The United Nations denounces use of the pandemic to stoke racism and violence

Geneva/New York, February 22 – UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres denounced in a blistering speech to the Human Rights Council in Geneva that the coronavirus pandemic has been used by groups and powerful people to incite racism and violence.

He urged the council as it opened its annual meeting to urgently fight the blight of racism, discrimination and xenophobia and “the most pervasive human rights violation of all: gender inequality. These evils are fed by two of the deepest wells of injustice in our world: the legacy of centuries of colonialism; and the persistence, across the millennia, of patriarchy.”

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UN chief: Pandemic used to stoke racism, xenophobia and inequality; calls for action to defend human rights