Antonio Guterres - The African Mirror

Oct

2020

U.N. chief: time for national plans to help fund global COVID-19 vaccine effort

MICHELLE NICHOLS and STEPHANIE NEBEHAY UNITED Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres says it is time for countries to start using money from their national COVID-19 recovery and response plans to help fund the World Health Organization's global vaccine plan. The Access to COVID-19 Tools (ACT) Accelerator programme and its COVAX facility has so far received $3 billion but needs another $35 billion. It aims to deliver two billion doses of coronavirus vaccines by the end of next year, 245 million treatments and 500 million tests. "The ACT-Accelerator provides the only safe and certain way to re-open the global economy as quickly…

Sep

2020

By The African Mirror

Global coronavirus deaths pass ‘agonizing milestone’ of 1 million

COVID-19

JANE WARDELL THE global death toll from COVID-19 rose past 1 million, according to a Reuters tally, a bleak milestone in a pandemic that has devastated the global economy, overloaded health systems and changed the way people live. The number of deaths from the novel coronavirus this year is now double the number of people who die annually from malaria - and the death rate has increased in recent weeks as infections surge in several countries. "Our world has reached an agonizing milestone," U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said in a statement. "It's a mind-numbing figure. Yet we must never lose…

Sep

2020

By The African Mirror

Pandemic sharpens ‘battle for the soul’ of United Nations between U.S. and China

WORLD

MICHELLE NICHOLS LONG-simmering tensions between the United States and China have hit boiling point at the United Nations over the coronavirus pandemic, spotlighting Beijing's bid for greater multilateral influence in a challenge to Washington's traditional leadership. Chinese President Xi Jinping has accelerated his U.N. power play as President Donald Trump's disregard for international cooperation led to the United States quitting global deals on climate and Iran and leaving the U.N. Human Rights Council and the World Health Organization, diplomats say. "There's definitely, in my mind, a battle for the soul of the U.N. going on," said a senior European diplomat,…

Jul

2020

By The African Mirror

Could genealogy websites help catch aid worker sex abusers

SCIENCE, TECH AND INNOVATION

EMMA BATHA TECHNOLOGY that helped catch a U.S. serial murderer, dubbed the Golden State Killer, could be used to track down aid workers who sexually abuse girls and women overseas, according to the team behind a groundbreaking project in the Philippines. In abuse cases which result in pregnancy, scientists say DNA could be taken from the child with the mother's consent and uploaded to a genealogy database to trace the father. The technology has been made possible by the popularity of commercial genealogy services which now hold DNA data on millions of people keen to explore their ancestry. "I'm really…

Jul

2020

By The African Mirror

U.N. chief to world leaders: ‘Inequality starts at the top’

NEWS

MICHELLE NICHOLS U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has accused world powers of ignoring inequality in global institutions but said the coronavirus pandemic has created a "generational opportunity" to build a more equal, sustainable world. Delivering the annual lecture for the Nelson Mandela Foundation, Guterres pushed for a so-called New Global Deal to ensure power, wealth and opportunity are shared more broadly and fairly at the international level. "The nations that came out on top more than seven decades ago have refused to contemplate the reforms needed to change power relations in international institutions," Guterres said. "The composition and voting rights in…