Editorial | Human Rights Day a wake-up call to rich on vaccine equality
- Now is time to reflect on how inequality of access to jabs is undermining global effort to halt spread of Covid-19 and bring pandemic to an end
Inequality between masses of humanity is the abiding concern of human rights campaigners, from the United Nations to anti-discrimination activists in every corner of Earth.
This year equality is the theme of UN Human Rights Day today. That resonates in these troubled Covid times because inequality of access to vaccines between rich and developing nations is undermining the global effort to halt the spread of the coronavirus and bring the pandemic to an end.
Indeed, health experts have warned that low vaccination rates in the developing world make the emergence of highly contagious or vaccine-resistant mutations more likely, with the latest variant Omicron perhaps a textbook example.
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The UN cites pervasive inequality among the greatest challenges to human rights along with rampant poverty and structural discrimination. Clearly inequality is instrumental in sustaining the latter two.
Thanks to low rates of inoculation in many developing countries that need a bigger share of vaccine supplies from the rich world, inequality has helped sustain the pandemic.
Ground zero in the battle against Covid-19 is Africa. The continent is the origin of Omicron, which has raised questions about the effectiveness of current vaccines and prompted governments to restore precautions against contagion, sometimes only days after relaxing them.
It vindicates concerns that low vaccination rates make potentially dangerous mutations more likely as the virus spreads.