At its fifteenth summit in August 2023, BRICS raised the question of reforming the United Nations, particularly its security council, urging the expansion of the council’s permanent membership to include countries from Africa, Asia, and Latin America, which would more closely represent the regional distribution of the global population. Throughout the last two decades, the UNSC’s permanent members (P5) have hindered attempts of Brazil, India, and South Africa to enter the UNSC as permanent members with veto power.

Libya’s state institutions were fatally damaged by the NATO bombardment in 2011, catapulting the country into an ongoing civil war. Then, on 10 September 2023, Storm Daniel picked up off the Mediterranean coast, dragged itself into Libya, and broke the neglected Wadi Derna dams, killing up to 11,000 with another 10,000 missing. In 2010, the year before the NATO war, the Libyan government had allocated money towards restoring the dams. But the company that was supposed to complete it left the country during the war.

Humanity is in a spiral of crises that has been referred to as a ‘polycrisis’. From the environment and climate to poverty and hunger, these myriad issues are ultimately rooted in the failures of capitalism. One element of the polycrisis is the deepening problems of gender inequality and violence against women. This must be dealt with through concerted struggle against patriarchy and the capitalist system as a whole.

As Chile’s people, led by the Popular Unity government, took control over their economic and political lives, they sent a flare into the sky announcing the great possibilities of socialism. Their advances mirrored those that had been attained in several other projects, such as in Cuba, and boosted the confidence of people across the Third World to test their own possibilities. Had the Popular Unity project not been cut short, it very well might have encouraged other left projects to demand the satisfaction of just desires in a world where it was possible to attain them.

On the last day of the BRICS summit, the five founding states (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa) welcomed six new members: Argentina, Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates. The BRICS partnership now encompasses 47.3% of the world’s population, with a combined global GDP (by purchasing power parity) of 36.4%. In comparison, though the G7 states account for merely 10% of the world’s population, their share of the global GDP is 30.4%. All available indicators show the immense power of this new grouping.