25
Nov
2024
Watch
The outcome of the G20 Leaders' Summit (debate)
Madam President, let me start by praising Brazil for the leadership it has shown by launching the Global Alliance Against Hunger and Poverty. It addresses the SDG one and SDG two, the most urgent ones, and that should be acknowledged and supported. Having said that, I regret that the G20 failed to address all the causes of poverty. They did address some of them, like inequalities, like the Commissioner has mentioned, but they did not address, for example, the lack of good governance. As a former rapporteur of this House for the 2030 agenda, we worked hard to include that SDG 16. They missed to address the lack of good governance as a cause of poverty. And they had a good example, unfortunately, of that situation in the vicinity, in the neighbourhood, in Venezuela, a country very rich in oil but unfortunately poor due to the mismanagement of the regime of Nicolás Maduro. Why that was not mentioned? Well, because Russia and China are supporting Nicolás Maduro. They did not want to have this mentioned at the G20 in Rio. But I believe that that was necessary because here we saw all the hypocrisy of these countries that say that they are caring about the interests of the citizens of the Global South, but what they are really doing is to support a dictator to stay in power against the will of his own people. So I believe that the leaders in Rio should have addressed the situation in Venezuela. I regret that they did not.