New Delhi hosts 12th BRICS Parliamentary Forum

• The 12th BRICS Parliamentary Forum concluded with the adoption of a joint declaration in New Delhi on October 27. 

• Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla inaugurated the two-day Forum at the historic Samvidhan Sadan in the Parliament House Complex on October 26.

• The theme was “Strengthening Parliaments for People-Centric Development”.

• It facilitated consensus-based dialogue through four high-level sessions themed on Resilience, Innovation, Cooperation and Sustainability.

Highlights of the joint declaration:

• The joint declaration condemned the imposition of unilateral economic and secondary sanctions saying such coercive measures have far reaching negative implications on human rights, including the right to development, health and food security of people.

• It supported a comprehensive reform of the United Nations, including its Security Council.

• It expressed strong condemnation of any acts of terrorism as criminal and unjustifiable, regardless of their motivation, whenever, wherever and by whomsoever committed. 

• The Forum said terrorism should not be associated with any religion, nationality, civilisation or ethnic group and that all those involved in terrorist activities and their support must be held accountable and brought to justice in accordance with relevant national and international law.

• It reaffirmed unwavering support for the peaceful resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict based on the two-State solution, with the two States living side by side, in peace and security.

• Recognising the urgency of addressing climate change, it called for intensifying efforts, through dialogue and international cooperation, to implement nationally determined contributions, strengthen mitigation and adaptation efforts, with a view to achieving the objectives of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and the goals of its Paris Agreement as applicable.

The BRICS nations

• The BRICS nations or Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa form the key pillars of south-south cooperation and are the representative voice of emerging markets and developing countries in the global forums such as the G20.

• The grouping has become a 11-nation body now with Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Indonesia joining it as new members.

• The acronym BRIC was first used in 2001 by Goldman Sachs in their Global Economics Paper, ‘The World Needs Better Economic BRICs’ on the basis of econometric analyses projecting that the four economies would individually and collectively occupy far greater economic space and would be amongst the world’s largest economies in the next 50 years or so.

• The leaders of BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India, and China) countries met for the first time in St. Petersburg, Russia, on the margins of the G8 Outreach Summit in July 2006. Shortly afterwards, in September 2006, the group was formalised as BRIC during the First BRIC Foreign Ministers’ Meeting, which met on the sidelines of the General Debate of the UN Assembly in New York City.

• After a series of high level meetings, the first BRIC summit was held in Yekaterinburg, Russia on June 16, 2009.

• It was agreed to expand BRIC into BRICS with the inclusion of South Africa at the BRIC Foreign Ministers meeting in New York in September 2010. Accordingly, South Africa attended the third BRICS Summit in Sanya on April 14, 2011. 

• In 2015, the BRICS established the New Development Bank (NDB) with the purpose of mobilising resources for infrastructure and sustainable development projects in emerging markets and developing countries.