii) Welcoming the ceasefire in Lebanon, the unacceptability of attacks on UNIFIL.

iii) Post-conflict reconstruction and rehabilitation in Syria.

iv) Political settlement in Yemen.

v) Stability and development in Iraq.

vi) Political process in Libya.

vii) Addressing the humanitarian crisis in Sudan. 

• They agreed to meet again under China’s chairship in 2027.

The BRICS nations

• The BRICS nations or Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa form the key pillars of south-south cooperation and are the representative voice of emerging markets and developing countries in the global forums such as the G20.

• The grouping has become a 11-nation body now with Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Indonesia joining it as new members.

• The acronym BRIC was first used in 2001 by Goldman Sachs in their Global Economics Paper, ‘The World Needs Better Economic BRICs’ on the basis of econometric analyses projecting that the four economies would individually and collectively occupy far greater economic space and would be amongst the world’s largest economies in the next 50 years or so.

• The leaders of BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India, and China) countries met for the first time in St. Petersburg, Russia, on the margins of the G8 Outreach Summit in July 2006. Shortly afterwards, in September 2006, the group was formalised as BRIC during the First BRIC Foreign Ministers’ Meeting, which met on the sidelines of the General Debate of the UN Assembly in New York City.

• After a series of high level meetings, the first BRIC summit was held in Yekaterinburg, Russia on June 16, 2009.

• It was agreed to expand BRIC into BRICS with the inclusion of South Africa at the BRIC Foreign Ministers meeting in New York in September 2010. Accordingly, South Africa attended the third BRICS Summit in Sanya on April 14, 2011. 

• In 2015, the BRICS established the New Development Bank (NDB) with the purpose of mobilising resources for infrastructure and sustainable development projects in emerging markets and developing countries.

Expansion of BRICS

• BRICS leaders have left the door open to future enlargement as dozens more countries voiced interest in joining a grouping.

• Around 40 countries had shown interest in joining BRICS out of which 23 formally applied for the membership.

• In August 2023, the top BRICS leaders at the grouping’s summit in Johannesburg approved a proposal to admit six countries, including Argentina, into the bloc with effect from January 1, 2024. However, Argentina’s President Javier Milei announced withdrawing his country from becoming a member of the BRICS.

• The decision to expand the bloc is seen as an effort to reshape global governance while putting the voices of the Global South as a key priority area to advance the overall development agenda.

• The BRICS has emerged as an influential grouping as it brings together 11 major emerging economies of the world, representing around 49.5 per cent of the global population, around 40 per cent of the global GDP and around 26 per cent of the global trade. 

(The author is a trainer for Civil Services aspirants.)