UN chief slams 'myths, delusions and falsehoods' around inequality
The UN secretary general will today deliver one of his most stinging speeches to date, attacking the “myths, delusions and falsehoods” around international progress on equality.
In an unusually strongly worded speech, António Guterres urged major reform to the UN security council, the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, to address systemic inequalities exposed by the coronavirus pandemic.
The health crisis had revealed the world’s fragility and “laid bare risks we have ignored for decades: inadequate health systems; gaps in social protection; structural inequalities; environmental degradation; the climate crisis”, he said.
He said the pandemic was exposing “fallacies and falsehoods everywhere: the lie that free markets can deliver healthcare for all. The fiction that unpaid care work is not work, the delusion that we live in a post-racist world, the myth that we are all in the same boat.”
The anger of the #MeToo and Black Lives Matter movements were a measure of “utter disillusionment with the status quo”, Guterres said, while colonialism and patriarchy were historical sources of inequality.
“Let’s not fool ourselves. The legacy of colonialism still reverberates. We see this in economic and social injustice, the rise of hate crimes and xenophobia; the persistence of institutionalised racism and white supremacy.
“We see this in the global trade system. Economies that were colonised are at greater risk of getting locked into the production of raw materials and low-tech goods – a new form of colonialism. And we see this in global power relations.”
Speaking from the UN’s New York headquarters, Guterres was delivering the annual Nelson Mandela lecture – on what would have been Mandela’s 102nd birthday –, to an online audience for the first time in its 18-year history.
Africa, Guterres said, had been a “double victim”, first because of colonialism and second, because African countries were underrepresented in the international institutions set up after the second world war.
“The nations that came out on top 70 years ago have refused to contemplate the reforms needed to change power relations in international institutions. The composition and voting rights in the UN security council and the boards of the Bretton Woods system are a case in point. Inequality starts at the top: in global institutions. Addressing inequality must start by reforming them.”
The UN secretary general will today deliver one of his most stinging speeches to date, attacking the “myths, delusions and falsehoods” around international progress on equality.
In an unusually strongly worded speech, António Guterres urged major reform to the UN security council, the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, to address systemic inequalities exposed by the coronavirus pandemic.
The health crisis had revealed the world’s fragility and “laid bare risks we have ignored for decades: inadequate health systems; gaps in social protection; structural inequalities; environmental degradation; the climate crisis”, he said.
He said the pandemic was exposing “fallacies and falsehoods everywhere: the lie that free markets can deliver healthcare for all. The fiction that unpaid care work is not work, the delusion that we live in a post-racist world, the myth that we are all in the same boat.”
The anger of the #MeToo and Black Lives Matter movements were a measure of “utter disillusionment with the status quo”, Guterres said, while colonialism and patriarchy were historical sources of inequality.
“Let’s not fool ourselves. The legacy of colonialism still reverberates. We see this in economic and social injustice, the rise of hate crimes and xenophobia; the persistence of institutionalised racism and white supremacy.
“We see this in the global trade system. Economies that were colonised are at greater risk of getting locked into the production of raw materials and low-tech goods – a new form of colonialism. And we see this in global power relations.”
Speaking from the UN’s New York headquarters, Guterres was delivering the annual Nelson Mandela lecture – on what would have been Mandela’s 102nd birthday –, to an online audience for the first time in its 18-year history.
Africa, Guterres said, had been a “double victim”, first because of colonialism and second, because African countries were underrepresented in the international institutions set up after the second world war.
“The nations that came out on top 70 years ago have refused to contemplate the reforms needed to change power relations in international institutions. The composition and voting rights in the UN security council and the boards of the Bretton Woods system are a case in point. Inequality starts at the top: in global institutions. Addressing inequality must start by reforming them.”
I'm gonna stay tuned, and wait for the proposal(s).
@CyrilRamaphosa calls to reform global financial architecture & lift the South from "quicksand of debt"
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