BRICS 2025 may promise unity and justice for the Global South, but behind the lofty rhetoric lies a troubling contradiction. From climate hypocrisy to digital authoritarianism, this deep-dive expose unpacks the Rio Declaration’s strategic vagueness and selective morality. Is BRICS really building a new world order or just mirroring the very empires it denounces?
We must, without hesitation, applaud yet another BRICS summit in 2025. But beneath this ceremonial stage of pledges lies a troubling double act: a show of resistance against global injustice that, paradoxically, props up the very inequalities it condemns. The Rio de Janeiro Declaration, rich in rhetoric and outwardly noble, crumbles under scrutiny as a performance of diplomacy lacking any of the meaningful action it proclaims.
Repeated calls for multilateralism and equity, “a more just, equitable, agile, effective, efficient, responsive, representative, legitimate, democratic and accountable international and multilateral system” veer into the theatrical. Though seemingly aspirational, this lavish language blurs more than it clarifies. That vagueness is not accidental; it conceals the bloc’s failure or refusal to offer tangible structural change, relying instead on tired tropes of Western grievance.
Despite appeals for sovereign parity and a “more representative, fairer international order,” BRICS presents few alternatives that differ meaningfully from the hierarchies it critiques. While the declaration supports greater roles for Brazil and India within the UN, including the Security Council, this appears more as a reshuffling within the current system than a break from it. Reform, not revolution, seems to be the underlying message.
BRICS’ assertion that it champions the Global South is eroded by its own contradictions. The bloc protests the dominance of nationals from major powers in senior UN positions and champions “geographical diversity,” yet offers no clarity on how appointments should be equitably restructured. Its silence on the authoritarian practices within its own membership starkly contrasts with its vocal opposition to Western sanctions and coercion.
Equally jarring is BRICS’ embrace of fossil fuels under the banner of sovereign development. It claims that fossil energy will remain vital in the global energy mix, even as it vows to champion a “just, orderly, equitable and inclusive energy transition.” Serving both climate justice and carbon dependency is an impossible duality. This contradiction, masked in sovereignty, is climate denial wrapped in nationalism.
Even praise for the New Development Bank’s role in advancing sustainable development rings hollow, given its simultaneous endorsement of “local currency financing” for infrastructure projects that often perpetuate extractive models. Calls for expanding NDB membership sound like old Bretton Woods structures draped in new flags.
The bloc’s advocacy for a “fair agricultural trading system” reveals more irony. While decrying protectionist policies, it simultaneously pushes for exclusive trade systems such as the BRICS Grain Exchange. This paradox underlines how BRICS often champions food sovereignty and trade resilience, yet avoids reckoning with internal inequalities such as skewed land ownership and agrarian crises.
Its support for AI and digital governance appears visionary on paper, with endorsements for “AI that upholds shared values.” However, BRICS avoids acknowledging the poor records many of its members hold on issues like surveillance, privacy, and censorship. Its talk of tech empowerment often camouflages authoritarian tendencies.
Even its human rights narrative is steeped in selective outrage. While BRICS calls for Israeli withdrawal from Gaza and release of hostages, it avoids condemning state violence or oppression within its own bloc. Its refusal to mention China’s Uyghur policies or Russia’s aggression in Ukraine, beyond vague gestures toward “dialogue,” exposes a glaring moral blind spot.
Most revealing is BRICS’ continued reliance on clichéd tropes of “dialogue and consultation” without tackling internal complicity in regional instability. The bloc calls for African solutions to African problems, yet dodges the critical realities of resource plunder, foreign debt, and state failure across the continent. What emerges is less solidarity, more selective paternalism.
The heart of BRICS’ dilemma lies in its unwillingness to face its contradictions. Justice, in its lexicon, is performance. Its critique of the West mirrors the West itself, merely switching costumes and language. The Global South it invokes becomes a rhetorical device, not a transformative force.
We are told BRICS is crafting a new world order. But the real question is: to what purpose, and for whom? The Rio Declaration is a case study in theatrical multilateralism: grand in tone, absent in action. BRICS may style itself as the challenger of global dominance, but it remains haunted by the same imperial ghosts. In the play of geopolitics, BRICS is not the radical alternative. It is the reflection.
