Report: Civil20 Midterm Meeting

All Photos: Maicon Douglas Fotografia

The Civil20 Midterm Meeting was held in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, on Monday 1 and Tuesday 2 July 2024. The G20 Summit, where leaders and ministers from 20 countries and regions meet to discuss various issues, is led by the Government of Brazil as Presidency, and a number of meetings are being held from December 2023.

The Government of Japan holds the G20 Presidency in 2019, with a leaders’ meeting held in Osaka in June. At that time, Civil20 (C20), one of the official engagement groups, coordinated policy recommendations by domestic and international civil society and engaged in dialogue with the G20 side. To promote activities by Japanese civil society, JANIC, together with the Japan Civil Society Network on SDGs, launched the “Japan Civil Society Platform for 2019 G20 Summit“, and was also in charge of organizing the C20.

At the Midterm Meeting, halfway through this year’s presidency, policy recommendations for the G20 were discussed, and a dialogue with the G20 Sous-Sherpa, who are responsible for setting the agenda for the Summit in November took place.

This year’s C20 is jointly run by two civil society networks in Brazil, Abong and GESTOS. The Midterm Meeting was attended by up to 300 participants, mainly from Brazilian civil society. I was also able to interact with participants from Argentina, Bolivia and Indonesia, who had attended previous C20 summits.

The first day of the meeting saw in-depth discussions on policy recommendations by the C20’s 10 Working Groups, including fair and anti-racist economy, food, climate change, global health, gender equality, digitalization and peace , civic space (SDG 16). The following thematic sessions were organized.

– Fair, inclusive, and anti-racist economies
– Eradicating hunger, poverty, and the climate emergency
– Democracy, access to justice, and civic space

Each session was broadcast in Portuguese and English. Below is the URL for the English channel.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QvNvyuw8Bz0

On the second day, Felipe Hees, G20 Brazil sous sherpa at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and Fabrício Prado from the Social Participation and Diversity Advisory of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, joined the stage for two hours of discussion with civil society.

The Government of Brazil is pushing for ‘taxation of the wealthy’ in order to create a fairer society, and it remains to be seen whether this can be agreed at this year’s G20 Summit. However, it is likely to continue its efforts in South Africa, which will chair next year, although it is expected to be difficult to reach agreement due to strong opposition from several countries.

The C20 meeting as a whole was very attentive to diversity, with simultaneous Portuguese-English interpretation and sign language interpretation, as well as a number of statements from people with different vulnerabilities, such as people with African roots, women and small farmers. The event was also run in a very creative way for the sign language interpreter users, as speakers explain how they were dressed before they start speaking.

With over 2,000 civil society organizations from 91 countries participating in this year’s C20, the C20 Midterm Meeting reaffirmed the importance of civil society’s active participation in building a more just, equitable and sustainable future for all.

At the end of the meeting, recommendations by the C20 were presented to the third G20 Sherpa meeting.

For the full text of the C20 recommendations for the 3rd G20 Sherpa meeting, see.

https://c20brasil.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/Civil20-Brazil-2024_Communique_EN_july_final.docx.pdf