On the lifting of the current economic embargoes and the intensification of international cooperation
On the lifting of the current economic embargoes and the intensification of international cooperation
The COVID-19 pandemic that strikes almost every country around the world today has devastating effects on the people’s health and life, as well as devastating economic and social consequences. These consequences are not the same everywhere and do not affect equally different social strata: they are more dramatic for poorest countries and, almost everywhere in the world, for the the most insecure, the most badly off. Where more or less insidious armed conflicts persist and where embargoes are enforced the suffering of the populations concerned is tragically aggravated.
The establishment of economic and financial embargoes outside the framework of the United Nations should be condemned. Today, such embargoes as those against Cuba, Venezuela, Iran or Gaza are weakening societies facing the pandemic and are therefore criminal offences. Adding to that, they pose a real threat to the rest of the world, since no country will be immune to the pandemic until the population of another country has the means to protect itself.
The same is true of the sub-regional wars that continue to rage – in some cases in an exceedingly destructive way – as is the case in Libya, Yemen, Syria, the Central African Republic, in South Sudan or Somalia, ignoring the call launched in March 2020 by the Secretary General of the United Nations to end armed conflicts around the world. Such conflicts, are as well a major factor worsening the risks of contamination and impoverishment of the targeted populations in the areas concerned.
It is high time for the international community to find the path towards an effective cooperation and to give the United Nations system the power to resolve through negotiation the crises and conflicts that threaten the world.
That is why, the WFSW joins the mobilization of the numerous researchers and other scientific workers as well as that of progressive organizations from all over the world in a call to state powers and regional forces:
– To put an end to all embargoes causing the populations to suffer, much more severely than their leaders, in many regions of the world;
– To cease hostilities and return to the negotiating table to find solutions for peace for the benefit of peoples suffering from the destructions and insecurity as much as from the pandemic.
– To develop international cooperation to immediately extend care measures to the populations,
– To jointly act to reorient research efforts and economic exchanges towards the reduction of inequalities, famine, disease, the plundering of planetary resources and towards combating the climate change.
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