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UN: Covid-19 Fuels Humanitarian Crises Worldwide

by Karen Faulkner, Worthy News Correspondent

(Worthy News) – Top U.N. officials warned Wednesday that the COVID-19 pandemic has aggravated discrimination and other human rights violations that can fuel conflict, and its indirect consequences are dwarfing the impact of the virus itself in the world’s most fragile countries.

U.N. political chief Rosemary DiCarlo and U.N. humanitarian chief Mark Lowcock painted a grim picture to the U.N. Security Council of the global impact of the pandemic that has blanketed the world, with over 26 million confirmed cases of COVID-19 and more than 860,000 deaths.

Lowcock warned the council that the indirect economic and health effects from the crisis in fragile countries “will be higher poverty, lower life expectancy, more starvation, less education, and more child death.”

He said roughly a third of the cases and fatalities are in countries affected by humanitarian or refugee crises, or those facing high levels of vulnerability. But the full extent isn’t known because testing in these fragile countries is very low and in some places many people are reluctant to seek help, perhaps fearing being quarantined or fearing they won’t get useful medical treatment, he said.

“The better news is that it seems possible that the fatality rate from COVID-19 may be lower in these fragile countries than initially feared,” he said, but the indirect impact is greater.

As for growing human rights challenges during the pandemic, DiCarlo pointed to increased discrimination including in access to health services, surging violence against women particularly in the home during lock-downs, and “growing limitations being placed on the media, civic space and freedom of expression.”

“Social media platforms are used to spread disinformation about the pandemic,” DiCarlo said. “And there has been a rise in stigma and hate speech, especially against migrants and foreigners.”

Lowcock, the undersecretary-general for humanitarian affairs, said the main indirect effects of the pandemic on fragile countries are economic – weakening commodity prices, declining remittances, disruptions to trade, and lock-down measures making it harder for people to survive, especially day laborers and many women.

The humanitarian chief said another important impact is on health and education, because in the most fragile countries people are vulnerable to killer diseases like measles, malaria, tuberculosis, and HIV/AIDs, and because infant mortality and the numbers of women losing their lives in childbirth are much higher than in better-off countries.