KUALA LUMPUR: Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva took a swipe at the United Nations and other multilateral institutions on Saturday, saying they “stopped working” and failed to protect Gaza’s victims.

Lula was speaking after meeting Malaysia’s Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim, ahead of a major regional summit where the Brazilian leader would likely meet US President Donald Trump.

“Who can accept the genocide that has been going on in the Gaza Strip for so long?” Lula told reporters after the bilateral meeting.

“The multilateral institutions that were created to try to prevent these things from happening have stopped working. Today, the UN Security Council and the UN no longer function,” Lula said.

He also appeared to take a swipe at Trump, saying, “For a leader, walking with their head held high is more important than a Nobel Prize”.

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Trump and Lula have begun to patch up their differences after months of bad blood over the trial and conviction of Trump’s ally, the far-right former Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro.

Trump has instituted a 50 per cent tariff on many Brazilian products and imposed sanctions on several top officials, including a top judge, to punish Brazil for what he termed a “witch hunt” against Bolsonaro.

Brazil’s apex court sentenced Bolsonaro to 27 years in prison last month for his role in a botched coup bid after his 2022 election loss to Lula.

But relations between Trump and Lula began to thaw when the two 79-year-old leaders had a brief meeting on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly last month.

They then spoke by phone on Oct 6 and first raised the possibility of meeting at the ASEAN summit.

Published in Dawn, October 26th, 2025