Thursday, April 08, 2021

New Amnesty chief: ‘Our global system of governance has failed’ amid pandemic

Issued on: 08/04/2021 - 

By: Stuart Norval
10 min

"At this point in the Covid-19 pandemic, even the most deluded leaders would struggle to deny that our social, economic and political systems are broken." These were the words of Agnès Callamard, the new secretary general of Amnesty International, as she launched the human rights NGO's annual report on Wednesday.

Callamard, a French citizen, took up her new post at the end of March. She told FRANCE 24 that in responding to the pandemic, most governments have "failed the most vulnerable, the poorest and women".

Amnesty's annual report said the health crisis had exposed "broken" policies and that cooperation was the only way forward.

Since the coronavirus emerged in China in late 2019, the pandemic has claimed nearly 2.9 million lives and infected at least 130 million people worldwide.

Despite regular calls for global solidarity from international organisations, figures show widening inequality in access to vaccines.


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