{"id":91056,"date":"2020-12-11T07:45:09","date_gmt":"2020-12-11T12:45:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/?p=91056"},"modified":"2020-12-11T07:45:09","modified_gmt":"2020-12-11T12:45:09","slug":"auto-draft-366","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/2020\/12\/11\/auto-draft-366\/","title":{"rendered":"Pandemic Undermines Human Rights Worldwide, UN Says"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"VOA \u2014 The head of the United Nations is urging the world to put human rights \u201cfront and center\u201d in the coronavirus recovery efforts in order to achieve a better future for its citizens.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In a televised address issued Thursday on the annual observance of International Human Rights Day, Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said the COVID-19 pandemic has had a \u201cdisproportionate impact on vulnerable groups\u201d including frontline workers, the elderly, disabled, women and girls, and minorities.<\/p>\n

The virus \u201chas thrived because poverty, inequality, discrimination, the destruction of our natural environment and other human rights failures, have created enormous fragilities in our societies,\u201d Guterres said, while simultaneously\u00a0providing leaders with a pretext to\u00a0impose \u201cheavy-handed security responses and repressive measures that curtail civic space and media freedom.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

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\"Human<\/div>\n<\/figure>\n<\/div>
Human rights activists stage a protest over human rights violations in Egypt during a two-day official visit of Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi in Paris, France, Dec. 8, 2020.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

In a speech delivered Wednesday in Geneva, U.N. human rights commissioner Michelle Bachelet said the failure of many countries\u00a0to take the virus seriously and to act quickly enough to prevent its spread has undermined a range of human rights issues around the world,\u00a0including economic, civil and political rights.<\/p>\n

\u201cPoliticizing a pandemic in this way is beyond irresponsible \u2013 it is utterly reprehensible,\u201d Bachelet said.\u00a0 \u201cScientific evidence and processes have been discounted, and conspiracy theories and disinformation have been sown and allowed \u2013 or encouraged \u2013 to thrive.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

The ex-Chilean president said these actions have allowed discrimination, systemic racism and marginalization of the most vulnerable people in the world to flourish, especially in \u201ccountries in conflict\u201d such as Yemen, which has suffered from \u201ca perfect storm of five years of conflict and violations, disease, blockades, and shortage of humanitarian funding.\u201d<\/p>\n

Although the world is on the cusp of at least one safe and effective COVID-19 vaccine, Bachelet said it will not prevent or cure the socio-economic ravages caused by the pandemic. She said the only thing that can accomplish that is the \u201cvaccine of human rights,\u201d whose core ingredients are embedded in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which was adopted by the U.N. General Assembly on December 10, 1948.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

Globally, the pandemic has infected at least 68 million people and killed more than 1.5 million, according to Johns Hopkins University.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

VOA \u2014 The head of the United Nations is urging the world to put human rights \u201cfront and center\u201d in the coronavirus recovery efforts in order to achieve a better future for its citizens.\u00a0 In a televised address issued Thursday on the annual observance of International Human Rights Day, Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said the COVID-19 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":91057,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-91056","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-recposts"],"translation":{"provider":"WPGlobus","version":"3.0.2","language":"en","enabled_languages":["fa","en"],"languages":{"fa":{"title":true,"content":false,"excerpt":false},"en":{"title":true,"content":true,"excerpt":false}}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91056","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=91056"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91056\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":91059,"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91056\/revisions\/91059"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/91057"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=91056"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=91056"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=91056"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}