BRICS Summit 2023

What’s in today’s article?

• What is 15th BRICS Summit?
• News Summary: BRICS Summit 2023
• Significance of this move
• Need for expansion of BRICS
• The new members of BRICS
• What BRICS expansion means for India?

Why in news?

• The 15th BRICS summit was held from the 22nd to 24th August at the Sandton Convention Centre in South Africa.
• A major outcome of the BRICS Summit was the decision of the BRICS leaders to expand its membership to include six new members.
  • BRICS decisions are unanimous, that is, all members have to agree for any move to go ahead.

‹ ›

15^th BRICS Summit

• Host
  • This year’s summit was hosted by South Africa.
    • South Africa became Chair of BRICS on 1 January 2023.
• Theme
  • BRICS and Africa: Partnership for Mutually Accelerated Growth, Sustainable Development and Inclusive Multilateralism
• Five priorities for 2023
  • Developing a partnership towards an equitable Just Transition
  • Transforming education and skills development for the future
  • Unlocking opportunities through the African Continental Free Trade Area
  • Strengthening post-pandemic socio-economic recovery and the attainment of the 2030 Agenda on Sustainable Development
  • Strengthening multilateralism, including working towards real reform of global governance institutions and strengthening the meaningful participation of women in peace processes
• Outcome Document
  • At the end of summit, member countries adopted Johannesburg II Declaration.
  • The outcome document called upon member countries to work on following themes
    • Partnership for Inclusive Multilateralism
    • Fostering an Environment of Peace and Development
    • Partnership for Mutually Accelerated Growth
    • Partnership for Sustainable Development
    • Deepening People-to-People Exchanges
    • Institutional Development

News Summary: BRICS Summit 2023

• The 15^th BRICS Summit, held in South Africa, invited six countries to join the alliance.
  • This is significant as this move can strengthen BRICS’ claim of being a ‘voice of the Global South’.
• These countries are – Iran, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Argentina, Egypt, and Ethiopia. Their membership will begin in January 2024.

Significance of this move

• Spokesperson of the developing world
  • Adding new members strengthens the group’s heft as a spokesperson of the developing world.
• Increased weight of the organisation
  • BRICS currently represents around 40% of the world’s population and more than a quarter of the world’s GDP.
  • With the additions, it will represent almost half the world’s population, and will include three of the world’s biggest oil producers, Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Iran.
• China’s increasing dominance on the other
  • This move also raises concerns about China’s increasing dominance on the other as China is driving the expansion of the group.
  • The fact that regional rivals Saudi Arabia and Iran are now part of BRICS is in itself remarkable.
    • China happens to be the biggest buyer of Saudi Arabia’s oil, and had recently brokered a peace deal between Tehran and Riyadh.

Need for expansion of BRICS

• Anti-US sentiment and support for multipolarity
  • As per experts, there is considerable anti-US sentiment in the world, and all these countries are looking for a grouping where they can use that sentiment to gather together.
  • Also, there is a lot of appetite for multipolarity, for a platform where countries of the Global South can express their solidarity.
• Aspiring bloc that can challenge the western geopolitical view
  • The war in Ukraine has brought the West together on the one hand and strengthened the China-Russia partnership on the other.
  • This war has turned BRICS into an aspiring bloc that can challenge the western geopolitical view, and emerge as a counterweight to Western-led fora like the Group of 7 and the World Bank.

The new members of BRICS

• The invitation to Iran, whose ties with the West are strained, seems to have a strong China-Russia imprint.
• While Saudi Arabia has traditionally been a US ally, it has been increasingly striking out on its own, and the BRICS membership is in line with that.
• For Iran and Russia, this membership is a signal to the West that they still have friends globally.
• Both Egypt and Ethiopia have had longstanding ties with the US too.
• Argentina, facing an economic crisis, will hope for financial aid from BRICS.

What BRICS expansion means for India?

• If India’s presence at the recent G7 summit in Hiroshima, where PM Modi also participated in an informal Quad summit, was seen as a sign of New Delhi’s US tilt, it continues to attach importance to the “anti-West” BRICS.
• India is also part of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO), and despite problems, it has relations with Russia, with China.
• While China does want BRICS to be an anti-western group, the Indian view is that it is a non-western group and should stay that way.
• Among the new members, while India looks at all of them as partnerships worth developing.
• However, concerns have been raised that the group could become more pro-China and sideline New Delhi’s voice and interests.

Q1) What is G7? 

The Group of Seven, often abbreviated as G7, is an intergovernmental organization consisting of seven of the world’s largest advanced economies. The G7 member countries are: Canada; France; Germany; Italy; Japan; United Kingdom; United States.

Q2) What is Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO)?

The Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) is a Eurasian political, economic, and security alliance that was established on June 15, 2001. It has its roots in the Shanghai Five, a regional forum that included China, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan, which was founded in 1996. The SCO expanded and evolved into a more comprehensive organization with the inclusion of Uzbekistan in 2001.

Source: BRICS gets six new members: Significance, what it means for India | BRICS 2023 | MEA