UNITED NATIONS –The Prime Minister of Antigua and Barbuda Gaston Browne says that he is in agreement with United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres that the lack of a global response and vaccination program to end the COVID-19 pandemic is “a clear and tragic example” of the failure of the international community to deliver policies to support peace, global health, the viability of the planet and other pressing needs.
Prime Minister Gaston Browne“If developed countries had acted in a manner that allowed for the proper access to vaccines and medical supplies at the onset of the pandemic, globally we would be in a better place,” Prime Minister Browne told the 76th Session of the UN General Assembly Debate on Saturday.
“Developing countries were not seeking handouts. Many of our countries paid into a global system that promised early access to vaccines.
“But it could not deliver because the majority of the vaccines from the major pharmaceutical companies had been bought or contracted and hoarded by a few wealthy nations, leaving the rest of the world bereft of the means to save their people,” he added. “This selfish nationalism forced most nations to rely on vaccine charity which, in itself, has not solved the problem of large numbers of people remaining unvaccinated throughout the world.
“No country wanted charity; no country wanted to beg for vaccines that should be a global good accessible to all,” Browne continued. “We were ready to pay. “But the vaccines were hoarded, and the pharmaceutical companies demanded prices beyond the capacity of countries whose economies were already decimated by the economic effects of the pandemic.”
The Antiguan leader said the world “should not witness such a spectacle again.
“What is significant about the COVID-19 pandemic is that years of warnings of an inevitable pandemic threat were not addressed, and there was inadequate funding and stress testing of preparedness,” he said.
Browne said the nations that must bear the burden of responsibility for this lack of preparedness must be those who control the world’s health systems and “who did nothing to put in place the resources necessary to, at least, alleviate the effects of the pandemic when it came.”
He said what was also troubling was the absence of coordinated, global leadership.
“Instead of cooperation, the world witnessed finger-pointing and conspiracy theories about where the novel coronavirus originated and who was responsible,” the prime minister said. “The resulting global tension undermined multilateral institutions and cooperative action.”
He noted that the World Health Organization (WHO) became “the scapegoat even though it was not the management of the organization that caused it to be underfunded and under resourced.
“Blame was cast at the WHO as if it is not the representatives of powerful governments who set its priorities, and determine how and where its money should be spent and on what,” Browne said. “Developing countries, and especially small states, have to be absolved from responsibility for the lack of response, because they neither control the decision-making bodies, nor do they have the power to allocate funding.”
He said the cries of small countries are often either ignored or discarded, “even on the few occasions when we actually get a seat at the table.”
He claimed there was no dedicated fund of the size necessary to supply medical equipment and to ensure vaccines would be available to all.
Browne said international financing, when it came, was “too little and too late,” adding that “nothing has changed since then.
“International financing to stop COVID, and to deal with its impact both on health and economies, is still too little,” he said. “COVID-19 is still infecting people all over the world, every minute of every day.
“People are still dying every minute of every day, economies are still being ruined every minute of every day, and the prospect of recovery recedes every minute of every day,” he warned.
Prime Minister Browne congratulated US President Joe Biden for convening a Global Summit on COVID 19, last week.
“He has shown great leadership, and we are grateful that the United States has committed an additional US$250 million in the first instance to establish a pandemic fund at the World Bank to proactively address future biological threats and pandemics,” he said.
“But more is needed, and a more organized global machinery is needed, under the auspices of this UN organization,” added Browne, stating that, in his own participation in President Biden’s Summit on COVID, he made it clear that the pandemic has wrecked economies in small island states, including Caribbean Community (CARICOM) countries.
He said that, in some states, more than 20 per cent of gross domestic product has been lost; unemployment has risen; poverty has expanded and demands on the state has multiplied even, as revenues have declined steeply.
Browne said he told the Biden summit that, for small countries, recovering from the economic effects of COVID-19 will be “protracted, because hard won economic progress has been greatly reversed.
“Therefore, building back will be longer and harder for small island states than it will be in larger economies with greater resources,” he said. “Thousands of our people have been infected and thousands have died – many who had not yet begun to enjoy life, and others who had much to contribute.
“I emphatically stated that the disease must be stopped,” he added. “We must stop behaving as if the pandemic has ended; it has not. A high rate of inoculations by rich countries with both the vaccines and the money must not be regarded as a great success, not even for those countries, because, today, there is no greater truth than the mantra that no country is safe until all countries are safe.”
Browne said Antigua and Barbuda is committed to a global drive to inoculate 70 per cent of the world’s population by September 2022.
He said his government has taken the action to make inoculations against COVID-19 mandatory for all public sector workers to protect the lives of all, including tourists who visit the shores of Antigua and Barbuda.
“We are determined to overcome the baselessly flawed arguments of those who promote resistance to vaccines, despite the fact that, sadly, the number of COVID victims rise daily,” he said. “We will educate and inform our people at home.
“But we will continue to raise our voice internationally for the equitable distribution of vaccines at affordable prices and for the reduction in the pricing for COVID testing,” Browne continued. “Vaccines are a global good; they should not be a commodity for profit at the expense of human life.”
He also told the General Assembly Debate that Antigua and Barbuda is committed to work for better global planning and preparation for any future pandemic.
But while Antigua and Barbuda will play its part utilizing its scarce resources, it will continue to argue for the provision of resources to poor and vulnerable countries, Browne said.
“We didn’t start the pandemic,” he made clear. “And no virus has ever originated in Caribbean countries or being spread from it. We have been – and are – victims of others who must recognize their responsibilities and act on them.”
In this nexus, the prime minister said his government is “extremely disturbed about incidents in which some countries have not recognized vaccines administered in Caribbean countries, and have forced fully vaccinated travelers in to quarantine.
“Governments cannot urge people to get inoculated on the basis that the best vaccine is the available vaccine, and yet discriminate against vaccines that were not manufactured directly in North America and Europe,” he stressed. “This would not only be a form of vaccine apartheid, it would defeat the objective of inoculating 70 per cent of the world’s people by this time next year.
“This discrimination must cease now before it becomes a norm by some developed countries,” he urged. “It is wrong; unjust and patently unfair.”
Browne said while his administration will cooperate with all governments to protect the world – giving young people the chance to live a safe, secure, and enjoyable life – stopping the COVID-19 pandemic “still is a global responsibility, and the burden of sharing its cost must be borne equitably.”
He appealed to the international system to prepare for future pandemics, “which are surely coming, particularly as action on Climate Change has also been a failure.”
The prime minister said the impact of Climate Change will, undoubtedly, bring new vector borne diseases and viruses that “jump from animal to man.”
He urged The World Health Organization (WHO), the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank and the UN to “start gearing up now to prepare for the pandemics of the future.
“The UN Security Council should be treating pandemics as major security risks to the world, and it should act accordingly to use the full powers of the Council to meet these global threats,” Browne said. “Never again should the world be caught unprepared to manage and end a pandemic swiftly.
“Never again should millions of people be killed by a disease that could have been stopped earlier,” he added. “And never again should there be such a selfish display of nationalism as we witnessed in the response to a global threat.”
He said the same argument applies to Climate Change, hoping that the UN’s conference on climate change, dubbed COP26, in Glasgow, Scotland, at the end of October, will be “an inflection point, at which all nations will commit themselves to saving the planet.”
“There is no planet B,” Browne declared. “The consequences of Climate Change will be catastrophic. For some small island states, it already is.”
He pointed to recent research, published by the Royal Institute of International Affairs, which reveals a dire situation for the world, unless action is taken now by the world’s greatest polluters to significantly reduce their carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions.
Browne said it is evident that global solidarity and firm commitments are required – “commitments that will result in emission cuts to reduce global temperatures below 1.5 degrees Celsius of preindustrial levels.”
He said equally vital is access to quality financing and climate technologies in order to save the planet.
“And contracting debt to pay for recovery from the effects of Climate Change and to build resilience is not the answer to the problems of small states that are already burdened by debt and are the worst affected,” he said, adding that funding packages for Small Island Developing States (SIDS) should include a significant amount of official development assistance – “in other words, grants not loans.”
The Antigua and Barbuda prime minister said most states have “significant debt overhang.”
“They are simply not in a position to assume more debt, especially after the economic devastation of the COVID-19 pandemic,” he said, stating that the Official Development Assistance (ODA) component in funding for SIDS “should not be seen as a gift or charity.”
Browne thanked the Government of Denmark that has announced its proposal to significantly increase its contribution to climate aid.
He disclosed that the Danish Government wrote to him, a few days ago, “to say that it has earmarked 60 percent of its annual grant for adaptation and resilience initiatives, especially in the most vulnerable countries.”
“Note that Denmark is giving a grant, not a loan,” he said. “The news that Denmark will contribute more than 1 percent of the global collective target for climate financing is welcome with deep appreciation.
“It is my hope that Denmark’s action will help to galvanize others to contribute their fair share to the collective efforts required to address climate change at C0P26,” Browne added. “Industrialized countries have an obligation to assist the states most affected by Climate Change, because they created a problem in the first instance. “Climate ODA should be seen as a form of climate reparations to compensate for past climate damage.”
In addition to ODA, debt swaps and debt cancellation, he said climate related debts would help small states to build financial capacity to accelerate the transition into renewable technologies.
“No new or significant sums of monies would be needed to achieve these debt cancellations; they would be mere book entries that will bring significant relief and sustainability to SIDS, while, at the same time, not creating any significant financial pressures for the industrialized countries,” the Antiguan prime minister said.
