One of the first things Lula da Silva said in his speech to the UNGA today was to proclaim his “unshakeable confidence in humanity,” as he embarks on tackling the great challenges facing Brazil and the world. The first part of his speech focused on combating inequality, hunger, and misery. Securing a future requires overcoming resignation “which makes us accept such injustice as a natural phenomenon…. Inequality should provoke indignation, indignation with hunger, poverty, war or disrespect for the human being.” Brazil, he said, “is back,” and willing to take on “the major global challenges,” reclaim its foreign policy, but understanding there are simultaneous and multiple crises in which the international community is enmired, at the core of which is inequality.
The basis for multilateralism, the sovereign equality among states, is “eroding,” Lula warned. But his strongest remarks were on the BRICS, which he said is growing as a result of the paralysis of institutions like the IMF and World Bank whose “unacceptable” leadership is characterized by “unequal and distorted” representation. BRICS is a “strategic platform” to promote cooperation among developing states. Its recent expansion announced in Johannesburg strengthens the fight for a [global] order which accommodates “economic, geographic and political pluralisms of the 21st century…We are a force that works for a more just global trade in the context of a grave crisis of multilateralism.”
Governments must break from the “dissonance” between the “voice of the markets and the voice of the streets.” Neoliberalism aggravated the economic and political inequality affecting democracies today, leaving a legacy of disenfranchised and abandoned people. It’s necessary to “rescue the best humanist traditions that inspired the creation of the UN.”
