The final document of the G20 summit in South Africa says the organisation will work towards the settlement of armed conflicts and lighten the burden of the developing nations in the world.

The summit, the first G20 gathering on the African continent, convened on the first of two days with an ambitious agenda to make progress on solving some of the longstanding problems that have afflicted the world’s poorest nations despite a boycott by the United States.

Leaders and top government officials from the richest and leading emerging economies came together at an exhibition centre near the famous Soweto township in South Africa, once home to iconic post-Apartheid leader Nelson Mandela, to try and find some consensus on the priorities set out by the host country.

The summit declaration adopted said on Saturday that the organisation will work for a comprehensive and lasting peace in Sudan, the Democratic Republic of Congo, the Occupied Palestinian Territory and Ukraine.

The declaration placed pointed emphasis on the seriousness of climate change, in a snub to United States President Donald Trump, who has repeatedly cast aspersions and doubts on the scientific consensus that global warming is caused by human activities

It stressed that increasing large-scale disasters disproportionately affect people in vulnerable situations in ways that exacerbate poverty and inequality, adding that a high level of debt is one of the obstacles to inclusive growth in many developing economies.

“We are committed to strengthen the implementation of the G20 common framework for debt treatments in a predictable, timely, orderly, and coordinated manner,” the declaration also said.

“Critical minerals should become a catalyst for value-addition and broad-based development, rather than just raw material exports,” it added.

South African President Cyril Ramaphosa said in his opening remarks that Johannesburg sought to preserve the integrity and stature of the Group of 20 (G20) top economies, but is also committed to ensuring that the development priorities of the Global South and Africa find expression in the group’s agenda.

The US, which is boycotting the summit, has demanded that the summit not issue a declaration. Ramaphosa has flatly rejected that.

Many of South Africa’s priorities for the group, including a focus on climate change and its impact on developing countries, have met resistance from the US.

United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said before the summit: “But I think South Africa has done its part in putting those things clearly upon the table.”

Guterres cautioned that rich nations have often failed to make the concessions required to strike effective climate or global financial reform agreements.

Trump ordered his country to boycott the summit over his baseless claims that South Africa is pursuing racist anti-white policies and persecuting its Afrikaner white minority.

The Trump administration has also made clear its opposition to South Africa’s G20 agenda from the start of the year, when it began hosting G20 meetings.

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio skipped a G20 foreign ministers’ meeting in February, slamming the agenda as being all about diversity, equity and inclusion, and climate change.

Rubio dismissively said he would not waste American taxpayers’ money on that.

‘So many challenges’

The months-long diplomatic rift between the US and South Africa deepened in the build-up to the main summit this weekend, but while Trump’s boycott dominated the pre-talks discussions in Johannesburg and threatened to undercut the agenda, some leaders were eager to move on.

“I do regret it,” French President Emmanuel Macron said of Trump’s absence.

“But it should not block us. Our duty is to be present, engage and work all together because we have so many challenges.”

The G20 is actually a group of 21 members that includes 19 nations, the European Union, and the African Union.

The bloc was formed in 1999 as a bridge between rich and poor nations to confront global financial crises. While it often operates in the shadow of the Group of Seven richest democracies, G20 members together represent about 85 percent of the world’s economy, 75 percent of international trade and more than half the global population.

But it works on consensus rather than any binding resolutions, and that is often hard to come by with the different interests of members like the US, Russia, China, India, Japan, the Western European nations France, Germany and the United Kingdom, and others like Indonesia, Saudi Arabia and South Africa.