GENEVA, Dec 9 — The UN human rights chief warned today that the coronavirus crisis had laid bare serious weaknesses and divisions within societies, including a destructive failure to respect basic rights.

“Covid-19 has zeroed in on the fissures and fragilities in our societies, exposing all our failures to invest in building fair and equitable societies,” Michelle Bachelet told reporters in Geneva.

“It has shown the weakness of systems that have failed to place a central focus on upholding human rights,” she said.

The Covid-19 pandemic has claimed more than 1.5 million lives in less than a year, and infected over 67 million others since the virus first surfaced in China a year ago.

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Bachelet hailed the recent dramatic advances in vaccine developments against Covid-19, but lamented that the world had long ignored existing “vaccines” against ills like poverty, inequality and even climate change.

“It is a vaccine we developed in the wake of previous massive global shocks, including pandemics, financial crises and two world wars,” she said.

“The name of that vaccine is human rights.”

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“Covid-19 has shone a stark spotlight on our failure to uphold those rights to the best of our ability, not just because we couldn’t, but because we neglected to, or chose not to,” she said.

Bachelet decried that a number of governments had failed to act quickly and decisively enough to halt the spread of the virus, while others refused to take it seriously, or were not transparent about its spread.

“Astoundingly, even to this day, some political leaders are still playing down its impact, disparaging the use of simple measures such as wearing masks and avoiding large gatherings,” she said.

“Politicising a pandemic in this way is beyond irresponsible — it is utterly reprehensible,” she said.

Bachelet especially lamented widespread efforts to undermine a science-based approach to the crisis.

“Conspiracy theories and disinformation have been sown and allowed — or encouraged — to thrive,” she said.

“These actions have plunged a knife into the heart of that most precious commodity: trust.”

She stressed the need to combat “narrow nationalistic responses” to crises like the pandemic, but also climate change, since they “simply undermine collective recovery.”

If we are unable to do better, she said, “especially with regard to climate change, 2020 will simply be the first step on the road to further calamity.” — AFP