Group photo involving all the presidents and high dignitaries participating in the 16th BRICS Summit, held in Kazan, Russia, on Thursday, October 24, 2025. Photo: Sputnik/Agencies/Sergey Bobylev.
The president of Venezuela, Nicolás Maduro, gave a speech during the BRICS Summit plenary sessions, in which he highlighted the need to “redesign the United Nations system.”
“Every time a high-precision missile hits an apartment building in Gaza and kills men, women, and children, every time a missile hits Beirut or southern Lebanon, those missiles set fire to and destroy the United Nations system,” he said during his address this Thursday, October 24.
“Where is the International Court of Justice then?” he asked. “Or was it created only to persecute the countries of the Global South? Where is the United Nations Justice system? Is it only useful for extracting documents, communications? And the lives of the children of Palestine are not worth anything?”
The Venezuelan president called for “raising our voices loudly” and seeking “a practical and bold plan” for a redesign of the UN system that is “dying in the face of the rise of Nazi and fascist currents throughout this painful juncture of history.”
“A new world is possible,” he stated. “We believe that a new world has already been born.”
President Maduro added that a “new economic agenda with practical solutions” is needed. “It is not just about making small reforms to the monetary system,” he explained, “we must move forward with a new payment system to replace the old forms, which have sometimes been used as weapons of aggression.”
“Venezuela has been blockaded from global payment systems as part of systematic aggression and economic punishment,” he recalled, referring to the measures illegally launched by the US imperial government. “A plethora of currencies is needed, that combines the strong currencies of the superpowers with the right of each of our countries to have our own currency.”
President Maduro advocated for a “new inclusive economy of independent countries that aspire to social happiness and dignity.”
Presidents Maduro and Putin Meet at 16th BRICS Summit in Kazan
A change in our era
The president noted that the BRICS alliance emerged during “a change in our historical era. A new era has emerged and new superpowers have emerged, new powers and countries like Venezuela, or regions like Latin America and the Caribbean. Here is our sister Cuba, our sister Bolivia, our sister Nicaragua,” he listed out. “We aspire to have our rights respected, to independence, to our future, and to our development.”
“BRICS has set in motion a new paradigms on the global agenda,” the Venezuelan head of state added.
President Maduro arrived in Russia on Tuesday to take part in the summit, and was received with high honors. In his first remarks, he noted that it was the first time that a Venezuelan president had attended a summit of heads of state of the BRICS, and that such an occasion “is historic.”
During his bilateral meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Wednesday, Maduro praised “the great battle that Russia is currently waging” against Nazism. After the meeting, in a conversation with the RT news outlet, the Venezuelan leader described the meeting as “successful” and “extraordinary,” and expressed his satisfaction with the emergence of a bloc of emerging countries such as the BRICS, stating that it “has become the epicentre of the new world.”
Translation by Orinoco Tribune
OT/JRE/AU
