United Nations (UN) Secretary-General António Guterres has called for debt relief for all developing and middle-income countries in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic, which has continued to cause social and economic havoc across the globe.
Mr Guterres has said the COVID-19 pandemic has unleashed havoc in every country and every economy of the world causing the loss of two million lives with about 500 million jobs having been lost, thereby triggering extreme poverty among developing nations.
Spelling out long list of priorities for 2021, Mr Guterres described the year 2020 as a year of death, disaster and despair, warning that if the virus was allowed to spread like wildfire in the Global South, it would inevitably mutate and become more transmissible, deadly and resistant to vaccines.
He told Member States that developing countries had been drained of their remittances, tourism revenues and earnings from commodities while wealthier countries were implementing recovery and stimulus plans worth trillions of dollars.
Mr Guterres said economic recovery should be inclusive and sustainable because the world was not going to heal from the COVID-19 if economies of developing countries were left on life support.
“The COVID-19 pandemic has unleashed havoc in every country and every economy. We have lost two million lives, including many dear members of our UN family. The human toll continues to multiply while the economic costs continue to mount. 500 million jobs are gone and extreme poverty is back to levels not seen in a generation. Inequalities are widening. Hunger is rising again. We need to move from death to health; from disaster to reconstruction; from despair to hope; from business as usual to transformation,” Mr Guterres said.
From his list of priorities, Mr Guterres announced the need for quick response to COVID-19 pandemic by ensuring that vaccines were made available and accessible to all countries.
He said while governments had a responsibility to protect their populations, vaccines were reaching only a handful of countries as quickly while the poorest countries had almost none.
Mr Guterres has also put priority on making peace with nature, and urged nations to consider the year 2021 as critical year tackling effects of climate change and promoting biodiversity.
Other priorities included tackling the pandemic of poverty and inequality, the scourge that has pushed more than 70 per cent of the world’s population into wealth inequality, gender inequality which he said had sparked a parallel epidemic of gender-based violence of increased child marriage and sexual exploitation.
Healing geopolitical rifts and finding common ground, nuclear disarmament and non-proliferation of nuclear weapons and seizing the opportunities of digital technologies while protecting against their growing dangers were the other priorities set out for the year 2021 for the United Nations.
“Our aim is for people everywhere to have affordable, meaningful and safe access to the Internet by 2030, and all schools online as quickly as possible. We need to strengthen cybersecurity and promote responsible behaviour in this domain. We need a ceasefire in cyberspace, including to end cyberattacks on vital infrastructure. We need to address the digital spread of hatred, exploitation and disinformation,” Mr Guterres said.
