Dear Editor,
I wish to highlight four areas in which world governments have failed. They include the fight against domestic terrorism, the COVID-19 pandemic, climate change, and poverty. Domestic terrorism is defined by the Rand Corporation as, ‘Violence against the civilian population or infrastructure of a nation by citizens of that nation with intent to intimidate, coerce, and to influence national policy to achieve broad political goals.’ National security experts in the US claimed that the principal terrorist threat in America today is domestic terrorism. Extremists groups in the US like the Boogaloos, the Antifa, the Proud Boys, Three Percent and QAnon, among others, have recently risen to prominence.
According to the Global Terrorism Index 2020, ‘One of the more worrying trends in the last five years is the surge in far right political terrorism. In North America, Western Europe and Oceania, far right attacks have increased by 250 percent since 2014 with deaths increasing by 709 percent over the same period. There were 89 deaths attributed to far right terrorism in 2009, with 51 of those occurring in the Christ Church mosque attacks in New Zealand. There have been over 35 far-right terrorist incidents in the West every year for the past five years.’ We in Guyana have had our own experiences during the crime spree period from 2002 to 2006.
Failure number two is reflected in the statement by UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres who, on the occasion of the COVID-19 death toll reaching two million, pointed out, “The pandemic has been made worse by the absence of global coordination.” Guterres went on to stress, “In the memory of those two million souls the world must act with far greater solidarity”. “The greater solidarity” that Guterres called for was the scramble by rich countries to purchase and hoard huge amounts of vaccines, with scant regard to the needs of poorer nations who can ill afford the high cost of the vaccine. It is hoped that the incoming Biden administration will return the United States to its rightful place at the WHO.
The third failure is Climate Change. Twenty-nine years after the Rio Summit and the adoption of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) followed by the Kyoto Protocol and the Paris Agreement in December 1997 and December 2015 respectively, the world’s governments are yet to take decisive steps to curb the emission of greenhouse gases that contribute to long term global warming and other threatening climatic changes. World governments have a commitment to keep global temperature to 1.5 degrees Celsius.
It is hoped that the upcoming 26th Session of the Conference of the Parties (COP) to the UNFCC scheduled to take place in Glasgow in the UK in November this year will, according to the UNFCC Executive Secretary, “…finish the work that COP25 was unable to conclude – setting out the rules for a carbon market between countries and that countries will up their ambitions expressed in enhanced nationally determined contributions.” The Biden administration’s decision to return to the Paris Agreement will constitute a shot in the arm for enhanced global negotiations.
The fourth failure is in the area of poverty and, in his book ‘The End of Poverty’ Jeffrey Sachs states, ‘The time to end poverty has arrived, although hard work lies ahead.’ Sachs identified nine steps that are required to win the war against poverty; he went on to add that, ‘Collective action through effective government provision for health, education, infrastructure, as well as foreign assistance when needed underpin economic success.’
Cheddi Jagan, in his call for a New Global Human Order, declared; ‘…a Development strategy for the eradication of poverty must be global and positive, not the South against North and the North against the South in interdependence, cooperation and partnership…’
2021 will be a defining year for global governance. It was these dire circumstances in which poor countries found themselves that prompted Jeffrey Sachs to recognize that ‘Our safety and prosperity depends at least on collective decision to fight disease, promote good science and action in unison to help the poorest of the poor.’
Yours faithfully,
Clement J. Rohee
