UN secretary-general warns COVID-19 ‘dress rehearsal’ for challenges to come
Secretary-General Antonio Guterres warned the UN’s first-ever virtual meeting of global leaders Tuesday that the world is facing an “epochal” health crisis, the biggest economic calamity and job losses since the Great Depression, threats to human rights and worries of a new Cold War between the U.S. and China.
In his grim state of the world speech to the UN General Assembly’s annual high-level meeting, the UN chief said the coronavirus that “brought the world to its knees” was but “a dress rehearsal for the world of challenges to come.”
He called for global unity, first and foremost to fight the pandemic, and sharply criticized populism and nationalism for failing to contain the virus and for often making things worse.
But the prerecorded speeches from world leaders at the opening of the sixday session reflected deep global divisions.
U.S. President Donald Trump clashed with the presidents of China and Iran. Russian leader Vladimir Putin urged an end to U.S. and European Union sanctions.
South African President Cyril Ramaphosa, speaking on behalf of the African Union, said rich nations haven’t been generous enough in helping developing nations combat COVID-19, which is setting back the continent’s development.
Days after the pandemic shut down big parts of the world in March, Guterres called for a global ceasefire to tackle it. On Tuesday, he appealed for a 100-day push by the international community, led by the UN Security Council, “to make this a reality by the end of the year.”
“There is only one winner of conflict during a pandemic: the virus itself,” the secretary-general stressed.
Reiterating a warning he made to world leaders a year ago about rising U.S.-China rivalry, he said, “We are moving in a very dangerous direction.”
“Our world cannot afford a future where the two largest economies split the globe in a great fracture — each with its own trade and financial rules and internet and artificial intelligence capacities,” Guterres said.
“A technological and economic divide risks inevitably turning into a geostrategic and military divide. We must avoid this at all costs.”
The rivalry between the two powers was in full display as Trump, in a very short virtual speech, urged the United Nations to hold Beijing “accountable” for failing to contain COVID-19, which originated in China and has killed 200,000 Americans and nearly one million around the world.
Soon after, China’s ambassador rejected all accusations against Beijing as “totally baseless.”