If your social media feed or city streets were flooded with calls to #EndThePandemic once and for all, then you’re familiar with our Global Week of Action.
From 15-22 January, ONE, our dedicated Global Activists, and our partners called on leaders of rich countries to finally make 2022 the year they end the pandemic and vaccinate the world.
Here’s what happened.
Taking over billboards and social media
All week long ONE and it’s partners took over billboards in France, London and Berlin, plastered...
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Money, money, money: The world’s 10 richest men made trillions during the pandemic. They doubled their fortunes, at a rate of $15,000 every second. Some have chosen to do good – the Gates Foundation and the Wellcome Trust pledged $300 million to CEPI (CEPI is seeking a total of $3.5 billion to tackle the minor issues of pandemic response and preparedness). But even if each of the 10 richest men gave away 99.9% of their current wealth, they would still be richer than 99% of...
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Lost generation: Uganda’s schools reopened after nearly two years of COVID-19 closures – the longest in the world. More than 50% of students stopped learning as a result. One-third of students are expected to stay out of school, instead working to support their families. And many teachers have been lost to other professions. The situation is similarly dire in South Africa, where at least 775,000 students have dropped out and teen pregnancies have increased by 60%. The changing nature of the virus means it...
As children across Africa return to school this week, they might find a very different landscape to the one they left behind before the pandemic. Classroom sizes in some schools will be smaller due to high dropout rates, especially among adolescent girls.
COVID-19 has shut an entire generation in Africa out of the education system. Millions of children in low- and middle-income African countries will not return to schools as they reopen due to a variety of reasons. That includes...
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Model behavior: A new COVID vaccine is on the block – and the US scientists behind it decided to make it available to the world (read: no patents, no-frills tech transfer, and a round of applause from us to the makers, Texas Children’s Hospital and Baylor College of Medicine). Production is underway in India under the drug name CORBEVAX, and its inventors speculate that it will soon reach more people in middle- and low-income countries than those donated by G7 nations. It’s...
Did you know that #Omicron and Transformers (yes, those Transformers) have a lot in common?
Omicron is the pandemic’s latest threat against us. And by hoarding the supply of COVID-19 vaccines, world leaders are allowing variants like Omicron to continue to grow and spread. That means Omicron may be the latest variant to spread around the world — but it certainly won’t be the last.
Learn more and demand that leaders of rich countries share vaccine doses to end the pandemic...
In my lifetime I’ve had the privilege and honor to meet American presidents and leaders from all over the world, but Archbishop Desmond Tutu commanded more authority than any person I have ever known. His was borne not of faith, nor of religious hierarchy or the status of the positions he held; it emerged from who he was.
He was fierce, and never hesitated to call out injustice, whether to comrade or foe. He was fair – always willing and...
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Africa rising: COVID-19 cases are surging across Africa, with many countries experiencing a fourth wave amidst the Omicron variant. In Nigeria, the number of daily confirmed infections over the past week jumped from 76 to 451, following the discovery of the new variant in the country. Both South Africa and Kenya surpassed the WHO high-risk threshold of 5% for COVID-19 cases, with South Africa exceeding a 30% positivity rate and Kenya at 6.5%. However, despite the surge of COVID-19 infections in Africa, the number...
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) allocated $650 billion worth of Special Drawing Rights (SDRs) to its members in August, and activists are pressuring rich nations to channel, or recycle, their SDRs to low- and middle-income countries to help them recover faster from the COVID-19 pandemic. Advocates for the recycling of SDRs argue that low- and middle-income countries, especially in Africa, should benefit more from the new SDR allocation as their economies have been badly battered by the pandemic. As a result...
In Cape Town, the team at the Women’s Legal Centre are champions of women’s rights and staunch defenders of women when they’re at their most vulnerable. They are at the forefront of changing South Africa’s legal landscape. And as South Africa’s only African feminist law centre for women’s rights, they are making huge strides, especially for black women.
“We call it ‘feminist activist lawyering,’” Seehaam Samaai, the centre’s director, said. “It’s very important for us to ensure that the courts,...