The 46 Regular Session of the UN Human Rights Council was held in Geneva on February 22 – March 23, 2021. Professor Dai Ruijun, a research fellow at the International Human Rights Law Department of CASS Institute of International Law and a council member of China Foundation for Human Rights, was invited to attend the session and give an online speech at the general debate under agenda item No. 3.

In the speech, Professor Dai pointed out that the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic threatens almost all human rights, especially the right to health and the right to life. However, some countries not only failed to take appropriate measures for the prevention and control of the pandemic, but also ignored the lives of their own people, incited racial hatred, and even stigmatized other countries.

The global crisis requires global solidarity. But at the beginning of the pandemic, some countries scrambled for pandemic prevention materials, some even withdrew from the WHO, completely ignoring their international obligations. Although vaccines have brought hope to the people, the problem of extreme inequality in distribution soon emerged.

While rapidly containing the pandemic, China has provided extensive humanitarian assistance to other countries. So far, it has provided vaccine assistance to nearly 70 countries.

Professor Dai called on the most developed countries to earnestly fulfill their international obligations and abandon vaccine "nationalism", so as to enable the world to recover from the pandemic as soon as possible.