Painting a grim picture of the last year where more than three million people have died from COVID-19, the United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres says a paradigm shift aligning the private sector with global goals is needed to address the challenges of the future and in particular, those triggered by COVID-19.

Addressing the Financing for Development (FfD) Forum held on Monday (April 12), the United Nations Chief, said that “an enormous push at the highest political level” is needed to prevent successive waves of COVID-19 infection, avoid a lengthy global recession and get back on track to fulfil the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and the 2015 Paris Agreement on climate change.  

To set the course for a sustainable and resilient COVID response and recovery, Guterres called for urgent action, beginning with closing the funding gap of the UN-backed vaccine initiative, COVAX. 

“To end the pandemic for good, we need equitable access to vaccines for everyone, everywhere”, said the Secretary-General.

Noting that just 10 countries globally account for around 75 per cent of the COVID-19 vaccinations given and that some estimates put the global cost of unequal access and vaccine hoarding at more than $9 trillion.

The President of the UN General Assembly, Volkan Bozkır, has also expressed that the COVID-19 pandemic has “precipitated the single largest economic contraction in 90-years, devastating lives, and livelihoods in the process”. 

He furthered by saying that even with vaccines providing a light at the end of the tunnel, “we are nonetheless faced with years of socioeconomic impact” ahead.  

Despite this, the Assembly President said that the 2021 FfD Forum was an opportunity “to lay the foundation for a proper recovery”. 

Adding that we should “seize the opportunity of this crisis to effectively shift toward a more sustainable and resilient path, to demonstrate the strength and utility of the multilateral system, and to build a world that we will proudly pass down to future generations”.