Today members of Congress joined health, labor, faith and development leaders in a press conference urging President Joe Biden to deliver on his pledge to remove intellectual property barriers that limit access to COVID-19 vaccines, treatments and diagnostic tests and prolong the pandemic by securing a waiver at the World Trade Organization (WTO) Ministerial starting next week. A meaningful WTO waiver that can facilitate the necessary scale-up in production will only be agreed if the Biden administration applies maximum diplomatic and political pressure to make it happen, the groups said.
The international community must urgently ease existing financial restrictions on Afghanistan that are blocking the provision of healthcare, food and other essential services, and expedite delivery of scaled-up humanitarian assistance to avert a mounting crisis that threatens the lives of tens of millions of people, said Amnesty International.
In response to today’s not guilty verdict in the Kyle Rittenhouse trial, Paul O’Brien, executive director of Amnesty International USA, said:
“Today, Kyle Rittenhouse walks free after arming himself, shooting, and killing two people at Black Lives Matter protests in Kenosha, WI in August 2020. The painful reality is that our country’s criminal justice system — and our society — is predicated on white supremacy and anti-Black racism.
