Brazil To Use G-20 To Push For UN Reforms Amid Conflict Deadlock
Brazil wants to use the nation’s presidency of the Group of 20 nations this year to push for changes at the United Nations to make the organization more relevant for solving the world’s conflicts, according to a top envoy from the country.
(Bloomberg) -- Brazil wants to use the nation’s presidency of the Group of 20 nations this year to push for changes at the United Nations to make the organization more relevant for solving the world’s conflicts, according to a top envoy from the country.
The South American nation is set to host G-20 meetings this year, including a gathering of foreign ministers in New York on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly in September, rather than in Brazil, the country’s so-called G-20 sherpa said Friday. He said that would help send a message on the need for reform from inside the building.
“We need to reform the institution,” Ambassador Mauricio Carvalho Lyrio said in an interview in Washington. “This institution should be at the center of the international agenda, the main agent for trying to preserve peace and avoid conflict.”
The G-20, which represents about 85% of the world’s gross domestic product, has seen its stated role as “the main forum for international economic cooperation” hamstrung by conflicts in Europe and the Middle East — major global economic threats that its members struggle to reach consensus on. Lyrio said it’s possible instead for the G-20 countries to push for reforms at the UN.
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That’s even more urgent given what he called a “very dire situation” with some 183 conflicts around the globe. “We are back to the Cold War times in terms of the number of conflicts,” Lyrio said in a subsequent interview with Bloomberg Television’s Joe Mathieu.
The UN Security Council has struggled to overcome a divide that’s only widened since the war in Ukraine as the US, France and the UK clash with fellow permanent members China and Russia. But Lyrio indicated Brazil opposes the idea of expelling Russia, calling for a “more inclusive” Security Council, not a less inclusive one.
Brazil wants to focus on fighting poverty and hunger, mobilize nation’s against climate change and overhaul the global governance of international institutions such as the World Trade Organization, the International Monetary Fund and World Bank.
“Brazil is supportive of a reform of the Security Council,” Lyrio said in the TV interview. “We think a more representative Security Council would be the instrument for it to be more effective.”
The council should no longer be “a mirror of the aftermath of Second World War” and instead reflect the modern global landscape, he said.
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