Inequality, an issue which “defines our time”, risks destroying the world’s economies and societies, UN Secretary-General António Guterres said in a hard-hitting speech on Saturday.
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UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has compared the coronavirus pandemic to an “x-ray” that has exposed deep global inequalities and “fractures in the fragile skeleton of the societies we have built.”
Delivering a lecture for the Nelson Mandela Foundation, Guterres slammed rich countries for failing “to deliver the support needed to help the developing world.”
Global risks ignored for decades – notably inadequate health systems, gaps in social protection, structural inequalities, environmental degradation, and the climate crisis – have been laid bare, he said. The vulnerable are suffering the most: those living in poverty, older people, and people with disabilities and pre-existing conditions.
Mr. Guterres pointed out that inequality take many forms. Whilst income disparity is stark, with the 26 richest people in the world holding as much wealth as half the global population, it is also the case that life-chances depend on factors such as gender, family and ethnic background, race and whether or not a person has a disability.
However, he noted that everyone suffers the consequences, because high levels of inequality are associated with “economic instability, corruption, financial crises, increased crime and poor physical and mental health.”
Colonialism, a historic aspect of inequality, was evoked by the Secretary-General. Today’s anti-racist movement, he said, points to this historic source of inequality: “The Global North, specifically my own continent of Europe, imposed colonial rule on much of the Global South for centuries, through violence and coercion.”
This led to huge inequalities within and between countries, including the transatlantic slave trade and the apartheid regime in South Africa, argued Mr. Guterres, and left a legacy of economic and social injustice, hate crimes and xenophobia, the persistence of institutionalized racism, and white supremacy.
Mr. Guterres also referred to patriarchy, another historic inequality which still resonates: women everywhere are worse off than men, and violence against women is, he said, at epidemic levels.
The UN has appealed for $10.3 billion (€9 billion) to help poor states hit by the pandemic, but has so far only received $1.7 billion.
“Entire regions that were making progress on eradicating poverty and narrowing inequality have been set back years, in a matter of months,” he warned, adding that the crisis could trigger “famines of historic proportions” and push 100 million more people into poverty.
Guterres stressed that there needed to be a new global system with change “at the top: in global institutions.”
He ended his address by urging leaders to build a more equal and sustainable world: “Will we succumb to chaos, division and equality? Or will we right the wrongs of the past and move forward together, for the good of all?”