United Nations
Reuters
World leaders are returning to the United Nations in New York this week with a focus on boosting efforts to fight both climate change and the COVID-19 pandemic, which last year forced them to send video statements for the annual gathering.
As the coronavirus still rages amid an inequitable vaccine rollout, about a third of the 193 UN states are planning to again send videos, but presidents, prime ministers and foreign ministers for the remainder are due to travel to the United States.
The United Nations headquarters in New York, US, on 21st September, 2020. PICTURE: Reuters/Mike Segar/File photo.
The United States tried to dissuade leaders from coming to New York in a bid to stop the UN General Assembly from becoming a “super-spreader event,” although President Joe Biden will address the assembly in person, his first UN visit since taking office. A so-called UN honour system means that anyone entering the assembly hall effectively declares they are vaccinated, but they do not have to show proof.
This system will be broken when the first country speaks – Brazil. Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro is a vaccine sceptic, who last week declared that he does not need the shot because he is already immune after being infected with COVID-19.
STOCKPILED COVID VACCINES MUST BE HANDED TO POORER NATIONS, SAYS FORMER UK PM
A vaccine summit being hosted by US President Joe Biden must come up with a plan this week to transfer 100 million stockpiled COVID-19 vaccines to poorer countries before they reach their expiry date, former British Prime Minister Gordon Brown said.
Biden is due to convene a virtual COVID-19 summit on Wednesday on the margins of the UN General Assembly, aimed at boosting vaccinations worldwide with the goal of ending the pandemic by the end of 2022.
Britain’s former Prime Minister Gordon Brown speaks at an event in Edinburgh, Scotland, on 17th January, 2019. PICTURE: Reuters/Russell Cheyne/File photo.
Brown said he had sent Biden and fellow G7 leaders research by Airfinity, a scientific information and analytics company, which found 100 million COVID-19 vaccines stockpiled in rich countries in the northern hemisphere would expire by December without being used.
“We need a plan to distribute vaccines quickly,” Brown, Britain’s finance minister for a decade before serving as prime minister from 2007 to 2010, said in a statement.
“It will be a profound and collective political tragedy if this summit misses the opportunity to act with doses transferred immediately to poorer countries,” he said.
The Airfinity data predicts that, without a speed-up in the vaccine roll-out, there will be 100 million more COVID-19 cases by next summer and one million more deaths from lack of ventilators and oxygen.
“It is unthinkable and unconscionable that 100 million vaccines will have to be thrown away from the stockpiles of the rich countries whilst the populations of the world’s poorest countries will pay for our vaccine waste in lives lost,” Brown said.
Brown called on the leaders to decide whether countries should swap delivery contracts, how regulatory barriers to vaccine exports could be overcome and who would underwrite the costs of using stockpiled vaccines.
“No one is safe anywhere until everyone is safe everywhere. It is in everyone’s interest everywhere that President Biden and his fellow G7 leaders do what it takes…to eradicate COVID in every corner of our globe,” he said.
– KYLIE MACLELLAN, Reuters
Should he change his mind, New York City has set up a van outside the United Nations for the week to supply free testing and free shots of the single-dose Johnson & Johnson vaccine.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres told Reuters that the discussions around how many traveling diplomats might have been immunized illustrated “how dramatic the inequality is today in relation to vaccination.” He is pushing for a global plan to vaccinate 70 per cent of the world by the first half of next year.
Out of 5.7 billion doses of coronavirus vaccines administered around the world, only two per cent have been in Africa. Biden will host a virtual meeting from Washington with leaders and chief executives on Wednesday that aims to boost the distribution of vaccines globally.
Speaking to CNN on Sunday, Guterres pointed to Biden’s efforts and an International Monetary Fund proposal to create a $US50 billion vaccine program for poorer countries as “positive signs” rich countries were starting to tackle vaccine inequity.
“But let’s be clear: all this is too little, too late,” he added.
Demonstrating US COVID-19 concerns about the UN gathering, Biden will be in New York only for about 24 hours, meeting with Guterres on Monday and making his first UN address on Tuesday, directly after Bolsonaro.
His UN envoy, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, said Biden would “speak to our top priorities: ending the COVID-19 pandemic; combatting climate change…and defending human rights, democracy, and the international rules-based order.”
Due to the pandemic, UN delegations are restricted to much smaller numbers and most events on the sidelines will be virtual or a hybrid of virtual and in-person. Among other topics that ministers are expected to discuss during the week are Afghanistan and Iran.
But before the annual speeches begin, Guterres and British Prime Minister Boris Johnson will start the week with a summit on Monday to try and save a UN summit – that kicks off in Glasgow, Scotland, on 31st October – from failure.
As scientists warn that global warming is dangerously close to spiraling out of control, the UN COP26 conference aims to wring much more ambitious climate action and the money to go with it from participants around the globe.
“It’s time to read the alarm bell,” Guterres told Reuters last week. “We are on the verge of the abyss.”
