Meeting of BRICS Foreign Ministers will be held in Rio de Janeiro, confirms Brazilian Sherpa
The capital of the state of Rio de Janeiro will receive the Foreign Ministers of the country members of the BRICS on April 28 and 29, following the group’s second Sherpas Meeting. In addition to this announcement, Ambassador Mauricio Lyrio also underscored the Brazilian priorities ahead of the BRICS coordination
By Franciéli Barcellos de Moraes | francieli.moraes@presidencia.gov.br
The first meeting of BRICS Foreign Ministers under Brazilian coordination this year has been scheduled for April 28 and 29 (Monday and Tuesday) in the city of Rio de Janeiro. The event gathers the ministers of Foreign Affairs of the countries that are part of the BRICS. It will occur right after the second BRICS Sherpas Meeting, which will take place on April 23 to 26. The first Sherpas Meeting was held at the Itamaraty Palace in Brasilia at the end of February, when the countries consolidated their unanimous support to the Brazilian priorities. Brasil’s President of the Republic, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, took part in the event.
Differently from the dynamics adopted by the G20 last year of having meetings in different places across the Brazilian territory, with Rio de Janeiro as a core city, BRICS Brasil has centralized its meetings at the country’s federal capital, which makes the decision to host the Ministers of Foreign Affairs Meeting in Rio de Janeiro a novelty. The information was confirmed by the group’s Sherpa, Ambassador Mauricio Lyrio, during a press conference.
Health at the heart of the debates
In addition to informing about the meeting, the ambassador recalled the priorities established by the Brazilian Presidency for the Global South cooperation agenda, highlighting the theme of equity in health. “We have elected the area of health because it has a particularity that is very important to us, which is the fact that some diseases have higher incidence in developing countries than in the wealthy countries, and these diseases are not necessarily privileged by large global labs in terms of research, innovation, and investments. So there is a need for a specific effort by the BRICS in that direction,” Lyrio stated.
At the BRICS, Brasil aims to launch a Partnership for the Eradication of Socially Determined Diseases and Neglected Tropical Diseases, a theme that was under discussion this Friday (14) in a video-conference coordinated by Brasil’s Ministry of Health.
On the occasion, Lyrio reinforced a consistent defense of multilateralism and denied any information regarding the creation of a common currency for the BRICS. “What we have been discussing is the development of various platforms to reduce payment costs, but not a BRICS currency. This is not under discussion. We have spoken about the use of local currencies as payment systems and the issue —which Banco Central has begun to discuss— of using digital currencies to reduce costs among the countries. These are new technologies and approaches, but it is not an idea for a common currency,” he stressed.
Next week, the Banco Central do Brasil (BCB) will host two video-conferencing events focused on sharing good practices conducted by the countries in the financial field and on promoting a larger economic integration among them. The BRICS gathers 11 member countries, in addition to the partner countries.