![]() ![]() Public health experts fear that if conflict zones don't receive vaccines soon, these places could become hot spots for transmission and incubators for potentially dangerous variants of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19.īut hammering out temporary ceasefires won't be easy. From Afghanistan to Myanmar, Nigeria to Azerbaijan, people caught amid violence and instability will need to be immunized. This triumph of public health diplomacy will have to occur once again, humanitarian professionals say, in order to bring the COVID-19 pandemic to an end. In this case, there were recent historical precedents: In the 1960s, representatives from the World Health Organization launched its intensified program to eradicate smallpox - focusing on countries such as Ethiopia and present-day Bangladesh, where the disease was endemic and where public health officials had to work around conflicts in order to bring lifesaving vaccines to civilians. It passed Resolution 2565, which less ambitiously but more pragmatically called for a "sustained humanitarian pause" in order to immunize the world. 26, 2021, the Security Council tried another tack. By fall 2020, the idea of a global ceasefire - which, in all of world history, has never taken place - was off the table. Security Council resolution that July, which affirmed Guterres' plea, also went nowhere. More than a dozen armed groups, from the National Liberation Army in Colombia to the Communist Party of the Philippines, initially endorsed Guterres' appeal, but most offers to lay down arms were either one-sided or did not culminate in a formal ceasefire agreement. "End the sickness of war and fight the disease that is ravaging our world." "The fury of the virus illustrates the folly of war," Guterres said. ![]() It was the first global ceasefire appeal since the agency was founded in 1945, in the aftermath of World War II. On March 23, 2020, with the deadly coronavirus reported in 167 countries and territories, United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres called for a global ceasefire to support a public health response. Doctors administer the Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 vaccine to patients at the Wazir Akbar Khan hospital in Kabul, Afghanistan in July. ![]()
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