BRICS Draws a New Global Line: Full Text of New Delhi Declaration

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi at the BRICS Summit in New Delhi, where India handed over the BRICS chairship to China for 2027. The BRICS New Delhi Declaration is less a routine summit communiqué than a broad statement of intent about how its members believe the international system should function. Across 140 paragraphs, the expanded grouping calls for a greater voice for emerging and developing economies, reform of global institutions, opposition to unilateral sanctions, changes to international finance and trade, stronger cooperation in local currencies and cross-border payments, and a more assertive role for the Global South. Adopted at the XVIII BRICS Summit in New Delhi on September 12, the declaration repeatedly challenges arrangements that its members regard as unequal or increasingly ill-suited to a multipolar world. Its language is particularly direct on economic coercion. “We condemn unilateral coercive measures and sanctions,” the declaration states, while later opposing “unilateral punitive, discriminatory or protectionist measures inconsistent with international law”, including carbon border adjustment mechanisms. The language places economic restrictions and emerging forms of trade and climate regulation within a wider BRICS argument about sovereignty, development and fairness. That argument begins with global governance. BRICS says international institutions must provide “greater and…