Speech by President Lula during the Summit of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC)

It's a pleasure to visit Saint Vincent and the Grenadines for the eighth CELAC Summit.

This beautiful and welcoming Caribbean country is now hosting the leaders who will make our integration goals a reality.

One of the most rewarding experiences of my previous terms in office was the revival of the integrationist project in the first decade of the 21st century.

I had the privilege and satisfaction of experiencing a unique moment in this collective desire to bring us closer together.

We worked to strengthen and expand MERCOSUR and establish UNASUR.

I took part in the initial stages of forming CELAC in 2008, in Bahia, when we brought together the 33 heads of state and government of Latin America and the Caribbean for the first time.

It took 500 years for this to happen.

Despite our diversity, we have made steady progress toward regional consensus.

Our extraordinary cultural, ethnic and geographical variety has not been a barrier.

Nor did our different political and economic models impede our ongoing efforts to reach an agreement.

We were united by a common desire for social justice, the fight against poverty and the promotion of development.

We created a culture of peace and understanding.

However, in recent years, we have become a balkanized and divided region, with an emphasis on the outside rather than the inside.

Intolerance has grown within many of us, preventing different points of view from sharing a table.

We are failing to cultivate our vocation for cooperation and allowing conflicts and disputes, many of them alien to the region, to take hold.

Defending the end of the blockade on Cuba and Argentina's sovereignty in the Malvinas interests us all.

All forms of unilateral sanctions, without support in international law, are counterproductive and penalize the most vulnerable.

At a time when global military spending exceeds 2 trillion dollars a year, recovering the spirit of solidarity, dialog and cooperation is an urgent and necessary reality.

In a world where so many conflicts kill thousands of innocent people, particularly women and children, our region must be a model of peacebuilding.

Ladies and gentlemen,

We must reflect on our place on the international stage.

In light of the spread of global power and the ongoing strengthening of multipolarity, the question of whether Latin American and Caribbean countries want to join the world together or separately resurfaces.

This is especially relevant now, as our region prepares to host the G20, APEC, BRICS, and COP30 summits.

If we speak as a region, we have a better chance of influencing today's major debates.

When we work together, we create synergies that strengthen our individual development projects.

The three priorities of Brazil's G20 presidency are very much in line with our historical challenges.

Our proposal for the Global Alliance against Hunger and Poverty can benefit from CELAC's "Food Security and Poverty Eradication Plan".

According to ECLAC, among the 660 million people in Latin America and the Caribbean, there are still 180 million people who do not have enough income for their basic needs and 70 million are still hungry.

This is a paradox for a region that is home to large and diverse food providers.

Sustainable development and the energy transition are an urgency of our time and an opportunity for all of us.

We have the greatest renewable energy potential in the world, if we take into account the capacity to produce biofuels, wind, solar and green hydrogen.

We have more than 1/3 of the planet's water reserves and an extremely rich biodiversity.

Our soil contains a vast and diverse range of strategic minerals of great importance for state-of-the-art industrial projects.

In this year in which we are celebrating the 60th anniversary of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), it is worth revisiting the debate on the structural nature of underdevelopment.

Economists such as Raul Prebisch and Celso Furtado explained the risks associated with international integration based solely on comparative advantages.

With integration, we can ensure that Artificial Intelligence tools are an ally of our reindustrialization projects, mitigating their harmful effects on the labor market.

According to the IMF, these new technologies will have a negative impact on 40% of global employment.

The necessary reforms of international organizations include the demand for innovative financing mechanisms.

Multilateral development banks must allocate more resources, in a more agile way and without conditionalities, to initiatives that really make a difference.

This will make it easier to tackle our poor physical connections and invest in the construction of roads, railroads, bridges, ports and air connections that allow for the effective movement of people and goods.

Ladies and gentlemen,

I would like to thank comrade Ralph Gonsalves once again for the exceptional work he has done during his presidency.

I am sure that comrade Xiomara Castro will be equally successful in running CELAC.

Brazil believes in CELAC as a forum for building consensus, which cultivates the path of understanding and does not allow itself to be tempted by imposed solutions.

I would like to conclude by paraphrasing Ambassador Samuel Pinheiro Guimarães, a great advocate of the regional aspect of Brazilian foreign policy, who left us recently.

In order to achieve their strategic development goals, the states on the periphery of the capitalist world need to see each other through their own eyes and not through the prism of the central countries.

CELAC gives us this opportunity to think about our position in the world from the perspective of our own agendas and interests.

Dear friends,

In Ukraine, every day that the war continues, the human suffering, the loss of life and the destruction of homes increase.

In Haiti, we need to act quickly to alleviate the suffering of a population torn apart by social chaos. Brazil has been saying for years that Haiti's problem is not just one of security, but above all one of development.

The humanitarian tragedy in Gaza requires all of us to say enough is enough to the collective punishment that the Israeli government is imposing on the Palestinian people.

People are dying in the queue for food.

The indifference of the international community is shocking.

I want to take advantage of the presence of the UN Secretary General, my comrade António Guterres, to propose a CELAC motion for an immediate end to this genocide.

The Secretary General can invoke Article 99 of the UN Charter to bring to the attention of the Council an issue that threatens international peace and security.

I appeal to the Japanese government, which takes over the presidency of the Council from today, to address this issue as a matter of urgency.

I ask the five permanent members of the UN Security Council to put aside their differences and put an end to this slaughter.

There have already been more than 30,000 deaths. The lives of thousands of innocent women and children are at stake.

The lives of Hamas hostages are also at stake.

I conclude by telling you that our dignity and humanity are at stake. That's why we must stop the carnage in the name of the survival of humanity, which needs a lot of humanism.

Thank you very much.