Developing countries summit in Venezuela: "To recover the South-South identity"

The developing countries group was officially created in 1989, during the summit of the non-aligned countries in Belgrade, with the goal of establishing the cooperation and exchange channels between its members.

In that opportunity it was created the High Level Group to the South-South Consult and the Cooperation that is now simply recognized as G-15. Nowadays, the group is formed by 19 countries that look forward to insert themselves in a more profitable way in the international economic scenario, by joint positions in the world economic organisms.

This appears as an important opportunity to restart the G-15, in a year in which the priority of the powerful countries –United States, Japan and the European Union- is to recover at the WTO the initiative that was lost in the Cancun Summit, in 2003.

In this opportunity, the encounter’s main issue will be “Energy and World Development”

The chancellors of the 19 member countries will have a previous meeting, where the agenda and the documents to be approved by the presidents will be defined. These will be approved in Friday and Saturday’s plenary meetings.

Another issue that will be analysed, besides the balance of the international situation and the possibilities of the world economic development, is the “restart and fortification of the G-15”, as a tool that make possible the influence of the poorer countries in the multilateral negotiation ambits.

The presidents that have already confirmed their presence are Nestor Kirchner from Argentina, Álvaro Uribe from Colombia, Lula da Silva from Brazil, the Jamaica prime minister Percival Patterson, besides delegates from Iran, Zimbabwe, Algeria, Egypt and Indonesia.

The G-15 is formed by Algeria (that will assume the presidency after the summit), Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Egypt, India, Indonesia, Iran, Jamaica, Kenya, Malaysia, Mexico, Nigeria, Peru, Senegal, Sri Lanka, Venezuela and Zimbabwe.