It’s not BRICS or UN, BRICS supports UN: Jaishankar

External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar said the choice between groupings such as BRICS and the UN was a “false choice”, stressing that smaller groups support the global organization and would like to reform it.

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“…I think it’s a false choice. The UN is the UN. It can have many flaws. It also has many successes, and of course, when you want to reform it, when you want to change it, it’s natural to focus on the flaws. But I don’t think that should lead us to reject the UN,” Mr. Jaishankar said.

The minister was speaking at a session titled ‘Ruptures & Ramparts: Building Bridges for a Changing World’ organized by the Observer Research Foundation (ORF), Reliance Foundation, UN India and the Permanent Mission of India to the UN on the sidelines of the 81st UN General Assembly in New York on Thursday (September 24, 2026).

Moderated by ORF President Samir Saran, the session was attended by Jamaican Minister of Foreign Affairs and Foreign Trade Kamina Johnson Smith, Suriname Minister of Foreign Affairs, International Trade and Cooperation Melvin Bouva, Ghanaian Minister of Foreign Affairs Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa and President and CEO of the East-West Center Celeste Connors.

Mr. Jaishankar said that the UN has served the world in a very significant way. “At the end of the day, if the UN didn’t exist, we’d all be sitting here trying to invent it,” he said, adding that BRICS or other groups “come together” of countries that have a certain point of view, interest or outlook and are comfortable creating that combination.

Referring to the BRICS Leaders’ Summit hosted by India on September 12-13, the External Affairs Minister said, “One of the points of BRICS is that the UN is the focal point of the international system.” “So it’s not the BRICS or the UN. The BRICS support the UN and a large part of the BRICS would like to reform the UN, some more than others,” Mr Jaishankar said.

The BRICS grouping includes Brazil, China, Egypt, Ethiopia, India, Indonesia, Iran, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa and the United Arab Emirates. Mr. Jaishankar said the issues highlighted by BRICS – resilience, sustainability, innovation, cooperation – are key issues today.

“These are the same problems for the United Nations,” he said. “As we sit here at a high-level week in New York, a few kilometers from UN headquarters, I would look at it as what the BRICS did to strengthen the UN and strengthen the cause of UN reform. I think it gave it a bit of a push. It indicated some bottom-up pressure.”

He also noted that there would be “very interesting press” about BRICS, without naming any publication or elaborating. “If you follow the BRICS, the ‘mainstream press’ is mostly very dismissive of the BRICS until the BRICS meet. Then they get a little worked up about it.”

He said the “real test” of BRICS was when the expansion of the grouping happened to include more countries from the original Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa. “We have doubled our numbers, but believe me, we could have easily gone up four or five times. The country was in huge demand,” Mr Jaishankar said, crediting BRICS as providing a platform for “alternative thinking.”

BRICS is ultimately a non-Western platform and not all its members are post-colonial societies and span multiple continents, he said.

“The second in that sense is the G7. But what unites them (BRICS) is actually the feeling that there are strong non-Western views, contributions and beliefs that need to be taken into account, and the non-Western segment of the global debate is growing in weight, which is why BRICS is becoming more important,” the minister said.

When asked to choose between interest, trust or value, Mr. Jaishankar said he would probably try to get the best of the three.

“Interest is a common term. But I believe the word trust has in a way – I don’t want to say it has replaced value – become a more dominant term in diplomacy,” Mr Jaishankar said, stressing that “values ​​are often declared and not practiced”, but trust is earned.

“Trust is based on records. It’s empirical. If you’ve done something good, something that you know has contributed, people will remember that. If you’ve behaved badly, people will remember that too,” he said. “So I put a lot of faith in trust because for me trust is an empirical concept derived from experience. It reflects the real feelings of the world and it’s a very democratic term. You don’t have to be big to be trusted. You can be trusted if you’re small. You have to be good or decent to be trusted,” Mr Jaishankar added.

Published – 26 Sep 2026 22:53 IST