Kumar Bahukhandi
New Delhi: China was not invited to the Voice of Global South Summit in which 123 countries took part with several leaders raising climate change concerns, challenges of new technologies and talking of the need for reforms in the United Nations.
Answering queries during a press conference here after the third Voice of Global South Summit, which was hosted by India and held virtually, External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar said some countries referred to multipolarity, saying that the world is moving towards multipolarity and this should be reflected in the workings of the Global South.
The first question, was China there? Answer is no. Underlying question, were they invited? Answer is no,” he said.
Answering a query, he said the Summit was an exercise much more in a way of finding common positions and the idea was to create that sense of coming together on a Compact.
“So I would say, I mean, clearly, in many ways, ideationally, there would be a carryover,” he said.
On the Monkey-pox issue, no. There was no specific reference to anybody. I mean, there were references to health challenges which were not getting the priority kind of thing, but not specific in that sense. We weren’t looking so much at financial… I mean, this was not a visit where you do say, okay, I have a list of deliverables to put before the world. This was more like a gathering of people around a set of themes who are exchanging ideas, taking, you know, mulling that between them, taking it forward, exactly as we did last year. Now, eventually, as you saw last year, all of that in some form or the other impacted the G20,” he added.
He said many people brought in ideas, bounced it off each other, partly reacted to something that somebody else said.
“And the idea was, when we do our gathering, we will take that from here and feed it into that. I think that would be a fair play,” he added.
The Global South Summit initiative began as an extension of PM Modi’s vision of ‘Sabka Saath, Sabka Vikas, Sabka Vishwas aur Sabka Prayas’, and is underpinned by India’s philosophy of Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam.
It envisages bringing together countries of the Global South to share their perspectives and priorities on a common platform across a whole range of issues.
India hosted the 1st Voice of Global South Summit (VOGSS) on January 12-13 2023, and the second Voice of Global South Summit on November 17, both in virtual format.
