Secretary Antony J. Blinken At a G20 Foreign Ministers Meeting Remarks September 25, 2024

 

Secretary Antony J. Blinken At a G20 Foreign Ministers Meeting

Remarks

September 25, 2024

SECRETARY BLINKEN:  Vieira, Mauro, thank you very, very much.  I’m really grateful for this opportunity to gather with fellow G20 foreign ministers ahead of the Rio Summit in November.  

When President Lula and President Biden met here last year, President Lula said this:  “Another world is possible with more fraternity, with more solidarity…with more fairness.”

That’s the spirit in which we gather here today and that’s the spirit the United States is bringing to the G20’s agenda under Brazil’s presidency.

Our country is committed to broad-based, inclusive growth that can expand opportunity and lift up all of our people. 

That’s only possible in an economy that honors and protects its workers, particularly the most discriminated against, the most vulnerable.  President Biden and President Lula launched the Partnership for Worker Rights last year to promote labor rights, worker voices, collective bargaining – unleashing a race to the top for workplace, economic, and environmental standards. 

The United States is also investing in quality, sustainable infrastructure – roads, clean energy, fiber optic cables – through our Partnership for Global Infrastructure and Investment.

We’re coming together with partner countries to enhance food security.  The United States is proud to be the world’s largest donor – funding one out of every three dollars of the World Food Programme’s global operations, providing more than $17.5 billion in food aid since 2021, in addition to our long-term investments to prevent hunger.

We strongly support Brazil’s initiative to stand up the G20’s Global Alliance Against Hunger.  We’ll do our part to ensure the alliance delivers on its ambitious – and crucial – mission.

So many of us are also seized by the need to tackle the climate crisis, which threatens not only our individual nations but our entire planet.

The United States is making the biggest investments of any country ever to accelerate the transition to clean energy, keeping us on track to cut our emissions by half by 2030.

At the same time, we’re working with partners like Brazil to preserve the Amazon, dedicating billions to help people in developing countries adapt to and manage the impacts of the climate crisis.

Three years ago, President Biden pledged to quadruple climate financing to developing nations.  This year we’re on pace to provide $11 billion toward that goal.

Effectively addressing any of these challenges – economic inequality, food security, climate change – requires us to reform global institutions to better reflect today’s world, not the world of 80 years ago.  Developing countries in particular must have a greater voice in the multilateral system.

That’s why the United States strongly supported the African Union joining the G20 – and we’re so glad to have them with us today.

Earlier this month, Ambassador Thomas-Greenfield announced that the United States supports expanding the UN Security Council to include two permanent seats for African countries, a non-permanent seat for Small Island Developing States, and to move from talk to action – text-based negotiations through the intergovernmental negotiations process. 

We’ve reaffirmed our support for permanent representation for Latin America and the Caribbean, as well as those countries we have long supported for permanent seats – Germany, India, Japan.

It’s critical as well that we reform the multilateral development banks – an effort that India did so much to advance during its own G20 presidency – to better deliver on the Sustainable Development Goals, to ensure that the benefits of greater prosperity are shared more equitably.

Our collective efforts have increased the capacity of our international financial institutions to support low- and middle-income countries as they respond to climate shocks, public health challenges, crushing debt.

As the G20 Global Governance Call to Action and the Pact for the Future underscore, all of these reforms must be rooted in the principles at the heart of the UN Charter and international law.

And I would add we were glad to see the near consensus on the Pact for the Future.  It’s unfortunate that there was one outlier.  We also look and support reform of the WTO – this, too, would be important progress.

Finally, let me just briefly address current challenges that many have alluded to and that actually are the things that make it harder for us to deliver on this affirmative agenda. 

We continue to strongly condemn Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine.  We continue to stand for the principles at the heart of the United Nations Charter.  We all have to do that whenever those principles are being violated, especially by a member of the United Nations Security Council and a member of this group, the G20.

And in the Middle East, we’re intensely engaged with a number of partners to de-escalate tensions in Lebanon and to work to get a ceasefire agreement that would have so many benefits for all concerned.

But mostly, what I want to say today and what we’ll continue to do in Rio is to affirm the United States commitment to promoting an affirmative agenda.  And we look forward to working with all of our partners toward a future of greater dignity and greater opportunity for all of our people. 

I thank you very much.

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