2020 BRICS summit to be held on Nov. 17 via video conference
Updated 22:09, 05-Oct-2020
CGTN

The 12th BRICS summit will be held on November 17 via video conference, according to a statement on its website.

The theme of the Meeting of the Leaders of BRICS countries is "BRICS Partnership for Global Stability, Shared Security and Innovative Growth."

The main purpose of the Russian BRICS Chairmanship in 2020, as it is for a multifaceted cooperation between the BRICS countries, is to contribute to raising living standards and quality of life for the countries' peoples, the statement said.

Five months ago, Russia decided to postpone the 12th BRICS summit due to the ongoing global coronavirus pandemic and the Kremlin said in a statement that the new date would be set "depending on the epidemiological situation in member countries and the world." 

BRICS countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa) are some of the worst affected by the global pandemic.

The BRICS Foreign Ministers' Extraordinary Conference on COVID-19 via video conference was held in April to discuss the impacts of the pandemic on international relations, joint efforts to tackle global challenges and deepen BRICS cooperation.

Last month, the foreign ministers of BRICS countries agreed that the member countries should jointly deal with the challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic and jointly promote multilateralism, the recovery of the world economy, and political settlement of hot-spot issues.

The 11th BRICS summit, which was held in November last year in Brazil, offered a good opportunity to assess the journey of BRICS in its first decade.

Since its first summit in 2009, BRICS has established more than 30 cooperation areas. The most prominent are: economy and finance, health, science, technology and innovation, security and business. Altogether these initiatives have yielded fruitful and laudable outcomes, and provided concrete benefits.