11 BRICS Members Unanimously Adopt Declaration — Including Rivals at War

For the crew of a bulk carrier nosing toward the Bab al-Mandeb, the abstraction of a summit communique is very concrete: whether the narrow water ahead is a trade lane or a target. Two days before the leaders gathered in New Delhi, that question sharpened when Iran-aligned Houthi fighters seized the port city of Mocha and pushed onto the Hanish islands inside the strait, the chokepoint that carries roughly 12 percent of the world's oil and goods. ¹ For civilians under bombardment in the wider West Asia war, the question is even starker: whether words like restraint and protection mean anything once the shooting resumes. ⁴

The institutional answer arrived on September 12 at Bharat Mandapam, when all eleven BRICS members adopted the New Delhi Declaration 2026 unanimously under India's chairship and the theme Building for Resilience, Innovation, Cooperation and Sustainability. ^{4 6} Host Narendra Modi made the unanimity the headline, and with reason: the signatories include Iran, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, states aligned on opposite sides of a live Middle East war. ^{6 10} The document runs about 45 pages and roughly 140 paragraphs, covering conflicts, economics, trade and health. ^{2 3}

The consensus was hard-won. Negotiations ran to about 4 a.m. on Saturday, strained by sharp differences between the UAE and Iran over how to characterize the West Asia conflict. ^{6 10} Both backed down from tough positions rather than break the bloc, and India engineered the compromise that bridged the Iran-UAE chasm. ^{6 10 11} That late-night marathon is the reason members who two days earlier had good reason to refuse a common text could still sign one. ¹⁰

The price of unanimity is that the declaration names no one. It does not name Israel, Iran, the United States, Saudi Arabia or the Houthis. ^{4 5} Following the restraint call, the text urges protection of civilians and civilian infrastructure in accordance with the Charter of the United Nations, including respect for sovereignty and territorial integrity. ^{2 9} It then flags deliberate attacks on civilian infrastructure and peaceful nuclear facilities under full safeguards of the International Atomic Energy Agency, insisting their safety and security must always be upheld, again without naming a state. ^{2 33} There is no condemnation and no assignment of blame; the language was deliberately drained of accusation so that all eleven could sign. ⁶

That restraint paragraph landed two days after the Red Sea move. On September 10, Houthi fighters seized Mocha and pushed onto the Hanish islands, directly threatening the Bab al-Mandeb strait. ¹ The declaration does not name the Houthis at all. ⁴ Its closest text is the same paragraph's insistence on the need to work together to maintain smooth flow of global trade, supply chains and energy, in accordance with applicable international law. ^{2 9} In other words, the bloc acknowledged the stakes of the waterway while declining to call out the event unfolding on it. ⁵

The economic core of the declaration is a shield. Paragraph 22 condemns the imposition of unilateral coercive measures that are contrary to international law, and reiterates that such measures, in the form of unilateral economic sanctions and secondary sanctions, have far-reaching negative implications. ^{8 27} It calls for the elimination of such unlawful measures and reaffirms opposition to non-UN Security Council authorized sanctions. ^{2 27} That is the material interest at stake across the bloc: a defense of Russian and Iranian oil trade against US secondary sanctions, and a challenge to the dollar's use as an instrument of coercion. ²⁹ The declaration also condemns unilateral tariffs and discriminatory trade practices such as the carbon border tax, and backs reform of the UN Security Council to give the grouping a larger voice. ^{27 34}

India was careful about how far to push. Modi favors central-bank digital currencies and local-currency settlement for cross-border trade, and Commerce and Industry Minister Piyush Goyal urged members to link national payment systems on the model of India's UPI. ^{24 28} But there is no BRICS common currency, and the declaration frames the goal as de-risking from dollar-pegged external shocks rather than de-dollarization, a hedge, not a break, designed to shield trade from the dollar while staying inside it. ^{22 23 26}

In person, the summit was a reset of two relationships that had been frozen. Xi Jinping made his first visit to India in seven years, his first since the 2020 border clash at Galwan, and met Modi on the sidelines. ^{12 13 19} Modi said peace and tranquillity in border areas is essential to development, while Xi called India and China key Global South countries with significant responsibilities. ^{12 15} The talks focused on trade, investment and border peace, with the Indian framing that differences should not become disputes. ¹⁵ Steps toward normalization have been taken, but no disengagement deal was announced, and the agenda included the unresolved Arunachal boundary and a proposed mega dam. ¹⁴ Vladimir Putin attended his first in-person BRICS summit since the Ukraine war began and reaffirmed the Russia-India partnership, while the declaration does not treat Ukraine as a standalone item. ¹⁶ Attendance reflected the bloc's weight: Iran's Masoud Pezeshkian, South Africa's Cyril Ramaphosa, Indonesia's Prabowo Subianto, Egypt's Abdel Fattah el-Sisi and Ethiopia's Abiy Ahmed were in the room, Brazil sent Foreign Minister Mauro Vieira, and the UAE was represented at high level by the Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi, with Saudi Arabia's head-of-state status ambiguous though the summit ran as an eleven-member grouping. ^{13 18}

What remains is a paradox the text does not hide. It is non-binding: it commits no one to a timetable, a payments system, a sanctions response, or a de-escalation step. ² The Houthi takeover continues with no named response, and the India-China reset rests on a border no closer to formal agreement. ^{1 12} The declaration is a statement that the world's largest emerging economies, including three rivals inside a live war, could still sign a single document. What they do with it is the open question. ^{4 6}