Lavrov G-20 on UNGA Sidelines

Today saw a meeting of G-20 nations on the sidelines of the UNGA Debate that was attended by Lavrov and other ministers. I was told by a friend that Blinken was also present. I don’t know if Blinken had his headset turned on during Lavrov’s ten-minute address, although it probably doesn’t matter as he’ll lie regardless what truths get told. I hope to find the time to watch many of the speeches and report on those that are remarkable. Here’re Lavrov’s remarks:

Mr. President,

Dear Colleagues,

We are grateful to the Brazilian presidency for the meeting on current global issues that it organized in New York.

The formation of a multilateral world requires a modernization of the international governance architecture if we are to build a more just and democratic world order, based on the enduring principles of the UN Charter in all their entirety and interrelatedness.

The G20, as the leading economic forum, is able to give a powerful impetus to these objective processes that are dictated by life itself. We believe that the G20 should strictly adhere to its mandate and not delve into issues of peace and security and other purely UN universal problems. It is important that the activities of our platform are strictly based on the principle of consensus.

In 2023, at the G20 Summit in New Delhi, we pledged to work together to strengthen the voice of developing countries in collective decision-making. Those assurances must be translated into concrete action. The reform of international institutions, which should be seen as global public goods, should take into account the interests of the new growing centres of world development. Current realities indicate that the ratio in the "weight" of economic leaders has undergone significant changes.

Two years ago, the five BRICS members bypassed the Group of Seven in terms of real GDP. According to forecasts, by 2028, the now "ten" members of the BRICS will produce about 37% of world products, while the "seven" will drop to 27% or even lower.

At the same time, there is a rapid rise of the African continent and other regions of the Global South and East. Russia is actively reorienting itself to their markets. These are the Asia-Pacific region, Latin America and the Caribbean, South Asia, the Middle East and Southeast Asia.

Multilateral formats of a new type, such as BRICS (which Russia chairs in 2024), the SCO, the EAEU, ASEAN, the African Union, and the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC), are becoming increasingly important.

Projects to combine integration efforts, for example, the Russian flagship initiative of the Greater Eurasian Partnership, are gaining momentum. The G20 has managed to turn towards the priorities of developing economies. A series of presidencies of emerging markets - Indonesia, India, Brazil - played a fundamental role here. We are confident that this trend will continue during the upcoming presidency of South Africa.

We actively welcomed the accession of the African Union to the G20. We also support the Arab League's commitment to joining the forum. I would suggest that we think about creating a specialised track of cooperation between regional platforms in the G20.

Tangible progress has been made in the de-dolarization of the international financial and economic system. In particular, the share of national currencies in Russia's settlements with the SCO and EAEU countries has already exceeded 90%. With our BRICS partners, we have reached 65%, and this figure is growing. The share of the dollar in the structure of payments of BRICS members is now below 29%. For our part, we are promoting the launch of an independent payment and settlement mechanism at the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation. Another promising topic that is being worked out is a single platform for settlements in digital national currencies through BRICS.

Nevertheless, some global mechanisms still remain in the hands of the West, which abuses them. Of particular concern are the attempts by the United States and its allies to impose a confrontational agenda on international organisations, to make them conductors of unilateral restrictions, embezzlement, seizures of sovereign assets, trade wars and unfair competition, including under the flag of ecology and climate.

All this is an obvious manifestation of neocolonialism. Over the past ten years, more than 21 thousand illegal restrictions have been imposed against Russia by the countries of the "collective West" alone. Their extraterritorial use (and this is a more odious, illegitimate raider approach) hits, first of all, the poorest countries and needy groups of the population, depriving them of affordable energy resources, food and fertilizers.

We are in favour of developing economies receiving a share of votes in the IMF and the World Bank commensurate with their weight. No shareholder in the IMF, including the United States, should be able to block collective decisions.

The West's monopoly on determining the scale of priorities of the Bretton Woods institutions is unacceptable, which leads to the flow of funds to fuel military adventures to the detriment of assistance to Africa, Asia, Latin America and international development in general.

It is also necessary to ensure that donor countries fulfill their commitments, which imply the allocation of 0.7% of GDP annually to development assistance (this commitment was first made 50 years ago, and it has not been fulfilled), as well as the promised $100 billion. to finance climate action. Nothing has been done here either. All the attention and resources of international institutions and the West are absorbed by Ukraine.

It is necessary to restore the full-fledged activities of the World Trade Organization in a short time. Now it has been interrupted by the destructive policy of the United States, which does not allow the resumption of the work of the WTO dispute settlement body, which has been inactive for many years.

Another urgent task is to combat the dominance and influence of Western citizens in senior positions in international secretariats and the excessive involvement of initially biased non-governmental organizations in the intergovernmental process.

The reform of the global governance architecture should take into account the enduring central role of the United Nations in the system of international relations. The UN Charter and international law should not be replaced by some secret "rules". The perniciousness of behind-the-scenes methods and the need to revive the true interstate nature of the World Organization have become especially obvious in the situation with the "Pact of the Future". The future of our peoples cannot be invented in a test tube with the participation of the UN Secretariat and Western lobbyists. It is important to form a decision in this regard in the context of negotiations, achieving a balance of interests.

Let me remind you that during the preparation of the "Pact of the Future" there was not a single round of negotiations with the participation of all delegations. This is unprecedented. Moreover, two years ago we agreed to adopt it by consensus. It didn't work out because of the mentioned "experiments". And it is not for nothing that in the appeal adopted by the G20 at the initiative of Brazil, this pact is only "noting". He did not deserve more.

I would like to refer to the section on the revitalization of the General Assembly. It says that it is necessary to strengthen the role of the UN General Assembly as "the chief deliberative, policymaking and representative organ of the United Nations." Those who wrote this "Pact of the Future" behind the scenes, on their knees, in a "nook" behind the scenes, do not want to see the UN General Assembly as an advisory body.

It is sad when the G20 and its position on the need to make the General Assembly a truly people's forum for discussion and decision-making on a universal basis were simply ignored by the Future Pact.

Ensuring the sovereign equality of all states should be a key vector of our reform efforts. Our colleague from Mexico has just spoken about this. This is the main provision of the UN Charter. It says: "The United Nations is founded on the sovereign equality of states." And, as I have already said, on the search for a balance of their interests and mutual benefit.

We must be driven by the desire to achieve genuine multilateralism, which is the main guarantee of strategic stability, indivisible security and an open, non-discriminatory economy. [My Emphasis]

That was a lot packed into ten minutes. The progress made toward dedollarization and ending dollar hegemony was very positive as was the information about what might emerge from SCO and BRICS. The summation about the “collective West’s” refusal to abide by its commitments to the Global Majority was well made. Given that group’s collective decline, the Global Majority will best be served by not anticipating a cent in help from that direction; just staying out-of-the-way is the best that can be hoped for. The need for the Global majority to continue to stand up and fight for its rights remains a priority along with recognizing what’s being done to subvert major UN agencies, which is part of the fight. Ideally, at some future point, the UN will finally become the institution that was imagined 80 years ago, but for that to occur, hegemony, exceptionalism and neocolonialism must first die, which is what the Hybrid Third World War that’s ongoing is all about.

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