As the world grapples with the ongoing conflict in Ukraine, an Indian G20 negotiator has called for a shift in focus towards addressing poverty. According to the negotiator, the global community must move on from the Ukraine war and utilize resources and efforts to combat poverty that plagues a significant portion of the world’s population. As India gears up to host the G20 summit in 2023, the country is making a proactive push towards addressing poverty and promoting sustainable development, and the negotiator’s call for action comes as a timely reminder of the need to prioritize a global agenda that benefits all.
India’s G20 summit negotiator Amitabh Kant has expressed concern over the impact of Russia’s war in Ukraine, saying urgent action is needed to address global poverty. In comments made after two back-to-back ministerial meetings in India, Kant highlighted the economic impact of the conflict, which entered its second year last month. As holder of the G20 presidency this year, India has sought to raise issues such as climate change and global debt as well as the impact of war. Kant questioned whether one conflict could bring the world to a standstill, noting that almost a third of the planet was in recession, while 200 million people had fallen below the poverty line. He suggested the world needed to move on and Europe needed to find solutions to its challenges, commenting: “Nutrition has been impacted, health outcomes have been impacted, learning outcomes have been impacted, people have become stunted and wasted and we are just concerned with one Russia and Ukraine war”.
Kant’s comments followed Indian Foreign Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar’s observation that European thinking needed to shift. Jaishankar argued that while Europe expected the world to aid it with its problems, it failed to acknowledge the globe’s issues as its concerns. India has declined to blame Russia for the Ukrainian conflict and has sought a diplomatic solution even as it has boosted its purchases of Russian oil.
Kant suggested it was too early to discuss whether US President Joe Biden and Russian President Vladimir Putin would attend the G20 summit in New Delhi in September. Putin has travelled only within the former Soviet Union since invading Ukraine in 2014 and missed November’s G20 summit in Indonesia. The G20 includes the rich G7 nations alongside China, India, Brazil, Australia, Saudi Arabia, and other countries.
Kant’s comments reflect the complexity of the renewed Cold War between Russia and the West, which entails the economic consequences of their confrontation while having serious implications for other areas of the world. The Russian-Ukrainian conflict is only one aspect of a multi-faceted set of problems which will be discussed by the G20 later this year.
The G20 has been grappling with mutually exclusive interests of these countries to move ahead with complementary efforts to ensure sustained economic growth for all participants. Such goals stand jeopardised by the confrontational policies of Western states. However, the issue of global poverty and inequality is too urgent and too far-reaching to be left to the squabbles of major nations alone.
Consequently, the G20 should move beyond its current position to redress the imbalance between developed and developing nations. This could entail the establishment of a mechanism for the provision of development assistance and aid to poor countries, commensurate with the scale of the challenge they face. New metrics need to be developed to measure such capacity and evaluate the effectiveness of such measures.
The real worries about the current G20 framework lie in the lack of direction towards a viable financial framework for the global economy. The G20 needs direction in this area that takes into account the different economic systems that are operating across the globe. This should include policies that address the inequalities and poverty across nations and provide incentives and support for growth.
Kant’s remarks serve well to highlight the problems that underlie the G20 framework, problems that will require leadership and innovative thinking to overcome. While empathising with the challenges of Europe, G20 members must recognise the need to focus on the broader challenges that confront the global community, and to adopt a more cooperative approach to their resolution.
