By: Alicia Louise
At the 24th meeting of the 48th Session of the Human Rights Council, the High-Level Panel Discussion focused on “Deepening Inequalities Exacerbated by the COVID-19 Pandemic and their Implications for the Realisation of Human Rights”. As the world recovers from the pandemic, States must identify ways to reduce inequality within and among States by sharing best practices, solutions and lessons learned. Most importantly, recovering from COVID-19 will require States to develop approaches based on the promotion and protection of human rights and the implementation of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development – paying particular attention to Goal 10 on reducing inequality. Moreover, the dialogue reversed on bridge the digital divide, ensure inclusive and equitable quality education for all, as well as guarantee the right to the best standard of physical and mental health care for all. Significant questions have been raised during the dialogue: how do we ensure free access to COVID-19 vaccines for everyone? How will we achieve a human rights-based economy? To have positive outcomes in building back better after the pandemic, international cooperation will be crucial.
GICJ welcomed the fact that all speakers acknowledged vaccines to be a global public good. Ms. Tlaleng Mofokeng and other delegates stated that inequalities in many low-income countries began with their exploitation and looting by Western States and are sustained by artificial barriers such as debt repayments and the refusal of Western companies to waive intellectual property rights to life-preserving medicines. We look forward to seeing progress from the leaders of the G7 and the private sector in this regard.
In this regard, GICJ calls on Western countries to abandon the human rights violation consisting in vaccine hoarding. We urge all States to better use the United Nations human rights mechanisms to advance vaccine equality: recognizing that no one is safe until everyone is safe is the first step that the international community should take. Further to this, we encourage all parties to increase their efforts in taking concrete measure to reverse the impact of austerity and economic inequalities and realizing a human rights-based economy.
Justice, Human rights, Geneva, geneva4justice, GICJ, Geneva International Centre For Justice
