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UNITED NATIONS: More than 70 countries were in debt stress amid a global cost of living crisis, the president of the UN General Assembly Csaba Krösi warned on Monday, days after a UN agency called for a 30 per cent debt-cut for stressed countries.
Addressing the 52nd session of the Human Rights Council, Mr Krösi noted that the countries facing the debt-stress were also “struggling to recover from the Covid-19 pandemic” and the rise in living cost was “systematically marginalising” women and girls.
Last week, the UN Development Programme (UNDP) proposed reducing the debt of stress countries to reduce global debt problems and revitalise the global economy.
The report suggested a 30pc upfront cut in borrowings, which could save the borrowers $148 billion over eight years. The report explained that a 30pc cut in the total global debt of $191 billion, could reduce the combined debt service bill of 52 stressed nations by $66.4 billion to private creditors, $44.2 billion to multilateral lenders and $38.9 billion to bilaterals by 2029.
The report pointed out that Sri Lanka, Ghana, and Ukraine joined Lebanon and Zambia in default last year, while Tunisia, Pakistan and Egypt were on the verge of doing so.
UN Secretary General António Guterres, who also addressed the 52nd session, identified another major crisis: global warming and blamed fossil fuel for heating up the globe.
“Fossil fuel producers and their financiers need to understand a basic truth: the pursuit of mega-profits, while so many people are losing their lives and their rights, now and in the future, is totally unacceptable,” he said.
Last year, the United Nations highlighted floods in Pakistan as an example of how rising temperatures were causing climate disasters and underlined the need to reduce global warming by moving away from fossil fuel.
On Monday, Mr Guterres warned that “nearly half of the world’s population, 3.5 billion people, live in climate hotspots,” and this was having a devastating impact across the globe.
He also recalled Sunday’s shipwreck that killed 59 people, including Pakistanis and Afghans, and pointed out that these people were trying to cross the sea only “to seek a better future for themselves and their children”.
The UN chief warned that religious intolerance, racism, and supremacist ideologies were on the rise and urged all nations to “stand on the right side of history.”
“Now is the time to stand up for the human rights of everyone, everywhere,” said Mr Guterres while reminding the international around that “antisemitism, anti-Muslim bigotry, the persecution of Christians, racism and white supremacist ideology” were on the march. He highlighted the key points of the Universal Declaration which sets out everyone’s right “to life, liberty and security; to equality before the law; to freedom of expression; to seek asylum; work, healthcare and education”.
Mr Guterres added his voice to international condemnation of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, telling the Human Rights Council that the Russian aggression “triggered the most massive violations of human rights we are living today”.
On March 20, the Human Rights Council will hear an update on the Ukraine war from an independent international commission of inquiry. The probe was set up in March last year with the aim to collect testimonies of possible war crimes.
Besides repeated shelling of Ukrainian cities and key infrastructure, acts of sexual violence against men, women, and girls, had also been documented in Ukraine in the last year, Mr Guterres said. “Serious violations of international humanitarian and human rights law against prisoners of war and hundreds of cases of enforced disappearances and arbitrary detentions of civilians” have been uncovered too, he said.