Will the UNGA Special Session deliver on critical impediments to COVID-19 recovery?
By: Elena Marmo
Tags: Covid 19, Inequality, United Nations, General Assembly, Gender Equality

The General Assembly (GA) will host its 31st Special session in response to the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic on 3 and 4 December 2020. The UN Charter (Chapter IV, article 20) provides for the General Assembly to meet in special sessions which can be “convoked by the Secretary-General at the request of the Security Council or of a majority of the Members of the United Nations.”

UN special sessions are unusual, this will be 31st in the life of the UN and only the sixth since 2000. As the COVID-19 pandemic’s widespread effects range across development, peace, security, and socioeconomic affairs, there is no doubt about the special measures that the global community must address to confront the global pandemic.

UN General Assembly Hall

This Special Session has been called at the level of Heads of State and Government to examine the responses to the COVID-19 pandemic. It will feature a presentation and interactive dialogue led by the World Health Organization Director-General. The programme on 3 December will consist of an Opening Session & General Debate, while the programme on 4 December will contain 3 panels on the following topics: The UN System Response to COVID-19; The Road to a COVID-19 Vaccine — a Global Public Good; Resilience and Recovering Better from COVID-19. The meeting will be webcast on UNWebTV for live and on-demand viewing, with translation in the six official UN languages.

Throughout the year, Member States have been presented with the challenge to decide whether to postpone or press on, and while major structural inadequacies have been revealed, the agenda as a whole is in danger of reinforcing the status quo that has led to climate degradation, rising inequalities, a rollback on women’s rights worldwide, and austerity — all of which have proven to create impediments to just and effective COVID-19 responses. As news regarding vaccine development becomes more promising, this Special Session is expected to discuss distribution, within which inequalities have been exposed and will likely be exacerbated if the international community fails to deliver a global public good, free, accessible and available to all.

COVID-19 Vaccine: A Global Public Good?

The issue of a vaccine as a global public good will be a main feature of the agenda of the Special Session. The meeting will host a dialogue with WHO Director-General and a thematic segment titled, “The Road to a COVID-19 Vaccine — a Global Public Good”.

The Special Session will receive various inputs to the process, including a statement by the Secretary-General as requested in Resolution 75/4. “ This statement must include “information about the implementation of the relevant General Assembly resolutions on the COVID-19 pandemic, including but not limited to, access to vaccines and medical equipment to face the COVID-19 pandemic”.

Among the resolutions adopted thus far is the COVID-19 Omnibus Resolution (A/74/306) titled “Comprehensive and Coordinated Response to the COVID-19 Pandemic”. It was adopted in September 2020 by a recorded vote of 169 in favor to 2 against (Israel, United States), with 2 abstentions (Hungary, Ukraine). These discussions are expected to continue at the Special Session of the General Assembly on 3 and 4 December.

The Omnibus Resolution highlights, on the role of Intellectual Property Rights and accessibility to vaccines and therapeutics, citing the World Trade Organization (WTO) Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS Agreement), “which recognizes that intellectual property rights should be interpreted and implemented in a manner supportive of the right of Member States to protect public health and, in particular, to promote access to medicines for all, and notes the need for appropriate incentives in the development of new health products”.

This comes despite calls from Civil Society Organizations (CSOs) and UN Leadership for a People’s Vaccine, free from Intellectual Property Rights but rather classified as a global public good. A CSO Sign-on letter called on decision-makers to waive certain provisions of the TRIPS Agreement to ensure any vaccine could be a Global Public Good, also known as a People’s Vaccine. A proposal by South Africa and India has been brought to the WTO but is currently being met with resistance from many states. To this end, Winnie Byanyima, Director of UNAIDS recently noted, “we are seeing at least 9 candidate COVID-19 vaccines, but the rich countries are booking them out for themselves and leaving just crumbs for the poorer countries. That’s why we need a People’s Vaccine”. This call has also been bolstered by a statement by UN Human Rights Experts calling for universal access to vaccines is essential for prevention and containment of COVID-19.

At the joint ECOSOC and GA meeting on 1 December, calls for a vaccine to be deemed a global public good were made by the President of ECOSOC, Argentina, Antigua and Barbuda on behalf of the Latin America and Caribbean Group, and Guyana on behalf of the Group of 77 and China. Comments also called on the upcoming Special Session to take action in this regard.

The President of ECOSOC highlighted, “We must make the world’s financial trade and technology regimes more fair and equal unless the poorer countries are helped to control COVID and revive economic growth. The world will be unable to overcome the triple challenge it confronts: the virus, the recession and the existential threat posed by climate change. I hope that a special session of the General Assembly later this week will effectively address the COVID crisis in all its dimensions.”

The Permanent Representative of Argentina reiterated the call for a global public good: “We must implement measures for the vulnerable groups who are suffering situations of structural inequalities that preexisted the pandemic in the same spirit of solidarity. It’s crucial that the vaccine produced to prevent the disease must be a global public good, accessible to all nations on an equal footing.”

In closing the meeting, the President of the GA urged: “I believe that in the international community, in our hearts, we all know what we have to do. It is up to us collectively to do it.” The question remains, will Member States garner the political will necessary to put the calls for a vaccine that is a global public good into action given the failures of the Omnibus Resolution thus far?

Women’s Rights and Gender Equality

The resolution also: “calls upon Member States to adopt measures to recognize, reduce and redistribute women’s and girls’ disproportionate share of unpaid care and domestic work and the feminization of poverty, which is exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic, including through poverty eradication measures, labour policies, public services and gender-responsive social protection programmes;”

Across the 75th Session of the GA, the issue of gender equality was present, with Member States acknowledging COVID-19’s effects on women and the widespread push back against human rights and women’s rights.

At the High-level meeting on Beijing +25 Dubravka Šimonović, Special Rapporteur on violence against women noted: “We need to push back [against] push back movements by implementation of those standards that we have accepted through implementation strategies. Gender based violence against women is a structural pandemic of ongoing violations of women’s human rights.”

The Prime Minister of France echoed this as well: “It is not time for commemoration nor for self-satisfaction, but rather for watchfulness and renewed engagement. It’s no secret. In 2020, the Beijing Declaration would have no chance of being adopted. That is where we stand collectively all over. Women’s rights are being attacked, as are human rights from which they are indivisible, hard won progress is being jeopardized even in our democracies”.

Secretary-General Antonio Guterres also cited: “COVID-19 demonstrates that we urgently need a strong push to meet the unfulfilled promise of Beijing. This is fundamentally a question of power, so it starts with the equal representation of women in leadership positions, in governments, boardrooms, in climate negotiations and at the peace table — everywhere decisions are taken that affect people’s lives.”

He also urged: “governments should expand social safety nets to women in the informal economy, and recognize the value of unpaid care work…Looking forward, we need transformative, women-led changes to the failed structures and frameworks exploited by this pandemic. That is the only way we will implement the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and achieve lives of dignity and opportunity for all.”

At the SDG Moment, Deputy Secretary-General Amina Mohammed urged Member States to begin: “investing at scale in those critical interventions –social protection, the green and the blue economy and women’s economic empowerment — that will unlock tremendous benefits across the goals, across societies and economies, and throughout the Decade of Action.”

Can and will Member States use the opportunity of the Special Session to push back against austerity, unjust trade laws, and unsustainable lending practices to advance policy actions that will create adequate fiscal space for vital public services, namely social protection schemes and support to the informal care economy which is disproportionately shouldered by women and girls?

Unsustainable Debt & Financing for Development

On the topic of unsustainable debt, the Omnibus Resolution “encourages all relevant actors, including private and commercial creditors, to address risks of debt vulnerabilities, through existing channels, in developing countries due to the pandemic;”

The resolution also calls on Member States to address illicit financial flows and tax evasion as they “reduce the availability of vital resources for responding to and recovering from the COVID-19 pandemic and financing the implementation of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development”. Additionally the resolution urges International Financial Institutions to provide more liquidity in the financial system, supporting the “continued examination of the broader use of special drawing rights to enhance the resilience of the international monetary system”.

A CSO Sign-on letter calls for full cancellation of debt, offering a critique of the G20’s Debt Service Suspension Initiative (DSSI) while advocating for “‘A fair, transparent, binding and multilateral framework for debt crisis resolution (under the auspices of the UN and not in lender dominated areas) that addresses unsustainable and illegitimate debt”. Further, the recent G20 Common Framework notes “the significant debt vulnerabilities and deteriorating outlook in many low-income countries” but fails to address Middle Income Countries, the roles and responsibilities of private creditors and calls for debt cancellation.

This concern has also been echoed by many across the General Assembly’s 75th Session. Despite the IMF, G20 and World Bank debt suspension initiatives, as noted by the President of Malawi at the High-level meeting on Financing, “these are not enough…We therefore call for a new global debt relief initiative”.

At the High-level meeting on the UN’s 75th Anniversary, the Prime Minister of Barbados highlighted this as well, noting its importance for not only Least Developed Countries, but also heavily indebted Middle-Income Countries:

“It must be the unique opportunity that the crisis gives us to reimagine all of the existing development paradigms of the way the United Nations system and to devise innovative policies for new and unprecedented times and a new framework for governance. Lest we forget, what is commonly known as the World Bank was founded in 1944 as the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development. Reconstruction and development of a devastated Europe was a priority then in 1945. Surely reconstruction of the COVID shattered economies of our countries is a priority now unless we forget. Financing was found in the form of a Marshall Plan for the rebuilding of Europe and financial space was given to war, indebted Britain for over 50 years through bilateral loans and lines of credit at exceedingly low interest rates. Surely it is not beyond the international community’s capacity to develop mechanisms to ring fence and differentiate COVID related debt and to treat to it with the far sighted realism that was shown then to the British debt. In the absence of such an approach, my friends, it is clear that the debt to GDP ratio of our region and many small island states will be unsustainable and there will be no fiscal room to build the resilience that we need as we stand on the front line of the climate crisis.”

At the High-level meeting on Financing, Prime Minister of the Bahamas cited: “The deleterious impacts of climatic events and the current pandemic on the global economy have made it abundantly clear that the outdated methodologies of assessing a country’s wealth are no longer justifiable. Priority must be given to developing a vulnerability index that will inform key policy sectors of international financial institutions, and guide development assistance”.

The Prime Minister of Antigua and Barbuda (on behalf of the Alliance of Small Island States) called for a new initiative — the Small Island Developing States (SIDS) Compact: “So in order to effectively address the systemic inequities that have long had allowed properties back from sustainable development. And even now preventing us from accessing the support we need to recover. We therefore advocate for a holistic approach that addresses SIDS issues with SIDS solutions, and we propose to do so in the form of a SIDS Compact. Since combat is premising be a special case of six and therefore requires a dynamic approach to addressing all recognize vulnerabilities as a crosscutting systemic issue. It would require finally agreeing to a multi-dimensional vulnerability index to replace the antiquated income only measures.”

With the Special Session’s programme focus on “The UN System Response to COVID-19” and “Resilience and Recovering Better from COVID-19”, macroeconomic policymaking must play a central role in discussions. How will inputs from the Financing for Development in the Era of COVID-19 and Beyond process as well as the parallel Civil Society contributions help inform this Special Session’s agenda and outcome?

Insufficient Data & Piecemeal responses

The COVID-19 Omnibus Resolution, titled “Comprehensive and Coordinated Response to the COVID-19 Pandemic”, rightly places emphasis on coordinated and UN system-wide efforts for response and recovery from COVID-19. The Resolution also recognizes the importance of “high-quality, timely and reliable data disaggregated by…characteristics relevant in national contexts to inform COVID-19 responses” while also acknowledging “substantial digital divides and data inequalities exist within and among countries and regions”. However, as COVID-19 is rapidly changing the world we live in, timely data is incredibly difficult to obtain.

A recent report by UN Statistical Office’s Committee for the Coordination of Statistical Activities (CCSA) titled “How COVID-19 is changing the world: a statistical perspective” noted challenges faced by National Statistical Offices: “At a time when reliable information is more essential than ever, many systems are struggling to compile basic statistics, due in part to the pandemic but also because of a lack of resources needed to modernize operations and infrastructures”.

As austerity measures continue to be proposed by lenders like the IMF and World Bank while debt servicing averaging about 51% of GDP in 2019 for developing countries, vital resources are being directed away from the public sector, including statistical offices. This perpetuating the self-fulfilling prophecy and vicious cycle wherein developing countries are trapped in the status quo due to insufficient and inadequate data to demonstrate the plight of their countries as a result of austerity measures and outdated policy-making.

What’s Next?

The upcoming Special Session will take place against the backdrop of worsening effects of COVID-19. Member States must respond to a variety of key issues which have gained the attention of Civil Society, Academia, UN Staff and leadership. Among them include: surges in violence against women and girls and a threat to women’s rights and human rights worldwide, profound impacts on governments’ abilities to offer robust and vital social protection, health infrastructure and economic stimulus to their countries due to macroeconomic miscarriages of justice in the name of unsustainable debt burdens, unfair trade agreements, illicit financial flows and austerity measures.

In this Special Session, Member States have an opportunity to take decisive action that will set the world on a different path from where it is headed. In the same ways we have lamented that we are “off track” to achieve the SDGs, it is time for Member States to take stock of the status quo and identify a new way forward, one that is underpinned by a people-centred, values-driven multilateralism.