On 20th April 2020,193 Members of the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) adopted the resolution, ‘equitable, efficient and timely’ access to any future vaccines developed to fight against COVID-19 without any voting.The World Health Organization (WHO) faced criticism from the Washington and the others for playing a major role in the resolution.
Significance:
i.The resolution was drafted by Mexico and supported by the United States (US) which encourages Scientific international cooperation and coordination to fight against COVID-19 along with the private sector.
ii.This calls for the cooperation among the research laboratories and pharmaceutical manufacturers to provide efforts to develop vaccines and other therapeutics to fight against the coronavirus pandemic.
iii.The resolution is to identify and recommend the options to rapidly scale the manufacturing and to strengthen the supply chain to ensure the fair, transparent, equitable, efficient and timely access of the support materials, medical supplies, laboratory testing, preventive tools, new diagnostics drugs and future COVID-19 vaccines.
iv.Earlier this month UNGA brought two resolutions,
- Intensified international cooperation to contain, mitigate and defeat the COVID-19 pandemic by exchanging information, scientific knowledge and the practices recommended by WHO.
- Abandoning the trade wars and to implement the protectionist measures not applying unilateral sanctions without United Nations Security Council (UNSC) approval.
About United Nations General Assembly:
President– Tijjani Muhammad-Bande
Secretary-General– Antonio Guterres
Headquarters– New York, United States
Founded in– 1945
