Friday, May 15, 2020

COVID-19 should be a wake-up call

 STAY HOME. WASH YOUR HANDS. WEAR MASK. KEEP SOCIAL DISTANCE.

The problem is that in at least two of the warnings: a staggering 3.0 billion people worldwide have no water to wash their hands and over 1.8 billion people have no adequate shelter—or homes to go to.

“The poorest people in the world are being left to face the COVID-19 pandemic alone,” says WaterAid, “with not even the most basic defence — clean water and a bar of soap”.

In 2018, says Habitat, the European Federation of National Organisations Working with the Homeless reported that homelessness had skyrocketed across the continent.

And in the United States, 500,000 people are currently homeless, 40 per cent of whom are unsheltered. In a locked-down New York city, the homeless have virtually taking over empty subway cars while turning subway stations into homeless shelters – even as City authorities are physically driving them out to the streets, with no homes to go to.
Pedro Conceição, Director of the Human Development Report Office at UNDP, told IPS  that more than 40 percent of the global population does not have any social protection and more than 6.5 billion people around the globe – 85 percent of the global population – still don’t have access to reliable broadband internet, which limits their ability to work and continue their education. 

According to the UN World Economic Situation and Prospects (WESP) mid-2020 report, released May 13, the pandemic will likely cause an estimated 34.3 million people to fall below the extreme poverty line in 2020, with 56% of this increase occurring in African countries,
An additional 130 million people may join to the ranks of people living in extreme poverty by 2030, dealing a huge blow to global efforts for eradicating extreme poverty and hunger.

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