The COVID-19 pandemic has been a stress test for the world, and has exposed our past mistakes and failures, Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, the President of Kazakhstan, told world leaders, during his address to the General Debate of the UN General Assembly on Wednesday, UN News reports.
Mr. Tokayev described a “critical collapse of global cooperation” in response to the crisis, as well as a lack of mutual confidence, a misunderstanding of international competition, trade wars, and sanctions which, he said, are undermining the prospects and hopes for a better world.
In a pre-recorded address to the Assembly’s virtual gathering of leaders, the Kazakh premier put forward a series of recommendations for dealing the pandemic at an international level.
These involved building a strong global health system; reaching a global agreement to protect global production and supply chains; increasing the World Health Organization’s capacity; and developing a network of regional centers for disease control and biosafety, as well as an international agency for biological safety, under the auspices of the UN.
Turning to what he descried as the “looming right behind the pandemic. One of them is the nuclear non-proliferation and disarmament crisis. Kazakhstan has been the role model of a responsible state by willingly abandoning its nuclear arsenal and shutting down world’s biggest nuclear test site.
However, continuous erosion of the non-proliferation regime leaves us in a dangerous position. Kazakhstan, therefore, expects all Member States to join its appeal to nuclear powers to take necessary and urgent measures to save the humankind from a nuclear disaster.
