UN: Coronavirus Crisis Erasing Decades of Global Progress
The United Nations Sustainable Development Goals document is the most comprehensive agreement that addresses ways to end poverty, environmental destruction, and inequality in access to education, but the coronavirus crisis has darkened the future of these objectives.
According to the latest United Nations report, the coronavirus pandemic has set humanity back decades in reducing poverty, combating shortages in medical, health, and educational facilities. In 2015, just five years ago, the global community committed to achieving these goals as its responsibility.
António Guterres, UN Secretary-General, states that by the end of last year, the world had fallen behind in taking the steps necessary to achieve the 17 Sustainable Development Goals by 2030. But now the coronavirus pandemic has confronted humanity with economic and social crises unprecedented in history. This crisis has transformed achieving the objectives set in the UN development document into a far more difficult challenge than before.
According to this report, it is likely that 71 million people will once again fall into the category of the world’s poor population in the current year. This is the first time since 1998 that the world faces such an increase in poverty expansion. Child labor is also expected to increase again after decades. The UN also predicts that hundreds of thousands of people, particularly the poor, people with disabilities, and women worldwide, will lose their lives to coronavirus due to lack of access to medical facilities and vaccination.
More than one billion people in slums, due to the use of shared toilets and overcrowded public transportation, are at risk from this crisis. School closures have confronted 90 percent of students worldwide with significant difficulties. This means 1 billion 570 million children and adolescents. Of these, 370 million have been deprived of one meal that was provided to them at school.
Despite all this, the report also noted some progress by the end of 2019, including progress in maternal and child health, access to electricity, and an increase in the number of women in government positions. Progress that is now threatened by increasing food supply problems for large sections of communities, environmental destruction, and severe injustice in some countries.
Among the 17 objectives that were placed on the agenda of countries until 2030 at the 2015 UN General Assembly were combating hunger, gender equality, and addressing the water and climate crisis. Problems that can only be overcome through joint cooperation of the global community.
Source: DW
