Health, Inequality Dangerously Linked, Speakers Warn, Stressing Exclusion, Disparity Impeding Ability to Contain COVID-19, on Day Three of High-Level Political Forum

• Published date: 10 July 2021
• Publication title: ASEAN Tribune

10 July 2021 (United Nations) Inequality and exclusion have deeply impaired the ability to contain the COVID-19 pandemic, which, in turn, further widened such disparity, demonstrating the dangerous links between health and inequality, experts warned, as the high-level political forum on sustainable development moved into the third day of its two-week session.

The forum is the United Nations central platform for follow-up and review of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and its 17 Goals adopted in 2015. Providing for the full and effective participation of all Member States of the United Nations and of specialized agencies, the 2021 forum - under the auspices of the Economic and Social Council - will review, from 6 to 16 July, progress in implementation.

The forum held three panels today, focusing on issues under the 2021 theme: 'Sustainable and resilient recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic that promotes the economic, social and environmental dimensions of sustainable development: building an inclusive and effective path for the achievement of the 2030 Agenda in the context of the decade of action and delivery for sustainable development'.

The morning panel discussion centred on interlinkages among Sustainable Development Goal 3 on good health and well-being, Goal 10 on reduced inequalities, Goal 16 on peace, justice and strong institutions and Goal 17 on partnerships.

Sarah Cliffe, Director of New York University Center on International Cooperation, described how a regression in one global Goal can erode gains in other areas in a vicious cycle. For instance, during the COVID-19 pandemic, more unequal societies had significantly higher infection rates than more equal, inclusive societies, she pointed out, highlighting the links between Goals 3 and 10. Another example is the relationship between Goals 10 and 16, she said, explaining that 'vertical' inequality - between classes on socioeconomic grounds - has a clear relationship to criminal violence, including on homicide rates, she said.

Along the same lines, Quarraisha Abdool Karim, Associate Scientific Director, Centre for the AIDS Programme of Research, and Professor of Clinical Epidemiology at Columbia University, described how countries that have invested sufficiently in vaccine development infrastructure and human resources or that have capacity for bulk manufacturing and distribution have been able to ensure sufficient numbers of vaccine doses for their citizens, while the rest of the world joins the end of the queue even if they have participated in multicentre clinical trials to evaluate the vaccine.

Presenting the Secretary-General's progress report on the Goals under review, Haoyi Chen, Coordinator, Intersecretariat Working Group on Household Surveys, Statistics Division of the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs, said that COVID-19 is likely to reverse progress made in reducing income gaps since the financial crisis. Moreover, the pandemic is disproportionately affecting children, threatening to push an additional 8.9 million into child labour by the end of 2022, adding to the 160 million children already suffering that plight at the beginning of 2020.

Proposing a solution to reduce inequality, Gabriela Bucher, Executive Director of Oxfam International, called for the introduction of permanent wealth taxes and corporation taxes worldwide to both reduce inequality and fund equalizing policies.

James K. Boyce, Senior Fellow at the Political Economy Research Institute at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, said that, instead of an equitable allocation of protective equipment, medicine and vaccines, these scarce resources followed 'the contours of wealth and power'. He stressed that national fiscal capacity to provide vital public goods and services can be built by encouraging tariffs on luxury imports and by ending the ubiquitous tax exemptions granted to the international community.

Armida Alisjahbana, Executive Secretary of the Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP), said that regional cooperation is necessary to avoid the emergence of a K-shaped recovery [in which different parts of the economy recover at different rates, times or magnitudes] with new divides. The annual ESCAP session in April endorsed the 'Action Plan to Strengthen Regional Cooperation on Social Protection in Asia and the Pacific', which has some 15 national actions to be implemented by 2030, including setting national targets for social protection.

In the afternoon, the forum held panel discussions on the themes 'Going local' and 'Restoring the conditions for SDG progress in African countries, least developed countries and landlocked developing countries'.

The political forum will reconvene at 9 a.m. on Friday, 9 July, to continue its work.

Panel 7

The forum began its third day with a discussion on the theme 'Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in focus: SDGs 3, 10, 16, 17 and interlinkages among those goals and with other SDGs'.

Chaired by Collen Vixen Kelapile (Botswana), Vice-President of the Economic and Social Council, the session featured a presentation of the Secretary-General's latest progress report on Sustainable Development Goal 3 on good health and well-being, Goal 10 on reduced inequalities, Goal 16 on peace, justice and strong institutions and Goal 17 on partnerships, by Haoyi Chen, Coordinator, Intersecretariat Working Group on Household Surveys, Statistics Division of the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs.

Moderated by Jan Beagle, Director-General of the International Development Law Organization, the discussion also featured the following panellists: Armida Alisjahbana, Executive Secretary of the Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP); Gabriela Bucher, Executive Director of Oxfam International; Sarah Cliffe, Director, New York University Center on International Cooperation; Quarraisha Abdool Karim, Associate Scientific Director, Centre for the AIDS Programme of Research, and Professor of Clinical Epidemiology, Columbia University; and James K Boyce, Senior Fellow at the Political Economy Research Institute at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.

Lead discussants were Marina Sereni, Vice-Minister, Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation of Italy; Najat Maalla M'jid, Special Representative of the Secretary-General on Violence against Children; Nata Menabde, Executive Director, New York Office, World Health Organization (WHO); Valentina Bodrug-Lungu, Associate Professor, Moldova State University (women's major group and Economic Commission for Europe regional CSO engagement mechanism).

Respondents were Francisco André, Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs and Cooperation of Portugal; Mohamed Fathi Ahmed Edrees (Egypt), Chair of Peacebuilding Commission; Jorge Bermudez, Comptroller General of Chile; Irma Pineda Santiago, Member of Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues, Mexico; and Margit Kraker, Secretary-General of the International Organization of Supreme Audit Institutions.

Mr. KELAPILE said that the continuation of the COVID-19 crisis risks increasing inequality both within and among countries in many areas, including health and well-being. This growing divide risks heightening social tensions and polarization and weakening social cohesion. However, the crisis could also be a chance to motivate new partnerships and initiatives to reduce inequalities, advance good health and well-being and promote justice and inclusive, effective and accountable institutions. This session will focus on the types of transformative actions needed in the immediate and longer-term to advance progress on Sustainable Development Goals 3, 10, 16 and 17 including ways to leverage the interlinkages among these objectives.

Ms. CHEN said the Secretary-General's progress report was prepared by her Department with inputs from more than 50 international and regional organizations, based on data from national statistical systems. Many health indicators were moving in the right direction before COVID-19. The pandemic has halted or reversed progress in health. Noting that understanding the true magnitude and impact of the COVID-19 pandemic has been hindered by a lack of data, she warned that COVID-19 is likely to reverse progress made in reducing income inequality since the financial crisis. By mid-2020, the number of people who had fled their countries and become refugees due to war, conflict, persecution, human rights violations and events seriously disturbing public order had grown to 24.5 million, the highest absolute number on record.

The world is still a long way from achieving the goal of peaceful, just and inclusive societies, she continued. Between 2015 and 2020, 176,085 civilian deaths were recorded in 12 of the world's deadliest armed conflicts. The pandemic is disproportionately affecting the most vulnerable, with children at high risk. Globally, 1 in 3 trafficking victims in 2018 was a child. At the start of 2020, the number of children engaged in child labour totalled 160 million, she said, adding that the impacts of COVID-19 threaten to push an additional 8.9 million children into child labour by the end of 2022.

Ms. BEAGLE, opening the panel discussion, said that the global Goals 3, 10, 16 and 17, although they may appear to have little in common at first glance, are playing out together to devastating effect. 'After living through over a year of a crisis that has challenged us to adapt and innovate, no one has all the answers but all of us, I am sure, have part of the answer,' she said.

Ms. BUCHER reminded all that even before the pandemic 10,000 people were dying each day for lack of access to affordable health care, 100 million were being pushed into extreme poverty each year because of health expenditures, and just 1 in 6 countries were spending the internationally accepted very basic level on health care. 'Our economies for too long have pursued private profits...