Skip to main content
Mexican president outlines global poverty reduction plan based on levy on rich countries, companies and individuals
Mexico's President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador addresses the United Nations Security Council, Tuesday, November 9, 2021

MEXICAN President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador has outlined an ambitious global poverty alleviation programme at the United Nations, warning that inequality has reached such levels that the world is sliding from “civilisation to barbarity.”

Mr Lopez Obrador said that the Covid pandemic had highlighted the gulf in power and wealth between the richest and the rest. Of all vaccination doses so far delivered, he pointed out, just 6 per cent had been provided to the World Health Organisation’s Covax distribution programme — the other 94 per cent having been sold by pharmaceutical companies.

“The spirit of co-operation is losing ground to the desire for profit and this is leading us to slide from civilisation into barbarity,” he said.

Donate to the Fighting Fund
Support the Morning Star
You have reached the free limit.
Subscribe to continue reading.
More from this author
Burnt cars remain in the middle of a street following the re
Features / 22 March 2025
22 March 2025
Ben Chacko asks NIZAR TRABULSI of the now banned Syrian Communist Party (Unified) to explain the country's turbulent, and violent, post-Assad scene
Delegates chat as they leave the Great Hall of the People af
Features / 22 March 2025
22 March 2025
From renewable tech to alternatives to the dollar, BEN CHACKO was encouraged by an optimistic meeting held by the China Media Group this week