Brazil officially announced today its re-entry to the Union of South American Nations (Unasur), one day after Argentina made the same decision and within the framework of President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s drive to reposition the country at the regional and international level. after the four years of government of former president Jair Bolsonaro.
“At a time when its main international alliances are resuming, Brazil will rejoin Unasur,” reported the Ministry of Foreign Affairs after publishing today in the Official Gazette the decree officially communicating the reentry and which will enter into force on next may.
The regional integration group was created in May 2008, during Lula’s second presidency, while Brazil announced its departure in April 2019, a few months after Bolsonaro took office.
“In 2010, the union was made up of the 12 South American states and had a population of almost 400 million inhabitants. Since then, some countries have withdrawn, mainly due to political disagreements,” the Brazilian Foreign Ministry recalled in a statement.
“Like Brazil, Argentina also announced that it will return,” the note highlighted, referring to the announcement made yesterday by the Argentine government to return to the bloc with the aim of “building a space for integration and union in the cultural, social, economic and politician among their peoples”.
Argentina had also left in 2019 by decision of then-president Mauricio Macri, when he was in the final part of his term.
Colombia, Paraguay, Chile and Ecuador are other countries that decreed their departure, while Uruguay left Unasur in 2020 due to an initiative taken by the government of Luis Lacalle Pou.
The objective of the regional group, which currently has Bolivia, Guyana, Suriname and Venezuela as members, in addition to Peru, which is suspended, is “to promote integration between South American countries, in a model that seeks to integrate the two customs unions of the continent, Mercosur and CAN (Andean Community of Nations), but going beyond the economic sphere to reach other areas of interest, such as the social, cultural, scientific-technological and political spheres”, highlighted the Brazilian Foreign Ministry.
“South American integration and union are necessary to advance towards sustainable development and the well-being of our peoples, as well as to contribute to solving the problems that still affect the region, such as the persistence of poverty, exclusion and social inequality,” says one of the extracts from the treaty that established the bloc.
This Constitutive Treaty was signed on May 23, 2008, within the framework of an extraordinary meeting of heads of State and Government held in the city of Brasilia, Brazil.
Source: Ambito
