By María Josefina Arce

Cuba is currently president pro tempore of one of the largest and most diverse existing mechanisms, the Group of 77+China, and as such participates in the 15th BRICS Summit, a valuable opportunity to strengthen the interaction between the two blocs and reinforce South-South cooperation, an urgency in current times.
   
In the South African city of Johannesburg, Cuba is the voice of the 134 countries that make up the Group of 77+China, which constitute two thirds of the member nations of the UN and 80% of the world's population.
   
It is the first time that the Caribbean nation and a Cuban president participate in a BRICS Summit, made up of Brazil, India, China, Russia and the host country of the event, South Africa, with which we maintain fluid relations in all areas and common visions on important issues of international affairs.
  
This is an endorsement to seek a greater and effective collaboration between the two mechanisms, to which is added, as experts have pointed out, that four of the states that make up the BRICS, Brazil, India, South Africa and of course China are also members of the Group which this year is presided over by the largest of the Antilles.
  
It is therefore feasible to move forward in an increasingly fluid cooperation, a need highlighted by Cuba in the face of an increasingly selfish and unequal world, in which the developed North is only interested in its profits to the detriment of the poorest.
   
This has been demonstrated in difficult times such as during the more than two years of the COVID pandemic that paralyzed the world, and in which the nations of the South helped each other.
   
Cuba, for example, sent medical brigades to numerous territories to face the disease caused by the new coronavirus, and made available to other peoples its anti-covirus vaccines, of proven efficacy and safety.
   
The Cubans, for their part, received donations of supplies and food from various countries, including Africa, in the face of the tightening of the blockade by the administration of the then U.S. President Donald Trump.
     
Precisely the adoption of sanctions and coercive measures that hinder the development of peoples is a concern present at the Johannesburg meeting, since several of the member states of the Group of 77+China are the object of these criminal actions.
    
Greater interaction is a way to confront these measures and an opportunity to defend the rights of the peoples of the South in international forums and organizations, given the growth in recent years of the role and influence of the BRICS in the world.
  
Hence the importance of Cuba's participation, representing the Group of 77+China, in the BRICS Dialogues, to strengthen the channel of communication and exchange for the advancement of developing nations and to ensure that the voice and aspirations of the global South are heard and taken into account in the various international institutions.