The EU-Africa partnership has ebbed and flowed over the years, with the period since 2020 being particularly dynamic. With the Covid-19 pandemic, the response to the war in Ukraine and the subsequent energy crisis in Europe, cleavages have been unearthed in the partnership.
Geopolitics has an important role to play in securing the health of both people and planet. Indeed, businesses cannot be asked to govern the planet’s health if some of the most polluting countries in the world are not on board. Successful governance of planetary health depends on geopolitics and cross border implementation. It also demands that special attention be paid to the interlinkages between businesses, environmental justice and inequalities. All of these are crucial to advance the universal right to a safe, clean, healthy and sustainable environment.
The establishment of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948 was a groundbreaking moment for global consensus on the shared rights of all human beings. 72 years later, international human rights agreements are often violated without consequence, with their impact on directly improving state’s human rights records modest at best. And Covid-19 has presented new, unexpected and unprecedented challenges to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals, as well as exacerbating suffering and violence from ongoing conflicts.
One billion people live with a disability. The International Day of Persons with Disabilities provides a key opportunity to highlight the issues they face and take stock of how the humanitarian sector can play its part in building a more inclusive post-Covid-19 world. This is an urgent challenge.
In the context of a global crisis, access to reliable information is more important than ever. Limiting free speech and press freedoms can impede accurate understanding and hence mitigation of the crisis. Beyond COVID, freedom of the press and expression are foundations of any functioning democracy.
