Speech by Minister Mauro Vieira on the occasion of the Meeting of Ministers of Foreign Affairs of the BRICS – Cape Town, June 1, 2023

Minister Naledi Pandor,

Minister Sergey Lavrov,

Minister Subrahmanyan Jaishankar,

Deputy Minister Ma Zhaoxu,

It is an honor and a pleasure to be here, in this beautiful city of Cape Town, and to be able to meet face-to-face as representatives of BRICS. I would like to express our gratitude to South Africa for organizing this meeting and for its wonderful hospitality.

I apologize for being late for this meeting due to a cancelled flight yesterday and a delayed flight today.

I have already met all of you individually on the margins of the G20, in New Delhi, where I met Minister Pandor. Some of you I have known for years, like Minister Jaishankar. I have also had the honor to welcome to Brazil my friend, Sergey, with whom I have worked and spent time together at the UN, for a very productive meeting. 

As you are aware, since President Lula took office in Brazil in January we have been restoring our Foreign Policy principles and traditions as enshrined in our Constitution. Principles such as the commitment to multilateralism, to International Law and the UN Charter, to dialogue and peace among nations and to the promotion of sustainable development and social justice.

To achieve those objectives, we must work together with our partners, especially those of the developing world that face similar challenges and constraints.

Starting in our region, we hosted this Tuesday, May 30th, in Brasilia, a Summit of South American Leaders, the first since 2014. We are strengthening our engagement with MERCOSUR and have rejoined CELAC and UNASUR. In the same spirit, we are working to deepen our dialogue and cooperation with African countries, which have enormous potential for trade and investments and with whom we share historical and cultural ties. The same applies to Asian and Middle Eastern countries.

We are resuming the South-South dimension of our foreign policy. It is our goal to reinforce partnerships with friends from the Global South.

Brazil is also fully committed to strengthening our engagement with the BRICS, which is an indispensable mechanism for building a multipolar world order that reflects the voices and needs of developing countries.  

This standalone BRICS Meeting of Ministers of Foreign Affairs is of great importance and a political statement in itself.

I would also like to state my satisfaction with the recent nomination by the Board of Governors of our former President Dilma Rousseff as President of the New Development Bank.  

President Dilma has had an important role in BRICS history: it was during the Fortaleza Summit, hosted by Her Excellency, in 2014, that the New Development Bank and the Contingent Reserve Arrangement were created. I had the honor to be President Dilma’s Foreign Minister, in 2015 and 2016, and I am sure that, under her leadership, the NDB will expand and increase its capacity to fund innovative, inclusive and sustainable projects.  

In addition to efforts to broaden the NDB membership, we are willing to explore new means of engagement with our partners from the developing world. We look forward to tomorrow’s session with an extensive number of representatives invited as “Friends of BRICS”.

I thank you again for this opportunity to have this relevant discussion on our BRICS partnership.