On 14 December, the United Nations General Assembly adopted a resolution on “Global health and foreign policy: strengthening health system resilience through affordable health care for all”, A/RES/75/130. The resolution was adopted by vote, 181-1-0, in contrast to previous resolutions on the topic adopted yearly by consensus based on proposals by the core group of the Global Health and Foreign Policy Initiative.

The draft resolution A/75/L.41 was presented by Brazil, Equatorial Guinea, Fiji, France, Indonesia, Mali, Mongolia, Norway, Senegal, Singapore, South Africa, Thailand and Viet Nam. Informal consultations were led by Indonesia.

The resolution reflects consensus on a number of issues. One core issue is the need for continued leadership, multilateral commitment and collaboration to address the COVID-19 pandemic. The resolution also calls for urgent support to fund and close the funding gap for the Access to COVID-19 Tools Accelerator and its mechanisms, such as the COVID-19 Vaccine Global Access (COVAX) Facility, and to support equitable distribution of diagnostics, therapeutics and vaccines, and further explore innovative financing mechanisms aimed at ensuring continuity and strengthening of essential health services. The resolution also notes the need for all States parties to fully implement and comply with the International Health Regulations (2005) which requires adequate capacity of all countries to prevent, detect, assess, notify and respond to public health threats, and support research and development, to prevent and control emerging and re-emerging infectious diseases that pose a risk to global public health.  It also calls upon Member States to strengthen the resilience of their health systems as an integral part of their preparedness for health emergencies. Continue reading

Even before the COVID pandemic hit, hundreds of millions of workers worldwide were being paid less than the minimum wage.

Read the ILO report

427 billion US$ lost to tax havens … check what it means for your country … check what we could do with this money in times of COVID …

www.taxjustice.net

Read this UNCTAD Report for 2020

The immediate introduction of a Temporary Basic Income for the world’s poorest people could slow the current surge in COVID-19 cases by enabling nearly three billion people to stay at home, according to a United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) report released today.

The report, Temporary Basic Income: Protecting Poor and Vulnerable People in Developing Countries estimates that it would cost from $199 billion per month to provide a time-bound, guaranteed basic income to the 2.7 billion people living below or just above the poverty line in 132 developing countries.

The report concludes that the measure is feasible and urgently needed, with the pandemic now spreading at a rate of more than 1.5 million new cases per week, particularly in developing countries, where seven out of ten workers make a living through informal markets and cannot earn money if they are at home.

Read the UNDP Report

The Special Rapporteur’s Philippe Alston most recent and last report on extreme poverty and human rights deserves reading: ‘Rather than resolving to address the inadequacy of their public health and social protection systems in response to the pandemic, many governments have seen COVID-19 as a passing challenge to be endured, ignoring the indispensability of large-scale economic and social restructuring. Others have taken it as an opportunity to undermine or restrict human rights. And rather than acknowledging how badly efforts to “end poverty” have been faring, and how relentlessly the pandemic has exposed that fact, most actors are doubling down on existing approaches that are clearly failing.’

It criticizes the World Bank statistics, promotes universal social protection, demands to update the SDGs and to find solutions for the debt and tax problems…

Read the report

A new report from Eurodad’s team working on ending debt crises warns that rapidly rising public debt is pitting the rights of creditors against those of the world’s poorest people – in particular women and girls. As the cost of debt rises and countries devote up to 40% of revenue to paying off external debt, public services are feeling the effect of austerity-driven cuts. Under international human rights law, states have a duty to promote social progress and better standards of living, including by allocating sufficient resources to public service provision. Yet people living in some of the world’s most impoverished countries are seeing their rights eroded on a daily basis because there is no fair international system addressing the growing debt crisis.