By LAURO MATTEI*
The Lula III government prioritized the definition of a global political strategy to combat hunger and poverty
The G20 summit – a group of leaders of the world’s twenty largest economies – held its 2024 annual meeting in Rio de Janeiro between 18 and 19/11/2024. In this edition, in addition to the G20 heads of state,[I] Several world leaders were invited, as well as international organizations (UN/FAO/WHO/IDB, etc.). Therefore, it can be said that the global political world was present at this forum organized and held by the Brazilian government.
It is important to note that the G20 does not define laws, but merely establishes political, economic, social and environmental commitments of global relevance. Thus, in this edition, three themes prevailed in the debates: policies against hunger and poverty; climate phenomena and their effects on sustainable development; and the necessary reformulations in global governance. Obviously, all of these are potentially controversial topics given the current global political scenario.
Since the Brazilian government has been presiding over the forum since 2023, it was responsible for organizing the debates and establishing priorities in its political proposals. In this case, it is clear that the Lula III government prioritized the definition of a global political strategy to combat hunger and poverty.
The global alliance against hunger and poverty
As president of the G20, Brazil presented the proposal to create the Global Alliance against Hunger and Poverty. By the start of the summit, this initiative had initially been supported by 81 countries, except Argentina. Perhaps what most touched the countries that signed up to this initiative was the fact that the FAO/UN, in its 2024 report, reported that 733 million people were in a state of hunger, a figure that indicates that one in every eleven people in the world is currently in a state of hunger.
In order to operationalize this initiative, the “Champions’ Council” was created with the participation of 50 members, 25 of whom represent countries and the other 25 represent civil society. The initiative’s headquarters will be in Rome (at the FAO/UN) and will have an office in Brasília (DF). In addition, the goal was set to achieve UN Sustainable Development Goals 2030 and 1 by 2. To this end, the actions must benefit 500 million people with income transfer programs and provide school meals for 150 million children.
In order to achieve these goals, it is important to involve the entire global society. In this sense, during the G20 summit, at least 24 international organizations had already joined the initiative, as well as 9 institutional financial institutions and 34 global NGOs. It is worth noting that during the event, the IDB announced the allocation of US$25 billion to the initiative.
There is no doubt that the current global scenario contributed to this massive adoption of the proposal. According to a 2024 World Bank document, approximately 700 million people lived in extreme poverty in the world (those people living on less than US$1,90/day), while 1,3 billion people were in a situation of moderate poverty (those people living on an income between US$1.90 and US$3.20/day).
Argentina's late accession to the initiative
It is important to note that the President of Argentina, Javier Milei, arrived at the event alone and his first intervention in the debates, stating that it is the presence of the State that generates poverty, was harshly criticized by other heads of State, especially by the President of Chile and the President of Colombia.
Given his cold reception from the event organizer – and to avoid being further isolated – Javier Milei decided to join the initiative. As a result, at the end of the G20 meeting, the Global Alliance against Hunger and Poverty had the support of 82 Heads of State. However, this support was made effective through a statement in which the Argentine president stated that he partially dissociated himself from the general content linked to the 2030 agenda.
Javier Milei's dissociative statement
Among the many pearls of wisdom in the Argentine president's statement, the following stand out: (a) restrictions on freedom of expression on social media; (b) unequal treatment under the law (?); (c) imposition of restrictions on the sovereignty of global governance institutions (?); the idea of greater state intervention is not the best way to fight hunger and poverty, since every time this has been attempted, the result has been an exodus of population and capital and the loss of human lives.
From then on, Javier Milei made his position on the matter clear: to fight hunger and poverty, the solution is to remove the presence of the State. To this end, he states that market capitalism has already lifted 90% of the world's population out of extreme poverty and doubled life expectancy.[ii]
At the end of his statement, Javier Milei calls on all world leaders to follow this path because in Argentina it is already bearing fruit in combating hunger and poverty caused by state intervention.
The parallel world of Javier Milei
The statements made by the Argentine president at the G20 summit made it clear to all those who have even a passing knowledge of the current reality in Argentina that Javier Milei lives in a fictional world and that perhaps his favorite interlocutor continues to be his pet dog who has already died. Let's see:
(i) Data from September 2024 from INDEC (National Institute of Statistics and Censuses of the Republic of Argentina) revealed that in the first ten months of Milei's administration, poverty increased considerably and reached the figure of 15,7 million people, which corresponds to 52,9% of the country's population.
(ii) On the same date, INDEC also revealed that the Gini Index of income distribution rose from 0,417 (2023) to 0,436 (2024); (iii) that the current dramatic economic and social reality of Argentines is due, according to INDEC, to the following factors: a brutal rise in unemployment; reduction in wages; withdrawal of social rights; and sharp devaluation of the currency.
INDEC-BA revealed that in September/24 the country's capital (Buenos Aires) reached the figure of 988 thousand people classified as living in poverty, which corresponds to 32,4% of the capital's population. In addition, this indicator recorded that in the first ten months of Milei's administration alone, 159 thousand new poor people emerged in relation to the same period of the previous year. According to INDEC-BA, this is the second highest historical record since 2015.
This information previously propagated by Javier Milei at the G20 summit, besides being fanciful, is nothing more than the whining of the widows of neoliberalism. In the real world, States still play a decisive role in defining the destiny of nations and, above all, in implementing conditions that aim to improve the lives of everyone, especially those who survive in conditions of hunger and poverty!
* Laura Mattei He is a professor at the Department of Economics and International Relations and at the postgraduate program in Business Administration, both at UFSC..
[I] With the exception of the President of Russia, represented at this event by his Chancellor, all other heads of state were present.
[ii] It should be noted that economist Javier Milei must have missed his Global Economic History classes. Otherwise, he would understand that the fundamental mechanism and contradiction of the capitalist mode of production is marked by inequality, which is expressed precisely in the permanence and existence of a minority that uses the results produced by everyone, while the vast majority of the population survives in miserable conditions. See the recent data from the World Bank reports.
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