Post #2013

🎙️Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov’s interview with Rossiyskaya Gazeta (November 27, 2024) ❓Question: You represented Russia at the G20 summit in Rio de Janeiro. Shortly before that, a series of meetings with African foreign ministers took place in Sochi, a city that hosted the first ministerial conference of the Russia-Africa Partnership Forum. Combatting modern practices of neocolonialism is increasingly taking a centre stage internationally. Was this issue addressed during the above events? 💭Sergey Lavrov: Of course, it was. Increasing numbers of participants in the international dialogue are coming to the realisation that the exploitation of former colonies by the colonial powers has never stopped. All it did was merely adjust its form, but the goal has remained the same, and it is to pump out resources from the countries of Asia, Africa, and Latin America to sustain the West’s dominance and ensure a high standard of living for its people. The methods can vary from sanctions pressure to coercion into signing unequal predatory agreements. Clearly, this slows down the development of the Global South and the Global East, particularly the poorest and the least developed nations among them. The cynicism of the Western countries profiting from the hardships of the most vulnerable countries is particularly striking. For instance, after the devastating earthquake in Haiti in 2010, of the $2.5 billion in recovery aid promised by the United States, merely 2.6 percent made it to Haitian companies and organisations. The rest of this amount stayed with the US contractors. There are more cases like that. Similarly unconscionable abuses took place with the Western aid for the peoples of Iraq and Afghanistan that is the countries that the Americans and their NATO allies themselves first laid to waste. I’d be remiss not to mention the fact that the developing countries keep raising the issue of their rightful spot in the global division of labour, which, in its current form, is a stark manifestation of modern neocolonialism in and of itself. I noted on earlier occasions that African countries receive less than 10 percent of the revenue from global coffee sales, and the rest is pocketed by transnational corporations. ❌We have no illusions and we are clear-eyed about the fact that Western neocolonialists will never give up their privileges of their own accord. Everyone can see that the West is shamelessly leveraging international financial institutions to promote its self-serving interests. The IMF and the WTO have been politicised, and “undesirable” members of these organisations are being openly discriminated against. 👉🏻This is why, alongside our like-minded partners from the World Majority, we believe that bringing principles and governance system established by the Bretton Woods institutions in line with the realities of the global economy is a long time coming. In fact, the G7 economies account for less than a third of global GDP, whereas BRICS nations make up 36 percent. The West ostensibly agrees with this view, but is unwilling to take action. 🔗Read in full