Making UNGA more effective can’t be divorced from UNSC reforms: India
Making the General Assembly more effective cannot be divorced from the wider context of the reform of the UN, including the Security Council, according to India.
United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said the COVID-19 pandemic is the most challenging crisis since the Second World War as it represents a threat to everybody.
He added that the pandemic is one that will bring a recession “that probably has no parallel in the recent past.”
The pandemic “represents a threat to everybody in the world and … it has an economic impact that will bring a recession that probably has no parallel in the recent past,” Guterres said on Tuesday at the virtual press launch of the UN report ‘Shared responsibility, global solidarity: Responding to the socio-economic impacts of COVID-19’.
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He said that there is also a risk that the combination of the disease and its economic impact will contribute to “enhanced instability, enhanced unrest, and enhanced conflict”.
“The combination of the two facts and the risk that it contributes to enhanced instability, enhanced unrest, and enhanced conflict are things that make us believe that this is, indeed, the most challenging crisis we have faced since the Second World War and the one that needs a stronger and more effective response that is only possible in solidarity if everybody comes together and if we forget political games and understand that it is humankind that is at stake,” the UN chief said.
Guterres called for a much stronger and more effective global response to the Coronavirus pandemic and to the social and economic devastation that it is causing.
He stressed that this will only be possible if everybody comes together and if we forget political games and understand that it is humankind that is at stake.
Noting that he has been in touch with world leaders about the pandemic, the secretary-general said that “there is a growing consciousness that we are in this together and we need to come out of it together.”
“The problem is how to create the practical ways to do so,” said Guterres, noting that fast action is critical.
“We are slowly moving in the right direction, but we need to speed up, and we need to do much more if we want to defeat the virus and if we want to support the people in need,” he added.
A total of 8,57, 957 positive cases of Coronavirus have been reported across the world, while death toll has jumped to 42, 139, according to a tally kept by the Johns Hopkins University.
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