In the midst of the ongoing global shake-up, the first big planning meeting for BRICS activities in 2025 was held in Brasilia Feb. 25-26, attended by the sherpas of the 11 BRICS full members, including Saudi Arabia. They were joined by the ambassadors of the 8 new BRICS Partner members when President Lula da Silva addressed the meeting on its second day.
Brazil, as this year’s chair of the BRICS, presented its six priorities for the year. “At this time of crisis, our historic responsibility is to seek constructive and balanced solutions…. The Brazilian presidency will reinforce the bloc’s vocation as a space for diversity and dialogue in favor of a multipolar world and less asymmetrical relations,” Lula said at the outset. He emphasized that Brazil’s first priority for BRICS attention is reforming the existing multilateral peace and security architecture.
“Resorting to unilateralism undermines the international order. Anyone who bets on chaos and unpredictability is moving away from the collective commitments that humanity urgently needs to make. Negotiating on the basis of the law of the strongest is a dangerous shortcut to instability and war,” he said. “In the face of polarization and the threat of fragmentation, the consistent defense of multilateralism is the only path we can take.” Lula held up the “Group of Friends of Peace” organized by China and Brazil to foster a peaceful resolution to the conflict in Ukraine, as an example of this approach, and insisted the crisis in Gaza “will only be resolved with the involvement of the countries in the region.”
Brazilian Foreign Minister Mauricio Vieira, who opened the first day’s meeting, likewise stressed that “the world’s institutions must evolve to accommodate diverse perspectives, ensuring that developing nations are not passive players, but active architects of the future. BRICS represents a new vision for global governance—one that prioritizes inclusivity, fairness, and cooperation over hegemony, injustice, inequality, and unilateralism.”
Brazil outlined five other priorities: global health; developing mechanisms to intensify trade, investment and finance among the members ("the Brazilian presidency is committed to developing complementary, voluntary, accessible, transparent and secure payment platforms,” Lula stated); climate change justice; governance of artificial intelligence so as to prevent corporate and other monopolies; and developing the institutional functioning of the BRICS after its expansion.
On its health initiative: Brazil proposes that the BRICS focus on how to eliminate diseases fed by poverty, lack of access to basic services and social exclusion. Lula called on the BRICS to form a “Partnership for the Elimination of Socially Determined Diseases and Neglected Tropical Diseases” to address such diseases as tuberculosis, malaria, dengue fever, and others “which together threaten around 1.7 billion people in the world.”
