By Umamah Bakharia

The world’s top five emerging economies said they backed talks between Ukraine and Russia as it ends its two-day summit discussing the war and economic recoveries. Beijing has been hosting a virtual forum of the BRIC nations: Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa which account for over 40% of the global population and nearly a quarter of the world’s gross domestic product.

Speaking to Radio Islam International, Professor of International Law and former director of the Institute for Foreign and Comparative Law at UNISA, Andre Thomashousen says BRICS is the strongest economic alliance at the moment.

“BRICS try their best to reunite countries that are very similar because they are in the global south for Russia but their indicators their GDP per capita and their policies place them in a group,” says Professor Thomashousen.

From the last summit, BRICS introduced four priority items which have been relevant to South Africa. The group intents to build a new platform to bride the vaccine divide and to make sure that vaccines can continue to be produced in South Africa and in the market. They also plan a new platform for food security to reduce the dependence on other continents. BRICS intends to manage new forms of business in the era of digital economies and they want to tap into the new technologies for upgrading.

“They want to inject more impetus into economic recovery and growth after the covid pandemic and for that, they want to strengthen globalisation, they want to counter the Wests plan to globalise and there will be a new initiative to win the fight against corruption,” says Professor Thomashousen.

BRICS intends to improve global governance and gap the global divide.

The countries said they had “discussed our concerns over the humanitarian situation in a humanitarian situation in and around Ukraine” and expressed support for international agencies “to provide humanitarian assistance.” This comes after the US and the European Union have slapped Russia with a barrage of sanctions since its invasion of Ukraine.