Prince El-Hassan calls for just, holistic approach to vaccine distribution
His Highness Prince El Hassan bin Talal, Honorary President of the World Refugee and Migration Council (WRM), said Saturday that justice must be achieved in providing and distributing coronavirus vaccines by moving away from politics to policies based on a holistic approach, which includes everyone without discrimination.
His Highness asked, during his participation in the seminar organized by the council entitled "Justice in the access of refugees and forced displaced persons to the vaccine," through video communication technology last week, "If the disease and the virus knows no boundaries, then why does this not apply to treatment?"
His Highness indicated that disasters are divided into four types: basic, predictable, deliberate and accidental, all of which apply to the pandemic that is affecting everyone worldwide today.
"We must benefit from the lessons we learned from this pandemic to develop for the better," said His Highness, stressing that the issue must be approached from a perspective that goes beyond the individual scope of a particular country to a regional and global scale.
His Highness added, "when talking about the East, regional integration and cooperation must be strengthened far from looking at the benefit of each country without the other, as we are all affected by each other," noting that if the situation continues as it is, he is afraid that the disparities will go beyond the rates of disease and death to more social and economic disparities, poverty, injustice and societal peace, calling for strengthening regional understandings about human dignity.
His Highness noted that Jordan is working hard to reconcile economic pressures and human needs to include the most affected communities.
The Prince referred to the need to achieve equality in vaccines, away from exclusion processes, pointing out that the Palestinian people were unable to obtain sufficient quantities of the vaccine compared to what the Israeli Occupation obtained.
He added, "The problem, as stated in the WHO report, is not the scarcity of vaccines but that the scarcity of vaccines is governed by restrictive supply conditions for life in the midst of a global pandemic- it is a morally bankrupt civilization."
The discussion focused on the need not to exclude the most vulnerable groups in the world from access to vaccines, with participants praising Jordan's approach to providing vaccines to refugees as an example to be followed by other host countries.
In their posts, they discussed the issue of the global response to the pandemic within the context of vaccine distribution, and the efforts made by many international institutions and programs to ensure equitable access to vaccines.
The session was moderated by the Canadian Ambassador and Permanent Representative to the United Nations in Geneva, Rosemary McCarney, and was attended by the Chair of the Center for International Governance Innovation in WRM, Lloyd Axworthy, the Director of Programs in the Regional Office for the Eastern Mediterranean at the World Health Organization (WHO) Rana Hajjeh, the former Jordanian Minister of Health, Saad Jaber, the head the Secretariat of the Independent Panel for Pandemic Preparedness and Response (IPPPR), Anders Nordstrom, and the Director of External Relations at the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), Dominique Hyde.
