Emphasizing that in the year 2020, the world has faced one of its worst economic crises in modern history due to the impact of the novel coronavirus pandemic. The said pandemic has a universal effect, with tens of millions of infected individuals and over a million deaths.
Bearing in mind that Covid-19 also affected the world social-economically directly and indirectly. The direct influence involves millions of people falling ill, including essential workers, policy-makers, medical professionals, and others. The indirect impact stemmed from shutdowns, lockdowns, and quarantine orders issued by governments to tame the pandemic (Shanthakumar et al., 2020).
Noting further that state actors have shuttered businesses, schools, offices, and factories to mitigate the pandemic’s spread and protect multiple individuals from its dangerous influence. The combination of the direct and indirect effects of Covid-19 reduced productivity of numerous economic sectors and increased poverty and financial inequality throughout the world (Nicola et al., 2020).
Keeping in mind that the governments of the world and international organizations have the onus to protect the global citizenry from the adversities caused by catastrophes such as the Covid-19 pandemic in order to reduce human suffering and preserve the modern way of life.
- Strongly urges the United Nations Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) to organize efforts to mitigate the socio-economic impact of Covid-19 on the global population;
- Further recommends to coordinate the actions from the perspective of subsistence, access to healthcare, education, and economic inequality;
- Proclaims the ECOSOC to commence a program for the mitigation of the impact of Covid-19 on the world population with a focus on the citizens of emerging nations;
- Further recommends to create a plan to address the developed nations that have been inordinately affected by the pandemic.
Ensuring the continued subsistence of the affected population and limiting social disruption to:
- establish a fund where developed nations, developing countries, and private-sector players can pool resources for assisting people who have been adversely influenced by the pandemic
- offer regular financial assistance to families that have lost their jobs or livelihoods because of the crisis
- provide vocational training programs to these families as the situation improves;
Ensuring the continuation of fundamental amenities such as healthcare and education by:
- providing available medical services in the areas adversely affected by the pandemic
- addressing both Covid-19 related illnesses and other diseases since the burden created by the crisis has affected many spheres, including preventative care and treatment for chronic health conditions (Wang et al., 2020)
- emphasizing that education is one of the fundamental needs in the modern world, which supports the necessity to mitigate the disruption to primary education in the areas that have suffered the most (Nicola et al., 2020);
Expresses its hope that all nations with developed economies and financial capability will contribute generously to the ECOSOC fund, which will allow:
- ensuring transparency and equitability in the application of the fund for the good of the world and combating the Covid-19 pandemic;
- reviewing the mitigation of Covid-19 consequences by the ECOSOC within the next 45 days to check on progress and develop further recommendations to address the remaining challenges.
References
Nicola, M., Alsafi, Z., Sohrabi, C., Kerwan, A., Al-Jabir, A., Iosifidis, C., Agha, M., & Agha, R. (2020). The socio-economic implications of the coronavirus pandemic (COVID-19): A review. International Journal of Surgery (London, England), 78, 185-193.
Shanthakumar, S. G., Seetharam, A., & Ramesh, A. (2020). Understanding the socio-economic disruption in the United States during COVID-19’s early days. Proceeding of ACM Conference, 1-5.
Wang, M. L., Behrman, P., Dulin, A., Baskin, M. L., Buscemi, J., Alcaraz, K. I., Goldstein, C. M., Carson, T. L., Shen, M., & Fitzgibbon, M. (2020). Addressing inequities in COVID-19 morbidity and mortality: Research and policy recommendations. Translational Behavioral Medicine, 10(3), 516-519.