The Lead

BRICS Calls for Updating International Governance, for Human Development and Scientific Advance

by Jason Ross (EIRNS) — Jul. 06, 2025

In opening the 2025 BRICS Summit in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, the host, President Lula da Silva, remarked that of the four times Brazil has hosted a such a summit, “this is the one that takes place in the most adverse global scenario. The UN celebrated its 80th anniversary on June 26, and we are witnessing an unprecedented collapse of multilateralism.”

“With multilateralism under attack, our autonomy is once again at risk,” he said. “International law has become a dead letter, along with the peaceful settlement of controversies. We have faced an unprecedented number of conflicts since World War II.”

NATO’s decision to allocate 5% of GDP to military spending, rather than to development programs, shows that, under the prevailing paradigm in NATO countries, “it is always easier to invest in war than in peace.”

The result of this militarism: “The fear of a nuclear catastrophe has returned to everyday life,” as the failed actions in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and Syria are being repeated. It is out of the fertile ground created by such unresolved crises that terrorism grows, he argued. While terrorism must always be rejected, he said, “we cannot remain indifferent to the genocide practiced by Israel in Gaza and the indiscriminate killing of innocent civilians and the use of hunger as a weapon of war.”

Lula identified the BRICS as the heir to the Non-Aligned Movement, whose 1955 Bandung Conference rejected the division of the world into zones of influence.

“If international governance does not reflect the new multipolar reality of the 21st century, it is up to the BRICS to contribute to its updating,” he said. “Postponing this process makes the world more unstable and dangerous. Every day we spend with an archaic and exclusionary international structure is a day lost in solving the serious crises plaguing humanity.”

President of Russia Vladimir Putin made a similar point in his remarks, delivered remotely: “The unipolar system of international relations that once served the interests of the so-called golden billion, is losing its relevance,” he said.

How are we to bring into being the new reality of the 21st century? The July 12-13 conference of the Schiller Institute, held next weekend in Berlin, will assemble high-ranking speakers and participants from Europe, the Americas, and the nations of the Global South for an intensive discussion of the LaRouche program for rebuilding the global economy, the beauty of cultural achievement, new scientific and technological frontiers, and the relevance of Lyndon LaRouche’s ideas in shaping Earth’s next fifty years.

Lyndon LaRouche understood human creativity, in the form of improved technologies developed in light of creative scientific hypothesis, to be the key driver of economic progress.

Certainly a heavy dose of creativity is needed today, to shift the direction of history. From July 20 through August 27, I will be leading a series of classes and discussions on highlights of Lyndon LaRouche’s approach to science, via what he called a “narrow path” of key discoveries and thinkers. You can learn more and register at this LaRouche Organization webpage.