The world is racing to find safe and effective vaccines against COVID-19, and world leaders are making deals for promising COVID-19 vaccine candidates and speaking about the need for vaccine equity. As this happens, we want them to know that we’re watching. That’s why in September, ONE launched the Vaccine Access Test.
The Test provides the framework to answer one question: Are the actions taken by world leaders and players moving us closer to or further from an equitable outcome...
COVID-19
Last week, G20 Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors decided to extend the debt service suspension initiative (DSSI) until the end of June 2021, accepting that more must be done to help the world’s most vulnerable countries. They also agreed to a new initiative that would go further on debt relief – including by bringing private-sector creditors into the fold.
The World Bank also announced that it will consider providing more emergency COVID-19 relief, although, unfortunately, it would not suspend...
Francis Musyoka, a ONE EA Champion in Kenya, is sharing why empowering girls in Kilifi County, Kenya is important and the steps local leaders can take to do so.
The issue of gender equality and women’s empowerment has been a top agenda for countries and leaders across the globe. Whilst gender inequality is widespread, organizations such as ONE are fighting to ensure that the world understands the importance of promoting the girl-child in the socio-economic world and take action.
Women and...
COVID-19 has presented many new social and economic challenges, and is exacerbating already existing ones. One such challenge is global poverty. Right now over 700 million people live in extreme poverty worldwide, which is defined as living on less than US$1.90 per person per day.
Right now, the pandemic is threatening to push up to 115 million people into poverty in 2020 alone. That would raise global totals significantly.
As we mark the International Day for the Eradication of Poverty on...
Megan Gieske is a storyteller and photographer based in Cape Town, South Africa.
On Steve Biko Street, taxi horns blare and horse carts trot down Gugulethu’s busy main road. But over a high wall, a woman has grown an oasis of green in the highly-developed, urban landscape of Gugulethu, where almost 100,000 share just 6.42²km (or 2.5² miles) of land.
It’s here in Gugulethu where Nomonde Kweza, or “Mama Nomonde,” is reclaiming her agricultural heritage, and teaching her community to support...
Falling on 11 October, International Day of the Girl Child is a United Nations day that brings attention to “girls’ rights and the unique challenges girls face around the world.” Empowering young girls early in life can give them the “potential to change the world — both as the empowered girls of today and as tomorrow’s workers, mothers, entrepreneurs, mentors, household heads, and political leaders.”
However, as we’ve seen with previous health crises, COVID-19’s lingering economic and social impacts on...
The World Bank predicts the greatest drop in remittances in recent history, with low-income developing countries set to receive US$110 billion less, due to COVID-19 in 2020.
Remittances, which are the cash flows sent home by migrant workers to help their families, are a huge source of finance for low- and-middle-income countries. Last year, these countries received 78% of the US$714 billion that were sent around the world. Global remittance flows were five times higher than official development assistance in...
It has been more than three months since Isaac Mutua, a Kenyan working in Durban, South Africa, sent money home to his family back in Kenya. Mutua, a renowned chef, lost his job after his employer closed down the restaurant where he worked following the COVID-19 lockdown measures in South Africa starting on 24 March.
Since 2015, Mutua has been sending $300 monthly to Nduta, his wife based in Kitengela, outside of Nairobi. His remittances have been their sole source...
To ensure that the world responds effectively to COVID-19 and the challenges it has presented, world leaders, companies, and individuals need to come together in a single response effort — a global pandemic of this magnitude demands a global response.
Finding an effective vaccine is a key part of a global response plan. But that is only half the battle.
After an effective vaccine for COVID-19 becomes available, world leaders must come together to ensure there is equitable access to a...
The COVID-19 pandemic has proven just how important strong health systems and both patient and healthcare worker safety is. With World Patient Safety Day falling on 17 September during a global health crisis, the gaps in our health systems are more apparent now than ever before.
At its core, World Patient Safety Day “calls for global solidarity and concentrated action by all countries and international partners to improve patient safety.” The current pandemic, unfortunately, has “unveiled the huge challenges health...