Cuba hosts G77 + China
Seeking a pluripolar world order
Cuba is hosting, on September 15-16, 2023, a meeting of the G-77 plus China, in its capacity as President pro tempore for 2023. According to Dr. Mario Antonio Padilla Torres, professor and researcher at the Center for Investigation of International Politics in Havana, the event occurs at a historical moment in which countries in development are seeking to change the architecture of international relations. The interest of Cuba is to strengthen the process of change in the international economic order toward a multipolar world with solidarity among nations.1
The Group of 77 was created on June 15, 1964, by seventy-seven nations during the First UN Conference on Commerce and Development (UNCTAD) for the purpose of promoting the collective economic interests of its members. The Group has maintained its name, in spite of the fact that it has reached 134 members.
For review of the historical context of the founding of the Group of 77 as well as a report on speeches by Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel and Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez on the occasion of the election of Cuba to the presidency of the Group, see “Cuba assumes presidency of G77: The struggle for a more just world economic order,” January 17, 2023.
During its 2023 presidency, Cuba hosted a G-77 ministerial meeting on the environment. See “Cuba plays a leading role in G77: The united quest of the South to protect the environment,” July 11, 2023. Cuba also hosted ministerial meetings in culture and tourism. In addition, Cuban President Díaz-Canel participated in the BRICS Summit in South Africa and in the Summit for a New International Financial Accord in Paris, representing Cuba as President pro tempore of the G-77. During the year, thirteen projects of cooperation under the sponsorship of G-77 have been developed.
In “El Grupo-77 más China, en el tránsito hacia un mundo multipolar,” Padilla writes that the fundamental activities of the Group of 77 include: elaborating declarations, programs of action, and agreements over specific themes; sponsoring and negotiating resolutions and decisions concerning themes related to international economic cooperation; developing international conferences and meetings under the sponsorship of the United Nations concerning international economic cooperation and development and with respect to the reform of the United Nations; stimulating through concrete actions the objectives of the 2030 Agenda; promoting solidarity and internal cooperation in support of post-pandemic recuperation; continuing to develop South-South cooperation; promoting greater emphasis on the just fulfillment of the responsibility of the industrialized countries to support the countries of the South through North-South cooperation; carrying out activities that promote greater voice to the Group of 77; continuing support for multilateral cooperation based on transparent, nondiscriminatory norms; and continuing to defend international access to quality education and health for the most dispossessed.
Padilla observes that the majority of the countries of the South are the most impacted by the multidimensional crisis of the world and the injustices of the international economic order. Hunger, poverty, and underdevelopment are the realities of their nations. Cuba, he notes, has an interest during its presidency to defend the interests of the underdeveloped nations.
Padilla makes clear the support of the G-77 by the Russian Federation, even though Russia is not a member. Russia, he notes, has permanent and positive economic relations with the countries of the Group, without neocolonialist or imperialist intentions. For various years, Russia has cooperated with the G-77 with respect to the implementation of various items on the G-77 agenda, inasmuch as the Russian government shares many of the priorities of G-77. Russia adopts many positions similar to the G-77 with respect to the eradication of poverty and hunger; the ensuring of access to education, health, and employment; the need for improvement in the system of world economic governance, which at the same time includes maintaining the role of the UN as the organization of greatest world legitimacy; the creation of world conditions favorable to stable development; and the need to increase official aid to development as one of the principal sources of external financing, oriented to the support of national priorities for development.
Russia, like G-77 and BRICS, rejects the excessive politization of the debates in the United Nations with respect to socioeconomic and environmental problems. Russia has similar positions with the Third World countries with respect to the management of natural resources; it sees natural wealth as the base of sustainable development, and its supports categorically the principal of the complete sovereignty of states over their natural resources. Consistent with the demands of countries in development, Russia is opposed to any type of unilateral economic sanction or other unjustified coercive measure that intends to politically pressure sovereign states. Russia respects the interests of its trading partners and the principle of non-interference in their internal affairs.
The G-77 plus China plays an increasingly visible role in the creation of a multipolar world characterized by solidarity, Padilla maintains. Many objective observers have pointed out, he notes, the active participation of emerging powers in supporting movement in international relations toward a multipolar world, which in a strict scientific sense does not yet exist. These countries include China, Russia, Iran, Türkiye, Saudi Arabia, the central Asiatic countries, among others.
The 134 countries of the G-77 plus China include big producers of petroleum, gas, and minerals important for the new technologies. They are increasingly developing relations among themselves, Padilla declares, thus taking a courageous position against the North American empire through nationalist projects that seek to rescue their natural resources. Thus, they can play—and ought to play—a primary role in the transition to a multipolar world.
Padilla writes:
Solidary multipolarity is not only a universal technological development; it also presupposes the development of culture, humanism, mutual aid, respect, and peace; that is, a general human process that includes possibilities for the great dispossessed masses, the equilibrium of the world, and equal development for the large and small countries, of the north looking to the south as equal partners and not as a predator of their economies, of social gains and changes of mentality with respect to absurd consumerism. The solidary multipolar world presupposes alliances for the development of the peoples, sharing profits, conceiving the creation of an infrastructure for development and not for the indiscriminate exploitation of natural resources to the point of their exhaustion. It appears to be an illusion, but it is an attainable utopia when above pride, egoism, and ideologies are placed the will of the world to defend life on earth.
Padilla maintains that the birth of the Group of 77 constitutes an important milestone in the history of international relations, for it is an organization that seeks to end the yoke of neocolonialism. The efforts of the Group have not been in vain, because it is the voice of the peoples. It identifies the problems that its countries confront, and it struggles to attain dignified levels of development against the old colonial powers. It constitutes a necessary effort to struggle for unity in diversity, in order to be able to confront the multiple problems of the majority of the countries of the Group. It seeks to coordinate strategies among its members for confronting the political and economic appetites of the imperialist countries. The current crisis of the imperialist system constitutes an opportunity for the countries of the Third World to marshal unified political will in support of their equal development in a multipolar world.
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Mario Antonio Padilla Torres, “El Grupo-77 más China, en el tránsito hacia un mundo multipolar” in Cuadernos de Nuestra América, Número 8 (La Habana: CIPI Centro de Investigaciones de Política Internacional, 2023), Pp. 82-90.