I keep on reading articles in the press in several different countries in Europe and the USA informing me about BRICS “members”, and of countries wanting to “join the club”. But nobody mentions what type of organisation this BRICS is and when it became a proper international organisation. Because last time I looked it was only an acronym that was coined in 2001 by Goldman Sachs economist Jim O’Neill to describe fast-growing economies that would collectively dominate the global economy by 2050. And now it is an organisation? Really? Why was that not in the news? Does it have an institutional seat, or several, like the EU (Brussels, Luxembourg City, Frankfurt and Strasbourg)? Does it have a President, or a General Secretary, and if so, what is their name? How long is their mandate, how often can they be re-elected? Do they have a budget, and if they do, who contributes how much, who decides how it is spent? Do they have an official language or several, a translation service, an interpreting service?
I could go on, but it seems to me that this BRICS story is a façade, an empty shell that pretends to look like an international organisation, but is only an excuse for five old presidents to meet from time to time, eat well, take a picture and grandstand.
Why do serious journalists still call this charade an Organisation? Where is the critical writing I expect from quality journalism?
Or is it me who is wrong, and they really are a proper International Organisation, and it has gone over my head?
Wikipedia says:
The BRIC grouping’s first summit, also held in Yekaterinburg, commenced on 16 June 2009, with, Dmitry Medvedev, Manmohan Singh, and Hu Jintao, the respective leaders of Brazil, Russia, India, and China, all attending. Note that the “S” was added when S Africa joined.
BRICS stands for Brazil-Russia-Indonesia-China-South Africa.
It used to be BRIC, before the addition of South Africa. Others such as Argentina want to lengthen the acronym. Meetings are occasionally held: the BRICS forum was created in 2011. They even kick in money to international organizations. I see they met in South Africa last week. Wiki gives a decent history.
BRICS Tower HQ:
Yes, they met, but a summit does not an International Organisation make, does it? So, why do they keep calling it an organisation, they being: The New York Times, die Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, El País, The Guardian, and several others, those just so off the top of my head.
Oh, and lots and lots of Putin trolls in the comments sections of too many careless on-line newspapers, who keep on pointing out how this (whatever “this” is) is a sure sign of the West’s decadence.
Pray tell, where is that? I read NDB on that building, not BRICS.
My bolding. That must be misfire/oversight. India, not Indonesia.
The term comes up fairly regularly in macroeconomic texts.
NDB is New Development Bank - which is BRICS bank, in Shanghai.
In a perfect world, BRICS could be a major player. As it stands, I think the nations don’t have terribly similar goals. Hell, China and India still have a border dispute that flares up from time to time.
Nice, I can finally google the BRICS Bank, in Shanghai, and find out that it has the following members: Bangladesh, Brazil, China, Egypt, India, Russia, South Africa, United Arab Emirates and Uruguay. It has more members that the BRICS itself! Something is not right here. It is like the Fed or the European Central Bank included members from Mexico, Egypt and Swizzerland. It makes no sense.
I think this should answer a good many of your questions, though it is several years old.
“Misfire” is a nice description of “Brain glitch”. Thank you. Yes it is, Brazil-Russia-India-China-South Africa
::smack-my-head::
Hey, don’t punish yourself! That’s what we’re here for! 
Yes, thank you, that is an interesting article and it addresses some of my points. It reaffirms my POV that the BRICS are not really a proper international organisation, but are playing at pretending to be one while advancing towards that goal. They are more bluff than substance – although they have set up some fora for debate and cooperation – and it annoys me that the press is falling for that bluff. Another ignorance to fight, and I am losing.
Help me fight my ignorance. BRICS has: summits, attempts at coordination on financial policy, stated common goals, founding documents, and a joint bank in furtherance of its developmental goals. The bank undertakes development projects that its members agree upon. Other countries have applied to be members of BRICS.
I would contrast BRICS with MINT (Mexico, Indonesia, Nigeria and Turkey), which is merely a grouping of countries that economists thought (think) might be the next BRICS. They have none of the things listed above.
So, what would make them a proper international organization? I think BRICS would compare nicely to ASEAN and APEC.
If BRICS is an informal organization it’s still an organization. But since it’s formal enough to have annual summits and take part in a banking structure, while the Council on Foreign Relations calls it an “institution,” I don’t understand what else would be needed to call it a formal organization.
From that article:
With each passing year, the BRICS diplomatic calendar has expanded, with a host of interactions to both coordinate policy positions as well as expand official and people-to-people dialogue, generally on non-contentious topics. What began with summit-level gatherings and, separately, meetings of foreign ministers, now includes meetings during the year for finance ministers and central bank governors, national security advisors, science and technology ministers, agriculture ministers, environment ministers, disaster response authorities, health ministers, labor ministers, a Business Council, a Think Tanks Council, a Parliamentary Forum, a Culture Festival, and a “Friendship Cities and Local Governments Cooperation Forum.” In turn, the joint statements have ballooned to reflect all this activity: last year’s ran twenty-seven pages, and in 2015, a bloated forty-three.
So what are they lacking? An army?
I missed the founding documents, all I see is ad hoc actions. It would need a Charta (not a declaration of intent), a formal Head (President or General Secretary), a standing bureaucracy, binding methods for adopting decisions, resolutions, common policy, and a budget, instead of “trundl[ing] on with a least-common-denominator focus” (last sentence in your link). It may be a matter of degree, and they may be coming closer to that goal, but I see them still closer to MINT than to ASEAN or APEC, never mind the EU, the UN, the IMF or the World Bank, those Western institutions which they want to supersede.
I see your point and don’t disagree that it lacks the criteria that you mention. But… just because they are more like 5 guys golfing together every month, instead of an organized Rotary Club, doesn’t mean that they can’t do a lot of serious business. If they want to supersede the western institutions, it doesn’t follow that they must act and organize themselves exactly as a western institution.
You raise a valid point that what they really are is not-the-West. They’re the rejectionists of the USA/EU/UN/WB/IMF - led post-WW-II world. At least the ones who are big enough to matter.
They don’t have a fully coherent agenda except to be separate from, and an irritant to, the aforementioned post-WWII arrangements that have locked them into the outer circle, not the inner circle. And latterly in the case of Russia and to a lesser degree China, locked them out of the circle entirely.
I also think it’s a bit quaint to insist on founding documents and all the rest of the organizational fol-de-rol before declaring them to be an actual actor on the world stage.
Like Bush II’s famous “coalition of the willing” to unseat Hussein in Iraq, the future will belong far more to more amorphous forms of overlapping shape-shifting international ad hoc policy groups and less to permanent blocs bound by deep-seated treaties & dedicated big buildings full of dedicated big bureaucracies.
Insisting that BRICS isn’t real until it comports to organizational ideas now a hundred years old is insisting on ignoring a present reality.
Well that’s been a bust as it relates to investing in those locations sine 2001. It hasn’t aged well.
I see we are close, what annoys me is that they call themselves an International Institution and that the press swallows that unreflected. Of course they can do things their way, whichever way they like, and of course they are mighty, each one of them, so if they just sit together and talk something is bound to come out of it, but if they don’t want to do things in the classic Western way, they should find another name for what they are.
That did not end well, did it? But it is an apt comparison: Bush wanted something, the UN did not abide, he went by the “coalition of the willing”. Some thought tht was illegal. BRICS want independence from the West, so they set up an “ad hoc of the wanting”. I think it is not the right description.
But at least it seems legal.
I am not sure I am making my point clear enough.
Last question… do you feel the same about the G-7? It lacks many of the same things you were looking for.
“With no formal charter, a limited bureaucratic structure, and no permanent secretariat, leaders of the G7 discuss major economic issues in an informal setting.” Group of Eight | G8, Member Nations & Summit | Britannica
Yes, I do, that is a very good example, should have thought of it myself 
. And I feel vindicated by the way they first admitted Russia to the forum to become the G-8, then expelled them unceremoniously to revert to be the G-7. And let’s be honest: it did not matter one iota to Putin that he was expelled. It was only a matter of prestige for Russia to be a member, no longer being one had no repercussions. Because it is not a proper organisation. Compare that to Brexit. Or to the adhesion procedures to become a full member of the EU or, more recently, NATO (the case of Finland and Sweden, with Turkey and Hungary playing the veto card).