Remarks by H.E. Mr. Abdulla Shahid, President of the 76th session of the United Nations General Assembly
22 September 2021
President Joseph R. Biden,
Excellencies,
It is an honour to join you today.
I understand that time is in short supply, so I will be brief and to the point.
Put simply: we have the means at our disposal to vaccinate the entirety of the human race, multiple times over.
With thanks to science, we have multiple proven vaccines.
We have the know-how and capacities to manage large-scale logistics.
And we have the shared commitment to be rid of this pandemic for good.
Only we are responsible for the inequity that has permeated vaccine access. Only we are responsible for the prolongation of this pandemic.
If COVID-19 has shown us anything it is that multilateralism is our only path forward.
No country can afford to go it alone.
Like climate change, this pandemic cares nothing for our borders or the size of our GDP. These threats are planetary, they affect all of us and they will only go away when we all act together, as one.
We can say now with absolute certainty that the phrase ‘no one is safe until we are all safe’ is a simplified way of saying ‘multilateralism’.
Excellencies. I firmly believe that collectively we can work together towards universal vaccination and reach global vaccination goals.
These vaccines promise our single greatest defence against COVID-19; our greatest opportunity to reopen the world; and our greatest asset in the race against variants.
As President of the UN General Assembly, I will host a high-level event Towards Universal Vaccination: From Hope to Action.
We will work to shore up political support for COVAX and the multilateral mechanisms for vaccine supply and distribution.
We will identify collective actions to quickly close the gap and ensure universal access to vaccines.
And we will address the challenges in supply and distribution.
I trust and hope that we can work together to make this a reality in leaving no one behind.
Thank you.
We can say now with absolute certainty that the phrase ‘no one is safe until we are all safe’ is a simplified way of saying ‘multilateralism’.
