The Ethical Bar Shifts: BRICS as an International Turning Point
It was no ordinary summit. The BRICS’ statement in Rio de Janeiro on July 7, 2025, was not only forceful—it was unprecedented. For the first time, a bloc of major nations officially condemned the use of hunger as a method of warfare and the militarization of humanitarian aid. The target of that condemnation is not named, but it is unmistakable: the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), created by the United States with Israel’s operational support, funded and executed by private companies.
The final BRICS declaration raises the ethical standard amid a paralyzed international system. Facing a UN crippled by vetoes and a Western world unable to distinguish aid from punishment, the BRICS state the obvious that no one dared voice: aid has been turned into a weapon. It is not just a diplomatic shift; it is a moral inflection point.
In the words of Chilean President Gabriel Boric, present at the summit as a permanent guest: “No form of assistance can justify the killing of starving people. What is happening in Gaza is not just a humanitarian tragedy; it is a violation of the very heart of international law.” Boric was the first to directly implicate the United States and Israel during a closed-door session, according to Brazilian diplomatic sources.
Gaza Humanitarian Foundation: Architecture of a Lethal Entity
The GHF was established in February 2025 as an alternative structure to the international aid system. Registered in Delaware (U.S.) and Switzerland, it began operations on May 27 under a model of autonomous and militarized distribution. Under the discourse of “humanitarian efficiency,” it replaced agencies like the UN, Red Cross, or MSF with a network of armed contractors and private consultancies.
Its operational partners include Safe Reach Solutions, led by former CIA paramilitary Phil Reilly, and UG Solutions, made up of former U.S. special forces personnel. The structure was designed by the consulting firm Boston Consulting Group under the internal codename “Plan Aurora,” whose objective was to facilitate the mass relocation of up to 500,000 Palestinians from northern to southern Gaza.
Funding included an initial injection of $30 million authorized by the Trump administration—despite 58 internal objections from USAID officials—and private backing from McNally Capital, a firm with interests in defense and logistics. The estimated monthly cost of GHF operations exceeds $140 million.
Distribution Centers or Execution Zones
Since it began operating, GHF sites have been scenes of systematic violence. According to Gaza’s Ministry of Health, 843 people have been killed and more than 4,700 injured near these distribution points between May 27 and July 7, 2025. Deaths were caused by live ammunition, stun grenades, and pepper spray used against civilian crowds.
Investigations by Associated Press, The Guardian, and TRT Español have revealed footage showing security personnel firing from elevated positions at starving people. Leaked videos include remarks such as “I think you got one,” voiced by contractors.
Security staff themselves reported a lack of training in crowd control, unclear protocols, and recruitment without prior experience. Use-of-force guidelines were authorized before any operational norms were even issued.
The Business of Relocation: Strategic Architecture and Structural Profit
The GHF model is not only an ethical failure; it is a business. An internal BCG report revealed contracts worth over a million dollars per month. Although the firm claimed the work was “pro bono,” UK parliamentary sources refuted this. After Plan Aurora was leaked, BCG exited the project and dismissed two senior partners.
GHF was not merely a food delivery tool, but a platform for territorial control and planned population displacement. In its operational phase, GHF laid out distribution routes that forced the population of northern Gaza to move south, clearing the north for potential military occupation.
Humanitarian Collapse and the Black Market
Simultaneously, the aid scheme created a food black market within Gaza. Field reports indicate resale of flour packets at up to 15 times their original price. GHF centers have become nodes of exclusion, repression, and breakdown.
Organizations like Oxfam, Save the Children, Human Rights Watch, and Médecins Sans Frontières have called for the immediate shutdown of GHF, arguing that aid has been “privatized, militarized, and used as a tool of forced displacement.”
Reactions from the East: The Response of the Global South
China has condemned the blockade as collective punishment and called for Israel to fulfill its responsibilities as an occupying power. It has also sent direct aid without participating in privatized schemes.
Russia has been more direct: Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov described Israel’s actions as “collective punishment” and condemned the West’s double standards. At the UN Security Council, Russia and China supported resolutions to create an independent humanitarian oversight mechanism for Gaza, blocked by a U.S. veto.
The BRICS joint declaration was unequivocal: “We reject the use of starvation as a method of warfare and any form of politicization or militarization of humanitarian aid. We demand full, safe, and unrestricted access to all essential life-sustaining supplies in Gaza.” It was the first time the bloc issued such a coordinated condemnation.
In addition to Boric, Brazilian President Lula da Silva described the situation as a “humanitarian apartheid,” while Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi warned of “the use of humanitarian logistics for geopolitical control, incompatible with the principles of Bandung.”
Gaza as a Dystopian Laboratory of Armed Neoliberalism
The GHF model marks a qualitative leap in the outsourcing of war. Not only is conflict privatized—so is humanitarian aid. Profit is made not only from defense but from misery. Gaza has become the first documented case where aid functions—literally—as a tool of mass execution.
Its architecture combines privatization, military outsourcing, population control, induced displacement, a black market for essential goods, and neutralization of independent humanitarian actors. It is, in itself, a narrative structure of 21st-century warfare.
This is not an isolated incident or anomaly: it is an exportable, adaptable, and expanding model. Its legality is opaque. Its legal accountability, diffused. Its public narrative, carefully crafted by lobbies and consultancies. It is the civilian face of a faceless war.
Conclusion: A Political, Ethical, and Narrative Watershed
The BRICS condemnation is not a diplomatic gesture. It marks the emergence of a new political subject on the world stage. The Global South no longer speaks only of rights; it speaks of narrative sovereignty. It refuses to accept aid as a pretext, logistics as repression, or assistance as crime.
In Gaza, aid kills. Not as a metaphor, but as a statistic, a structure, a business. Between May 27 and July 7, 2025, 843 people were killed while waiting for food. They didn’t die: they were executed by a planned, funded, and shielded system.
Western silence in the face of this fact is more than complicity: it is doctrine. That is why what happened in Rio de Janeiro marks a before and after.
The BRICS have drawn a line. And when history is written honestly, this gesture—this act of collective and sovereign denunciation—will be remembered as the moment when, clearly, a robust part of the organized world said: enough.
