This is the News in Brief from the United Nations.
COVID-19 equitable vaccine scheme reaches more than 100 countries and economies
More than 100 countries and economies have now received COVID-19 vaccines through the UN-partnered equitable coronavirus-busting scheme, COVAX.
The first delivery of lifesaving jabs arrived in Ghana on 24 February.
Announcing the news on Thursday, the UN World Health Organization (WHO) said that more than 38 million doses of AstraZeneca, Pfizer-BioNTech and Serum Institute of India have been transported globally so far.
COVAX aims to supply vaccines to all those who requested them in the first half of this year.
The development comes as WHO and other health regulators reaffirmed the overwhelming value of the AstraZeneca (or AZ) COVID-19 vaccine, amid ongoing concerns about clotting events among a very small number who’ve had the jab.
In statements on Wednesday evening, the WHO’s Global Advisory Committee on Vaccine Safety, the European Medicines Agency and the UK’s regulator all concluded that the benefits of taking the AZ vaccine “outweigh the very rare potential risks”.
More than 190 million doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine have been administered to date, but only 182 cases of clotting have been reported, WHO said, in its advice to countries to continue to vaccinate with the AZ vaccine, noting that it has “saved millions of lives and prevented serious illness”.
The migrants left stranded and without assistance by COVID-19 lockdowns
Travel restrictions during the COVID pandemic have been particularly hard on refugees and migrants who move out of necessity, stranding millions from home, the UN migration agency, IOM, said on Thursday.
According to the International Organization for Migration, the first year of the pandemic saw more than 111,000 travel restrictions and border closures around the world at their peak in December.
These measures “have thwarted many people’s ability to pursue migration as a tool to escape conflict, economic collapse, environmental disaster and other crises”, IOM said.
In mid-July, nearly three million were stranded, sometimes without access to consular assistance, nor the means to meet their basic needs.
This included Panama where thousands were cut off in the jungle while attempting to travel north to the United States; but not business travellers, who “have continued to move fairly freely”, including through agreed ‘green lanes’, such as the one between Singapore and Malaysia, IOM said.
Charges against journalist held after court freed them must be dropped: UN experts
To Mali now, where the authorities have been urged to drop charges against five men whose prosecution was dismissed in court, but who continue to be held in detention.
The appeal, from three UN-appointed independent rights experts, follows the arrest in December of journalist Mohamed Bathily and four senior officials.
Despite an order last month by the Bamako Court of Appeal to release the men after it found insufficient evidence against them, they are still being investigated for plotting against the government, criminal association, insulting the head of State, and complicity.
The rights experts alleged due process violations and likely arbitrary detention of the men, adding that former Prime Minister Boubou Cissé, is accused of the same acts and is reportedly in hiding.
The Human Rights Council-appointed experts also highlighted the decision of the Minister of Justice to transfer the judges who had been overseeing the case after the court of appeal ordered the case to be dropped, citing “political motivations…that could amount to judicial harassment”.
Daniel Johnson, UN News.
