Contributing Writers: Azad Ali, Tangerine Clarke,
Nelson King, Vinette K. Pryce, Bert Wilkinson
GENERAL INFORMATION (718) 260-2500
Caribbean L 12 ife, OCTOBER 15-21, 2021
By Yasmine Sherif
NEW YORK, Oct 14 2021
(IPS) – “Now is the time
for a stronger, more networked
and inclusive multilateral
system anchored in
the United Nations,” said UN
Secretary-General António
Guterres in his latest report
“Our Common Agenda.”
Indeed, there is a fork in the
road: we can either choose
to breakdown or to breakthrough.
Making this moral choice
and adopting this legal
imperative is more relevant
today than ever. The estimated
75 million children and
adolescents caught in emergencies
and protracted crisis
who suffer from disrupted
education has now dramatically
increased from 75 million
to 128 million due to the
pandemic. These vulnerable
girls and boys are now the
ones left furthest behind in
some of the world’s toughest
contexts, in Afghanistan, the
Middle East, Sub-Saharan
Africa and South America.
The current education
financing gap amounts to
US$1.48 billion for low- and
middle-income countries.
A gap that is increasingly
widening. In reviving the
multilateralism that is so
urgently needed, the UN Secretary
General will convene
a crucial, timely summit on
Transforming Education in
2022.
Despite all that we do,
despite all our investments,
we cannot win ‘the human
race’ unless we invest in
our fellow human beings,
now. It is the children and
young people impacted by
armed conflicts, climate-crisis
induced disasters, forced
displacement and protracted
crises who are in a sprint
against time, with their lives
and futures on the line.
We can no longer let “an
entire generation facing irreversible
losses be left behind
in the ruins of armed conflicts,
in protracted refuge,
on a planet whose climatechange
threatens us all,” as
the UN Special Envoy for
Global Education and Chair
of Education Cannot Wait’s
High-Level Steering Group,
The Rt. Hon. Gordon Brown
stated at the launch of Education
Cannot Wait’s Annual
Results Report: Winning the
Human Race, on 5 October
2021.
Education is the foundation,
the DNA and the absolute
prerequisite for achieving
all other Sustainable Human
Development Goals and Universal
Human Rights. Education
means investments in
the limitless possibilities of
human potential: the workforce,
governance, genderequality,
justice, peace and
security.
“Access to quality education
is key to addressing 21st
century challenges, including
accelerating the fight
to end poverty and climate
change,” says The LEGO
Foundation’s new CEO,
Anne-Birgitte Albrectsen, in
this month’s ECW Newsletter
high-level interview.
The time has come to
connect the dots between
individual human beings
and our collective humanity
and life on this planet.
We are now investing more
and more in Mother Earth
through significant climate
change financing. We must
now also invest in the human
beings populating the planet.
The correlation between the
positive impact of education
upon on all aspects of life on
the planet is indispensable
and inescapable.
Higher education levels
lead to higher concern for
the environment, and adaptation
to climate change
. If education progress is
stalled, it could lead to a 20%
increase in disaster-related
fatalities per decade.
Education is the one
unique investment that can
prevent conflict and forced
displacement
. High levels of secondary
school enrollment have been
shown to be associated with
an increase a country’s level
of stability and peace and
reduce crime and violence.
Every additional year of
schooling reduces an adolescent
boy’s risk of becoming
involved in conflict by 20
percent
. This effect reflects both
education’s economic benefits
and its role in social
cohesion and national identity.
Conversely, lack of education
often leads to political
disempowerment and regression
to group allegiances
. Across 22 countries in
sub-Saharan Africa, sub-national
regions with very low
average education had a 50
per cent probability of experiencing
the onset of conflict
within 21 years, while
the corresponding interval
for regions with very high
average education was 346
years.
Education is also the
most secure means of ending
extreme poverty
. For nations, each additional
year of schooling can
add up to 18 per cent to GDP
per capita. For individuals,
one more year of education
brings a 10 per cent increase
in personal income.
Education Cannot Wait
is a multilateral global UN
fund. Our Annual Results
Report of 2020, Winning
the Human Race, launched
at the UN in Geneva this
month, testifies to what we
can achieve when we think
and act multilaterally: when
we connect the dots, become
one, and act for all.
Through multilateralism,
we reached more than 29 million
crisis-affected girls and
boys in 2020 alone through
ECW’s COVID-19 emergency
response, working with our
strategic partners, including
host governments, our 21
donors, UNICEF, UNHCR,
UNESCO, UNDP, WFP, our
civil society partners, such as
INEE, Jesuit Refugee Service,
AVSI, Save the Children,
Plan International, Norwegian
Refugee Council, International
Rescue Committee
and numerous local civil
society organizations across
34 countries.
By Robert Pozarycki
“It is not about the money,
baby. It is about choosing what
is best for you.”
That’s what Kyrie Irving of the
Brooklyn Nets told the public in
an Instagram video Wednesday
explaining his decision not to
get the COVID-19 vaccine, as
the NBA has mandated. Irving’s
decision resulted in the Nets,
an expected NBA championship
contender, excluding the
seven-time all-star from their
plans for the season. Those plans
won’t change until Irving either
decides to get the vaccine, or
if New York City decides to lift
the COVID-19 restrictions that
prohibit unvaccinated individuals
from entering the Barclays
Center, where the Nets play their
home games.
In many ways, Irving embodies
the ridiculous resistance to
the COVID-19 vaccine amid a
pandemic that has killed more
than 700,000 Americans alone.
At the heart of the resistance is
not genuine concern about the
vaccine’s effects, but rather a
personal abdication of responsibility,
replaced by a severely
warped definition of the word
freedom.
We could cite the facts that
nearly 200 million Americans
have been vaccinated without
ill-effect; that close to 99 percent
of them avoided breakthrough
infections; that the vast majority
of those infected, hospitalized
and/or killed by COVID-
19 this year are unvaccinated
individuals; that the increasing
number of vaccinated people
helps reduce the spread of the
virus, even when it mutates into
a more contagious form like the
Delta variant.
But the “my body, my choice”
anti-vaxxer crowd does not care
about the facts; they care only
about themselves.
No person is an island on
their own. Every decision an
individual makes impacts those
around them in some way.
By choosing not to get vaccinated,
Irving continues to leave
himself at risk of a deadly virus.
That’s bad enough, but he’s also
leaving others at risk of getting
COVID-19 from him.
Irving’s in great shape, and if
he got COVID-19, chances are
that he would survive the infection;
he may wind up being completely
asymptomatic, but as we
all know, you may never suffer so
much as a sniffle from COVID-19
and still infect plenty of others.
Has Irving thought about
what would happen to those
around him if he inadvertently
infected them with COVID-19?
Has anyone who made this
so-called “personal choice” not
to get the vaccine thought for
a second about the people they
care about and interact with
every day?
And if they thought long and
hard about their loved ones and
friends, and still resist getting
the vaccine, what are they inadvertently
saying? That looking
out for number one means more
than looking out for them?
Selfishness throughout this
pandemic has caused needless
pain, suffering and death — and
sadly, that will continue as long
as self-serving resisters like Irving
fail to take this crisis seriously,
and avoid the vaccine.
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Winning the Human
Race, Together
Kyrie Irving’s vaccine stubbornness
embodies selfish resistance of
anti-COVID-19 vaxxers