JOHANNESBURG – G20 leaders concluded their annual summit on Sunday in South Africa Defending pluralism Facing a world affected by the unilateral policies of the United States, wars and geopolitical rivalries.
“We are not witnessing a transition, but rather a rupture.”The Canadian Prime Minister admitted, mark Carney, On the last day of the two-day summit.
“Many countries are retreating into geopolitical blocs or protectionist battlegrounds,” he said.
The G20 summit in South Africa concluded with a notable announcement The absence of the United StatesIt is the next country to lead the bloc after the president’s government Donald Trump Boycott the two-day talks involving leaders of the world’s richest and most important developing economies.
The G20 includes 19 countries, joined by the European Union and the African Union. In total, its participants represent 85% of the world’s gross domestic product and about two-thirds of the population.
president of south africa, Cyril Ramaphosa, He declared the summit in Johannesburg closed by hitting a block with a wooden gavel like a judge, in accordance with the G20 tradition.
The gavel is usually given to the leader of the next country to assume the rotating presidency, but no US official was present to receive it.
The world’s largest economy boycotted a summit that aimed to bring together rich and developing countries because of Trump’s allegations about that South Africa violently persecutes the white African minority.
In a last-minute decision, the White House said it planned to have an official from its embassy in South Africa attend the giving of the gavel.
But South Africa refused, saying that handing her over to a lower-ranking official at the embassy would be an insult to Ramaphosa.
In the end, no American delegation was accredited to attend the summit, according to the South African Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
South Africa announced that the handover process would take place at a later time, perhaps at the headquarters of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
Trump said so The United States will host the summit next year At his golf club in Doral, Florida.
Ramaphosa said at the conclusion of the summit, without referring in his speech to the American absence: “This gavel from this G20 summit officially concludes the meeting and now passes to the next president of the G20, which is the United States, where we will meet again next year.”
The first G20 summit in Africa also broke tradition on Saturday by issuing a leaders’ statement on the opening day of the talks, a time when statements are usually issued at the end of the summit.
The statement was important because it came in the face of opposition from the United States, which for months had criticized the group’s South African agenda that focused largely on Climate change and global wealth inequality An approach that the Trump administration despised.
Argentina stated that it also opposed the announcement after its president, Javier Miley, a Trump ally, was also absent from the summit.
Other G20 countries, including China, Russia, France, Germany, the United Kingdom, Japan and Canada, supported the statement, which called for greater global attention to issues that specifically affect poor countries, such as the need for financial assistance for recovery efforts after climate disasters, finding ways to reduce their debt levels and support their transition to green energy sources.
“South Africa has used this presidency to place African and Global South priorities firmly at the heart of the G20 agenda,” Ramaphosa stressed.
South Africa defended its G20 declaration as a victory for the summit and international cooperation against foreign policy “America first” From the Trump administration.
However, the G20 declarations are general, non-binding agreements, and their long-term impact has been questioned.
Furthermore, although the Declaration included many of South Africa’s priorities, some concrete proposals did not make it into the final document.
There was no mention of a new international panel on wealth inequality, similar to the UN-appointed Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which South Africa and other countries have called for.
The G20 was formed in 1999 in response to the Asian financial crisis and consists of 19 rich and developing economies, the European Union and the African Union, but some have questioned its effectiveness in helping to resolve the most prominent global crises, such as the war between Russia and Ukraine and the tensions in the Middle East.
advertisement 122 points Johannesburg made only one mention of Ukraine in a general call to end global conflicts, and the summit appeared to make no difference in the nearly four-year-old war, even as leaders or high-level delegations from all major European countries, the European Union and Russia sat in the same room for the G20 meeting.
“The meeting for the first time on the African continent constitutes an important event.”French President Emmanuel Macron said this, but added that the bloc was “struggling to reach a common standard in geopolitical crises.”
However, some hailed the summit as a hugely important symbolic moment for the G20.
“This is the first meeting of world leaders in history where the emergence of inequality has been placed at the heart of the agenda,” said Max Lawson of Oxfam, an international non-profit that works to alleviate global poverty.
“The importance of addressing development priorities from an African perspective cannot be underestimated,” said Namibian President Nitumbo Nandi Ndayetwah, whose southern African country of three million people was one of more than 20 small nations invited as guests to the summit alongside G20 members.
AP and AFP agencies
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