RIO DE JANEIRO. July 7 (Interfax) - BRICS member states and their like-minded people take a shared position that global issues cannot be resolved without taking into account the interests of the Global South and East countries, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said.
"For the first time, not only full-fledged BRICS members, but also partner states attended the summit," Lavrov said at a press conference following the BRICS summit in Rio de Janeiro.
"This category was established following the Kazan summit last October, and these are Belarus, Bolivia, Vietnam, Kazakhstan, Cuba, Malaysia, Nigeria, Thailand, Uganda, and Uzbekistan," Lavrov said.
"Well, along with the partner countries, which were now represented at the summit in this capacity, the Brazilian presidency invited the heads of state and government of the Global South to separate sessions," Lavrov said, adding that the heads of the secretariats of the United Nations, World Health Organization, World Trade Organization and the management of multilateral development banks were invited and spoke at separate sessions.
"The BRICS members and their like-minded people are unanimous that it is impossible to efficiently solve numerous issues of our time without taking into account the positions of the countries of the Global South, the Global East, in other words, the global majority," Lavrov said
"Within this context, everyone noted the BRICS role as a platform for coordinating the interests of the leading countries of that very global majority as one of the key pillars of multipolarity, which objectively replaces the globalization system that is disappearing in the past," Lavrov said.