This is the News in Brief from the United Nations.

Guterres opens Global Disability Summit with inclusivity call

The Global Disability Summit began on Wednesday in Oslo, where UN Secretary-General António Guterres urged all countries to do more to put people with disabilities “front and centre” of their post-COVID recovery plans.

In opening comments to the meeting, the UN chief insisted that people with disabilities were often the poorest and most disadvantaged members of society.

Those with disabilities were dying “at vastly higher rates”, Mr. Guterres said, all because they faced “persistent barriers in health systems”.

In developing countries “which are strangled financially”, he also noted that people with disabilities were among the first victims.

According to the UN Children’s Fund, UNICEF, there are 240 million children with disabilities in the world.

The UN Population Fund UNFPA, meanwhile, said that women with disabilities were up to 10 times more likely to experience sexual violence.

8 in 10 Africans haven’t had a single COVID vaccine: WHO

More than eight in 10 people in Africa still haven’t had a single COVID-19 vaccine dose, the head of the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Wednesday.

Speaking at an event in Germany in support of a coronavirus vaccines for all African nations, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus condemned the “rampant inequity” that is undermining efforts to bring the pandemic under control.

Tedros warned that in many countries with high vaccine coverage, a “dangerous narrative” had emerged that the global health crisis is over.

But with 116 countries off-track for vaccinating the WHO target of 70 per cent of their populations, Tedros warned that conditions remained “ideal” for new variants to emerge.

Cambodia casino strike delays are ‘unjustified, disproportionate’

To Cambodia now, where top UN-appointed rights experts on Wednesday criticized Government COVID restrictions on casino workers that have disrupted their strike action.

Staff from the 365 Naga World casino resort, initially downed tools in December over claims that employees had been dismissed unfairly.

But the strike ended earlier this month after the Government said that one of the picketers had tested positive for the coronavirus.

Several hundred striking workers were then transported to a makeshift testing site and many are still waiting for the results of their second COVID test.

The rights experts criticised the “sluggish test results” procedure, which they said “shows the lengths that authorities may be willing to go…to thwart” workers’ rights.

At least 35 union leaders and activists have been arrested since the strike began in Cambodia, where the rights experts described the restrictions on strikers, based on public health concerns, as “unjustified, unnecessary and disproportionate”. 

Daniel Johnson, UN News.