Covid recovery ‘greatest betrayals of our time’: AI

Johannesburg, Mar 29 (EFE).- Global powers and giant corporations betrayed the promise of a “fair recovery” from the Covid-19 pandemic and have driven a “deeper global inequality,” Amnesty International said Tuesday.

“Wealthy states colluded with corporate giants in 2021 to dupe people with empty slogans and false promises of a fair recovery from the Covid-19 pandemic, in what amounts to one of the greatest betrayals of our times,” AI said in a statement after publishing its annual assessment of human rights around the world.

The non-governmental organization blamed the betrayal and injustice on “noxious corporate greed and brutal national selfishness” as well as the “neglect of health and public infrastructure” by governments around the world.

​​“2021 should have been a year of healing and recuperation. Instead, it became an incubator for deeper inequality and greater instability, a legacy caustic for years to come,” Secretary-General of AI, Agnès Callamard, said.

Callamard said that the effects of the “tragic fable of betrayal and greed in cahoots with corporate titans” have been most damaging in marginalized communities and those already suffering from “endemic poverty”.

The report added that while the rapid and successful roll-out of Covid-19 vaccines raised hopes of the end of the pandemic, these were “undercut by self-interested nationalism and corporate greed”.

Less than 4% of people living in low-income countries have been fully vaccinated, according to AI.

“Wealthy states such as EU member states, the UK and the USA stockpiled more doses than needed, whilst turning a blind eye as Big Pharma put profits ahead of people, refusing to share their technology to enable wider distribution of vaccines.”

Pfizer, BioNTech and Moderna made a profit of up to $54 million dollars in 2021, but supplied less than 2% to low-income countries.

“In many countries around the world, already marginalized people paid the highest cost for the deliberate policy choices of a privileged few,” Callamard denounced. EFE

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