Coronavirus: ‘Leave no one behind’ mantra matters more than ever, as pandemic threatens all humanity: Guterres

24 Avril 2020

New York, US, April 24 (Infosplusgabon) - UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres issued a three-point global “Call to Action” on Thursday to cushion the colossal fallout from the COVID-19 (coronavirus) pandemic, pressing Governments to unify around a defining moment in history, as the new session of the UN’s Financing for Development Forum got underway.

Convened by webcast under the theme “Financing Sustainable Development in the Context of COVID-19,” the event brought together the Presidents of the General Assembly and the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC), among other high-level officials.

The epic nature of the threat demands a globally coordinated health response, led by the World Health Organization (WHO). “Developing countries need massive and urgent support,” Mr. Guterres said. “Now is the time to stand by our commitment to leave no one behind.”

A UN statement said he called for the pooling of efforts to assist countries at risk, strengthen and expand their health systems and stop transmission through a combination of testing, contact-tracing and quarantine, associated with appropriate restrictions on movement and contact.

Second, a large-scale response is needed to tackle the devastating socioeconomic consequences. “We must use all the fiscal and monetary measures at our disposal,” he said, recommending the creation of a global stimulus package to safeguard people’s livelihoods.

“I have strongly advocated for a response package that is a double-digit percentage of global GDP,” he said, with resources provided directly to workers and households, targeting both formal and informal sectors. Provisions should include a scaling-up of social protections and help for businesses to avoid bankruptcies.

He said the time-bound G20 initiative to suspend debt service payments for the poorest countries is a critical first step, which should be extended to all developing countries that request forbearance - including middle-income nations that lose access to financial markets.

Targeted debt relief will also be needed, followed by efforts to bolster debt sustainability and address structural issues in the international debt architecture.

He described the third step as “recovering better”. COVID-19 has laid bare the way in which economies are sustained through the invisible, unpaid domestic labour of women.

Indeed, existing multilateral frameworks address precisely the failures being exposed and exploited by the pandemic: stark inequalities in income and access to finance, high indebtedness, a highly leveraged financial system and a dysfunctional multilateral trading system.

“Returning to our previous path is simply not an option.”

The statement said ECOSOC President, Mona Juul, agreed that financing for sustainable development must be at the centre of preparedness and resilience.

The critical issues of resource mobilization, illicit finance, debt and women’s empowerment are more important than ever in a vastly different landscape, she said.

She drew particular attention to the different ways in which COVID-19 is affecting women and men. Women disproportionally carry the burden of unpaid care work, and are overrepresented as frontline health workers, making the integration of a gender perspective into social and economic responses all the more essential, she said.

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