Negotiators worked from Friday evening until nearly 4 a.m. on Saturday, hours before world leaders took their seats at Bharat Mandapam. That is how Republic World describes the final push behind the New Delhi Declaration, a 140-paragraph text adopted by consensus on 12 September at the 18th BRICS summit.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi chaired the meeting under India’s 2026 chairship, themed Building for Resilience, Innovation, Cooperation and Sustainability. It was India’s fourth time in the chair, after 2012, 2016 and 2021. Preparations took in more than 400 events across 30 Indian cities, so the declaration reflects months of work by ministers, central banks, expert groups and business representatives.
The membership
The grouping has grown from its original five. Eleven members now sit at the table: Brazil, China, Egypt, Ethiopia, India, Indonesia, Iran, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa and the United Arab Emirates. Ten partner countries, among them Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Belarus, Vietnam, Malaysia and Nigeria, take part without full membership. Together the members hold more than 40 percent of the world’s population and nearly a quarter of the global economy.
The Middle East test
The hard part was the Middle East. A deputy foreign ministers’ meeting on West Asia in April produced no joint statement, and a foreign ministers’ meeting in New Delhi in May settled for a chair’s statement, the first such failure in the bloc’s history. Iran and the UAE sit at opposite ends of the regional conflict; the UAE suspended trade and financial dealings with Iran in August after Iranian missile strikes.
The text that emerged does not name a country. Members expressed “deep concern” over escalation and called for “maximum restraint”, protection of civilians and a settlement through dialogue. Republic World reports that the language condemning unilateral aggression was anchored in sovereignty and the UN Charter, which let both Tehran and Abu Dhabi sign. The Indian Express reported that reaching a compromise between the Iranian and Emirati sides took almost 100 hours of talks, with help from China, Russia, Brazil and Egypt. Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian and the UAE’s Khaled bin Mohamed Al Nahyan met on 12 September, which Reuters described as the highest-level Iran-UAE meeting since the 2026 war began.
The silences are as telling as the words. The declaration never mentions the United States, even though members have been hit by the Iran war and by American tariffs. Nor does it mention the war in Ukraine, a departure from the 2024 Kazan and 2025 Rio declarations that Indian and international commentators noticed.
Trade and money
Indian Commerce Minister Piyush Goyal said on 11 September that the grouping’s merchandise exports rose from about $900 billion in 2003 to almost $6 trillion in 2024, taking its share of global merchandise exports to nearly 24 percent. Those figures include sales to buyers outside BRICS.
A UNCTAD study published in March, covering 10 countries, put exports among them at $1.17 trillion in 2024, more than 13 times the 2003 level. Reliance differs widely. Brazil, Russia and Indonesia sent more than 30 percent of their exports to BRICS countries in 2024, and Iran, Ethiopia, Russia and India sourced more than 40 percent of their imports from them. China was the largest exporter and importer in intra-group trade.
On payments, the declaration backs continued work on links between national payment systems and settlement in local currencies. It does not create a common currency. Members also criticised unilateral tariff and non-tariff measures and called for a greater say for developing economies in the IMF and World Bank.
The next summit goes to China in 2027, and the declaration voices support for it.
Sources
- BRICS Nations Agree on New Delhi Declaration: How India Engineered It & What it Means for the World
- 18th BRICS summit – Wikipedia
- BRICS in New Delhi: What leaders agreed on and what it means | News.az
