We, the Ministers of Labour and Employment from Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa, convened in Durban for the IX BRICS Labour and Employment Ministers’ Meeting (LEMM) on 29 September 2023. Guided by the theme of ‘Ensuring decent work, dignity and respect for all’ during the South African Chairship, our mission was to address common labour and employment challenges and promote cooperation for shared prosperity among BRICS nations.

We reiterate our Leaders’ unwavering commitment to promoting employment for sustainable development. This commitment includes developing skills to ensure a resilient recovery, fostering gender-responsive employment and implementing social protection policies that safeguard workers’ rights. We reaffirm our commitment to respect, promote and realise decent work for all and achieve social justice. In this context, we agree that we will step up efforts to effectively abolish child labour based on the Durban Call to Action and accelerate progress towards universal social protection for all by 2030. Furthermore, we are committed to investing in skills development systems to improve access to relevant and quality skills for workers in the informal economy and workers in new forms of employment as we seek to increase productivity for economically, socially and environmentally sustainable and inclusive economies.

In the XV BRICS Summit Declaration, our leaders committed to exploring the development of a BRICS platform to implement the Productivity Ecosystem for Decent Work. We believe that this collaborative initiative has the potential to enhance cross-collaboration, knowledge-sharing, and monitoring and evaluation, thereby fostering economic growth, sustainable enterprises, and productive employment creation. We recommend that South Africa continue to work on this commitment and report on the progress in our future meetings.

We value the contributions to our work made by the Social Partners and reaffirm our continued commitment to promoting social dialogue in our countries and internationally. Furthermore, we formally recognise their meetings as integral to the BRICS LEMM. To this end, we call on the employers within BRICS Countries to formalise their discussions in matters concerning the labour market similar to the BRICS Trade Union Forum.

As BRICS Partners, we remain steadfast in our commitment to harnessing our collective strength and augmenting our global influence. Our shared interests extend far beyond existing frameworks, motivating us to intensify our engagement within international organisations and other platforms. This engagement is vital to shaping global labour market policies and agendas.

In line with the decision of our Leaders, we welcome the invitation extended to Argentina, Egypt, Iran, Ethiopia, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates to join the BRICS family. We eagerly anticipate collaborating with them on a diverse range of labour market and development issues, the promotion of decent work, inclusiveness and human-centred growth.

In conclusion, we extend our heartfelt appreciation to the South African Chairship for its outstanding efforts in organising the IX BRICS Labour and Employment Ministers’ Meeting, the meetings of the Employment Working Group (EWG) and the XV Leaders’ Summit. Brazil, India, China and South Africa extend their full support to Russia for its BRICS Chairship and the holding of the X BRICS LEMM in 2024.

Durban, 29 September 2023