G20 Summit in South Africa Adopts Declaration Despite U.S. Boycott

Reuters

Leaders pose for a family photo on the first day of the G20 Leaders' Summit at the Nasrec Expo Centre in Johannesburg, South Africa, 22 November 2025.

A Group of 20 leaders' summit in South Africa adopted a declaration addressing the climate crisis and other global challenges on Saturday after it was drafted without U.S. input in a move a White House official called "shameful".

The declaration, using language to which Washington has been opposed, "can't be renegotiated," South African President Cyril Ramaphosa's spokesperson told reporters, reflecting strains between Pretoria and the Trump administration over the event.

"We had the entire year of working towards this adoption and the past week has been quite intense," spokesperson Vincent Magwenya said.

President Ramaphosa, host of this weekend's gathering of Group of 20 leaders in Johannesburg, had earlier said there was "overwhelming consensus" for a summit declaration.

But at the last minute Argentina, whose far-right President Javier Milei is a close ally of U.S. President Donald Trump, quit the negotiations right before the envoys were about to adopt the draft text, South African officials said.

"Argentina, although it cannot endorse the declaration ... remains fully committed to the spirit of cooperation that has defined the G20 since its conception," its foreign minister Pablo Quirno said at the summit. Ramaphosa noted this, but went ahead with it anyway.

In explanation, Quirno said Argentina was concerned about how the document referred to geopolitical issues.

"Specifically it addresses the longstanding Middle East conflict in a manner that fails to capture its full complexity," he said. The document mentions the conflict once, saying members agree to work for a just, comprehensive, and lasting peace in ... the Occupied Palestinian Territory".

Envoys from the G20 - which brings together the world's major economies - drew up a draft leaders' declaration on Friday without U.S. involvement, four sources familiar with the matter said.

“It is a longstanding G20 tradition to issue only consensus deliverables, and it is shameful that the South African government is now trying to depart from this standard practice," a senior Trump administration official said on Friday.

The declaration used the kind of language long disliked by the U.S. administration: stressing the seriousness of climate change and the need to better adapt to it, praising ambitious targets to boost renewable energy and noting the punishing levels of debt service suffered by poor countries.

The mention of climate change was a snub to Trump, who doubts the scientific consensus that global warming is caused by human activities. U.S. officials had indicated they would oppose any reference to it in the declaration.

In opening remarks to the summit, President Ramaphosa said: "We should not allow anything to diminish the value, the stature and the impact of the first African G20 presidency".

President Trump said U.S. officials would not attend the summit because of allegations, widely discredited, that the host country's Black majority government persecutes its white minority.

The summit came at a time of heightened tensions between world powers over Russia's war in Ukraine and fraught climate negotiations at the COP30 in Brazil.

The U.S. president had also rejected the host nation's agenda of promoting solidarity and helping developing nations adapt to weather disasters, transition to clean energy and cut their excessive debt costs.

The United States will host the G20 in 2026 and Ramaphosa said he would have to hand over the rotating presidency to an "empty chair".

The South African presidency on Saturday reiterated its rejection of a U.S. offer to send the U.S. charge d'affaires for the G20 handover.

"The president will not hand over to a junior embassy official the presidency of the G20. It's a breach of protocol that is not going to be accommodated," Magwenya said.

Lamola later said that South Africa would assign a diplomat of the same rank as a charge d'affaires to hand over the G20 presidency at the foreign affairs department.

Article was originally published by Reuters.



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