During his recent visit of Brazil, Secretary of State Antony Blinken met with other foreign ministers of G20 countries to prepare an agenda for the November meeting of the G20 leadership.
“The scale of some of these global challenges is immense, and I know that there are times when it feels like those challenges are outpacing our collective capacity to tackle them,” said Secretary Blinken.
“We actually do have the capacity when we’re working together, to effectively meet the moment, to meet the challenges that we’re facing, to actually address the needs of the people that we represent.”
“The United States, for its part, is working to do that, and we had some discussion of these issues in the context of the G20,” said Secretary Blinken.
“On Ukraine, there is a strong, palpable desire among virtually all of the G20 for the Russian aggression to end and for peace to prevail in a way that upholds the rights of Ukrainians to their freedom, to their future, to the territorial integrity of their country,” he said. “The conflict in Gaza between Israel and Hamas – we’re focused intensely on trying to get an agreement that results in the release of the remaining hostages and that produces an extended humanitarian ceasefire.”
Likewise, “a number of countries, all of whom … will be contributing to the mission to help provide renewed security for Haiti,” said Secretary Blinken. Also, “We’re working together to deal with irregular migration, a challenge that countries around the world are facing in this moment.”
“So many other places around the world where there is conflict, where there is insecurity, the United States, working with other countries, is trying to make a change and trying to make a difference – whether it’s in Sudan, whether it’s in the eastern DRC, Ethiopia, Somalia,” he said.
“Finally, beyond security, we are putting together new coalitions of countries and organizations to meet shared challenges in new ways. … That coalition … is increasingly focused on concrete projects and putting the resources into them,” said Secretary Blinken.
“The powerful reality is this: No one country alone has the capacity to deal with these challenges effectively. But when we work together, when we focus our efforts on common goals, I think we’ve demonstrated in the past, and we will demonstrate in the future, that there’s nothing we can’t actually achieve.”
