policymakers and world-renowned leaders from international organisations, including the Director-General of the World Health Organisation, the Secretary-General of the Commonwealth and political leaders from the UK, the EU, Italy and Germany.
During her address at the event on Thursday (2 September), Commonwealth Secretary-General Patricia Scotland called on the members of the G20 to urgently join forces with the Commonwealth, the WHO and other partners to launch a robust plan to shield the world’s smallest 42 states from the COVID-19 pandemic, by accelerating their vaccination campaigns.
“As the pandemic unfolded, we were urged to act selflessly to protect the most vulnerable. As some of the more affluent countries of the world start to emerge from the crisis, we must work now to protect the smallest and most vulnerable nations from COVID-19,” Scotland said. “Only 1.4 per cent of the vaccines administered globally having gone to people in low-income countries… I urge the G20 to start work now on protecting the 42 small states of the world, 32 of which are members of the Commonwealth which I have the honour of representing.”
The Secretary-General further noted that currently, the global community is not facing a race against ‘the’ COVID-19 virus, but against its variants instead. Therefore, she pointed out that to allow the virus to run unfettered in these small and vulnerable nations, who have been unable to protect themselves through vaccination, is to allow the virus to adapt, mutate and create deadlier variants that can “doom us all to more and longer suffering”.
