COVID-19 effects on children – Joining the heads of the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), at a press conference on Tuesday, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus outlined that since the start of the COVID pandemic, understanding its effects on children has been a priority.
“Nine months into the pandemic, many questions remain, but we are starting to have a clearer picture. We know that children and adolescents can be infected and can infect others”, he said.
“We know that this virus can kill children, but that children tend to have a milder infection and there are very few severe cases and deaths from COVID-19 among children and adolescents.”
According to WHO data, less than 10 per cent of reported cases and less than 0.2 per cent of deaths are in people under the age of 20. However, additional research is needed into the factors that put children and adolescents at an increased risk.
In addition, the potential long-term health effects in those who have been infected remains unknown.
Referring to closure of schools around the world, which has hit millions of children, impacting not only their education but also a range of other important services, the WHO Director-General said that the decision to close schools should be a last resort, temporary and only at a local level in areas with intense transmission.
The time during which schools are closed should be used for putting in place measures to prevent and respond to transmission when schools reopen.
“Keeping children safe and at school is not a job for schools alone, or governments alone or families alone. It’s a job for all of us, working together,” added Mr. Tedros.
“With the right combination of measures, we can keep our kids safe and teach them that health and education are two of the most precious commodities in life,” he added.
A classroom is disinfected in Minia governorate, Egypt, as schools prepare to reopen after COVID-19 closures.
Guidance on reopening schools, while keeping children and communities safe
Although children have largely been spared many of the most severe health effects of the virus, they have suffered in other ways, said Director-General Tedros, adding that closure of schools hit millions of children globally.
Based on latest scientific evidence, the guidance provides practical advice for schools in areas with no cases, sporadic cases, clusters of cases or community transmission. They were developed with input from the Technical Advisory Group of Experts on Educational Institutions and COVID-19, established by the three UN agencies in June.
Schools provide critical, diverse services
Audrey Azoulay, UNESCO Director-General, also highlighted the importance of school, not only for teaching, but also for providing health, protection and – at times – nutrition services.
“The longer schools remain closed, the more damaging the consequences, especially for children from more disadvantaged backgrounds … therefore, supporting safe reopening of schools must be a priority for us all”, she said.
In addition to safely reopening schools, attention must focus on ensuring that no one is left behind, Ms. Azoulay added, cautioning that in some countries, children are missing from classes, amid fears that many – especially girls – may not ever return to schools.
Alongside, ensuring flow of information and adequate communication between teachers, school administrators and families; and defining new rules and protocols, including on roles of and trainings for teachers, managing school schedules, revising learning content, and providing remedial support for learning losses are equally important, she said.
“When we deal with education, the decisions we make today will impact tomorrow’s world,” said the UNESCO Director-General.
A global education emergency
However, with half the global student population still unable to return to schools, and almost a third of the world’s pupils unable to access remote learning, the situation is “nothing short of a global education emergency”, said Henrietta Fore, UNICEF Executive Director.
“We know that closing schools for prolonged periods of time can have devastating consequences for children,” she added, outlining their increased exposure risk of physical, sexual, or emotional violence.
The situation is even more concerning given the results from a recent UNICEF survey which found that almost a fourth of the 158 countries questioned, on their school reopening plans, had not set a date to allow schoolchildren back to the classrooms.
“For the most marginalized, missing out on school – even if only for a few weeks – can lead to negative outcomes that last a lifetime,” warned Ms. Fore.
She called on governments to prioritize reopening schools, when restrictions are lifted, and to focus on all the things that children need – learning, protection, and physical and mental health – and ensure the best interest of every child is put first.
And when governments decide to keep schools closed, they must scale up remote learning opportunities for all children, especially the most marginalized.
“Find innovative ways – including online, TV and radio – to keep children learning, no matter what”, stressed Ms. Fore.
Before he was a journalist and a novelist, before he was a globe-trotting war correspondent and a historian with an eye for ordinary people that led extraordinary lives, Scott Anderson was a child of the Cold War. His father worked for the State Department, which took the Anderson family to South Korea, Taiwan, and Indonesia. All three countries were located on the new fault lines of the geopolitical struggle between the United States and the Soviet Union, anti-communism and communism, the “Yanks” and the “Reds.”
As a kid, Anderson watched his father grow disillusioned with his country’s crusade against communism and the folly of the Vietnam War. But Anderson himself didn’t fully grasp the contradictions, hubris, and stupidity of the American empire’s obsession with anti-communism until the spring of 1984, when he watched a young woman’s body dumped and retrieved with grim efficiency by a group of soldiers on a side street in San Salvador, the capital of El Salvador. At the time, the Reagan administration was backing the right-wing Salvadoran government in its war against leftist rebels, yet another front in the anti-communism campaign. The incident planted a simple question in Anderson’s mind: How had it come to this?
In his absorbing new book The Quiet Americans: Four CIA Spies at the Dawn of the Cold War — A Tragedy in Three Acts, Anderson answers that question by zeroing in on a critical juncture in time, the dawn of the Cold War from 1944 to 1956, and on four spooks who not just witnessed but shaped history during that period of time. It would be too on the nose to say Anderson’s book reads like Graham Greene’s classic The Quiet American, but Anderson masterfully weaves together the lives of Frank Wisner, a genteel Southerner who climbs the ranks of the CIA only to fall into despair and take his own life after the U.S.’s betrayal of revolutionaries in eastern Europe; Ed Lansdale, a CIA legend who has been called “the American James Bond” and the “T.E. Lawrence of Asia”; Peter Sichel, a German Jewish refugee who traded currency on the black market to fund covert U.S. operations across Europe; and Michael Burke, a black-ops specialist who directed commando operations behind the Iron Curtain. Each man would meet a different fate, but taken together they capture in vivid detail the early days of the CIA and the origins of the Cold War.
But The Quiet Americans book is more than a real-life le Carré tale. By focusing on the post-World War II period and the critical early days of the Cold War, Anderson’s story raises questions about the rise of American empire and how the trajectory of the 20th and 21st century could have looked so much differently. “If FDR had lived even another year, probably what happened in Eastern Europe would have looked quite a bit different,” Anderson tells Rolling Stone, referring to the upheaval on the European continent after World War II. “I think that Stalin would have responded to FDR. Again, this is a great what if?”
This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.
Rolling Stone: I’ve read so many end-of-the-Cold-War stories and end-of-World-War-Two stories. But with this time period from 1944 to 1956, I found myself absorbing the history as much as the characters and their stories. How did you come to zero in on this period in not just American history but world history? Scott Anderson: As I say at the beginning of the book, I’m very much a product of the Cold War. It was something I spent a lot of time thinking about growing up. And then seeing the residue of it in war reporting in the ’80s and ’90s. When did it all start to go south? When did all this get locked into place where there was this stalemate that went on forever and that I think is currently damaging to an American standing around the world?
I was reading some books about FDR while World War II was going and this idea that this was going to be the end of the age of empires, the dismantling of the British and the French empires, and that America was going to be this this kind of beacon of freedom and the spreader of democracy around the world. And then by the early ’50s, with the CIA knocking over the regimes in Guatemala and in Iran, there was an incredible turnaround in this 12-year period.
Did you have any of these globe-trotting larger than life characters in mind when you picked this time period? I always want to write history that focuses on people who are at the front lines or the players in the field rather than the generals or diplomats. When you’re talking about the Cold War, the people on the front lines were spies, which kind of works out. I’d rather write about spies than accountants. I’d heard of Wisner and I’d heard of Ed Lansdale. If you read much at all about Vietnam stuff, Lansdale is pretty prominent. But the other two [Sichel and Burke] I’d never heard of. I looked at, I don’t know, 20, 25 different CIA agents through this period. And invariably there were a lot of guys who did cool stuff for a while, but then went to the State Department or were sitting in the embassy somewhere. Or I couldn’t find any paper trail for them. And I really needed that.
And so out of all these people I looked at, I ended up with exactly these four. With Peter Sichel, he’s kind of like finding the proverbial chest of letters in the attic sort of thing. He’s still alive, still incredibly sharp, the last surviving member of this generation of the early CIA guys. And had been very prominent. In fact, I probably did eight or nine interviews with him. So he was a real find. It was kind of a treasure hunt.
What I found so fascinating about Frank Wisner is his evolution over the course of the book, from a true believer and early CIA booster to, in the case of Eisenhower and the “new look” policy, a cautionary voice or a skeptic. The guy asked, “Is this right policy? What are we getting ourselves into?” I don’t think you could put Wisner in a novel. He starts out as this gung ho guy, the Mighty Wurlitzer he creates, and he just wants to start fires everywhere. He’s this deeply emotional guy and he really takes this stuff personally. And I think he just sees coming over his desk the endless list of disasters and agents disappearing and being executed, he really did change.
The incredible irony with the Hungarian Revolution is here, finally, is the thing that he’s been fighting for the last 10 years. And just the irony that he’s in Europe when it happens, he goes down to the border. He sees all the refugees pouring across the border. And has a complete emotional collapse that he never really recovers from.
Along with Lansdale, he is probably the best known because he was so prominent in the early CIA. And most people think of him as just like I said earlier, this is rabid right wing anti-communist, but the Eisenhower people scared him. And by then he had seen all these operations just fail. And I think he started thinking we have to approach this in a different way. And, of course, he wasn’t listened to.
You bring an interesting background and experience to in this case a work of history, being a journalist, foreign correspondent, war correspondent who has written extensively from the places that you also write about decades, generations earlier in this book and obviously in your book Lawrence in Arabia. How do those things interplay? I suspect that even more than the war reporting the fact I grew up overseas and I didn’t spend any time in the States until I was a teenager, in a funny way, gave me not an outsider’s perspective but a semi-outsider’s perspective on this country.
In thinking of war, I can think back to the very first war I went to, which was in 1983 in Beirut, and it was just before the Marine barracks there got blown up. I was there about a month before that. The American troops on the ground were getting shot at already. A few had been killed. And I remember standing out in front of the American embassy in Beirut that had been destroyed a few months earlier with a massive truck bomb. There was a 19 year old soldier — about my age — sitting on top of a tank in front of the American embassy. We just got talking and he said, “Can I ask you a question? Why are we here?”
He had no clue why they were there or what in fact their mission was. Not to take anything away from him but I doubt he could have found Beirut on a map. He was just some kid out of Kansas or something. And I’ve seen that again and again with American troops around the world that they really don’t understand why they’re where they are or what they’re supposed to be doing. Again, it goes back to this notion that we’re coming in to liberate people. And I think these poor bastards in the field are constantly surprised why the locals are putting IEDs on them or shooting at them. That’s not true with the British and the French and former imperialists. They seem to have a much better sense of well, we’re here, if the French go in to Indonesia to knock some heads because of an insurgency or a guerrilla war going on, they kind of know they’re doing it for their own self-interest or their country’s self-interest and they have this kind of imperial mandate to do it. And I think British likewise. But Americans, they just don’t think that way. The rest of the world thinks of them that way. But they don’t.
You write about the Red Scare and the very profound effect it had on U.S. foreign policy and on the institutions and people in The Quiet Americans. We all know who Roy Cohn is, Joe McCarthy, the black lists in Hollywood. But how did the Red Scare seep into America’s actions abroad? Out of the four people I write about, two of them were direct victims of the Red Scare. Frank Wisner and Peter Sichel were both at different times investigated for their possible leftist connections. And in Frank Wisner’s case, because of a relationship he’d had with this Romanian woman during the war and who then maybe had gone on to pass information to the Soviets afterwards. J. Edgar Hoover hated Frank Wisner. At one point, right when Eisenhower was coming to the presidency, it looked like Wisner was probably going to be chosen to be the next CIA director like clockwork right after the election, Hoover reopened investigation into Wisner, something that had been going on now for seven years. Until Wisner died in ’65, it was always hanging over his head. McCarthy gets all the credit because they named the era after him, but he was by and large J. Edgar Hoover’s front man.
So what you saw was the Red Scare play out on an international level or the level of foreign policy in two really significant ways. One was obvious: When you are in the height of the Red Scare, there’s no downside to if you in the CIA to launch an operation that was going to fail or that or that would overthrow a democratic regime. You can only run into trouble if it looks like you’re obstructing the American advance against the communists.
The great irony of the CIA’s covert operations around the world in the ’40s and ’50s was that the most successful aspects of it were the soft power ones — Radio Free Europe, Voice of America. This kind of battle for hearts and minds started in Europe as this kind of intellectual counter movement against the communists overseas. There was a program where we’d sent hundreds of thousands of books overseas and had these open libraries. They were sponsoring Langston Hughes and putting on Porgy and Bess in Berlin. It actually had a huge cultural effect. And all that disappeared during the Red Scare.
When I finished the book, I feel like there are many ways to describe it, but on one sort of more abstract level, I almost came away feeling like it was sort of counterintuitive in the history of American empire or at least a sort of American interventionism and meddling overseas. And that there was a moment, a sort of a crossroads, where the U.S. didn’t go down this path that it did. Did you set out to do that? I felt it kind of came about pretty organically. To my mind, there are two great turning points or potential turning points that where things could have gone the other way. One being FDR dying like three weeks before the end of the war. I do think that if FDR had lived even another year, probably what happened in Eastern Europe would have looked quite a bit different. I think that Stalin would have responded to FDR. Again, this is a great what if? I think he would have been more equipped to deal with what was happening in Eastern Europe. Where I think Truman was just like a deer in headlights. So for about two years, he still seemed to labor under this idea that Oh, maybe we can deal with the Soviets. Maybe our wartime alliance can still be repaired until finally in 1947, he comes out with the Truman Doctrine, he starts the CIA, but at that point it’s too late. All of Eastern Europe is essentially sewn up at that point.
I think the other great turning point is around the time of Stalin’s death and the Hungarian Revolution. There are probably three or four times, culminating in the Hungarian Revolution, when the Kremlin was sending out peace feelers to the West. They were the ones who started talking about peaceful coexistence. And every time, the Eisenhower administration, led by John Foster Dulles, spurned them. And so I think that’s the second great turning point to me, and you really see it in the Hungarian Revolution where, on one day, Khrushchev decides, We have to let Hungary go. We can’t fight back. We’re going to liberalize all of Eastern Europe. Basically, he was talking about what Gorbachev did 33 years later. And then in one day, he flips around and thinks to himself, “Well, if the Americans were going to do anything about Hungary, they would have done it by now.” Then from that time, you see Khrushchev changing and he becomes more and more hard line. And so the Cold War goes on for another 33 years.
Another key turning point in the future course of Middle Eastern history is the overthrow of Mosadegh in Iran, which you write about. I always come back to the what if with Iran. If we had not done that, what would Iran look like today? The astonishing thing to me is I’ve spent a lot of time in the Middle East is, you know, you look at old pictures of Iran or Egypt or, you know, anywhere in the Middle East, Iraq from the 1950s and they’re very westernized. America had huge influence in the 1950s in that region, as it did in a lot of other regions around the world.
All of that was squandered by the overthrow of Mosadegh, and the fact that for a number of years after the coup there the CIA bragged about their role. You know, this is a great triumph. And it was really probably not until like the mid-’70s when they said Oh, you know what? Maybe we shouldn’t be bragging about this so much. And then, of course, the shah is overthrown, you have a Islamic fundamentalist regime come in, and now, throughout that part of the world, though this is complicated by Israel, of course, you’ve seen this incredible swing back to this Islamic fundamentalism everywhere. Even in American satellites like Egypt, you would never have seen a woman in a burqa in Cairo 15, 20 years ago. You see it all the time now.
These things tend to have a second life and it’s a bad life from the standpoint of American power and prestige. History is weird, how a certain event comes along and how, only in hindsight, you can see what a crucial turning point it probably was.
On 16 September 1620, 102 passengers and 30 crew set sail on the Mayflower from Plymouth, England, heading for the New World. Making the hazardous journey were the Pilgrim Fathers, a group of separatists who were dreaming of a new life, one in which they could live according to their religious beliefs without interference.
But for historian Stephen Tomkins, the most interesting journey isn’t the 66 days they spent onboard the Mayflower crossing the Atlantic; it’s what came before that – hence the name of his new book on the subject, The Journey to the Mayflower.
He speaks to Christian Today about the struggle of the separatists and what drove them to risk life and limb by leaving not only the Church of England, but England itself, and heading out to the New World.
CT: Looking back to the time of the Protestant Reformation, Elizabeth I is not often thought of as one of the ‘bad guys’ – that title often goes to Bloody Mary! But is it more nuanced than that, because under Elizabeth, the Puritans were persecuted.
Stephen: Queen Elizabeth does emerge as one of the ‘bad guys’ in my book because she persecuted this movement, but to be fair to her, she was a world away from Bloody Mary in that she had absolutely no interest in persecuting people just because of what they believed.
Mary rounded up Protestants and had them killed just because they wouldn’t give up their Protestant faith. There’s no way Elizabeth was going to do that to Catholics, and she wasn’t even interested in what the radical Puritans believed. She wasn’t going to try to change their minds, and she certainly wasn’t going to kill them just for their beliefs.
Her problem was that the Church of England was a state Church, and England was a church state. The idea that almost all Protestants in England at this time had was that the Church was a whole Christian nation. That, I think, is key to understanding Elizabeth’s attitude towards the Puritans, and it is where the separatists differed: they believed that the Church was a voluntary community.
Elizabeth, like everybody else, thought that the Church should include the entire nation, every person in England, so that when the separatists left the Church of England and started their own churches, Elizabeth – like many others – would have seen this as almost the end of the world!
The separatists were feared much like Islamist fundamentalists or communists in later times, because by leaving the state Church, the separatists were tugging at a lose thread on the fabric of England and it looked like they were threatening to pull the whole thing apart.
CT: Did the Queen feel threatened by the separatists or was it about control?
Stephen: It was absolutely a question of power. In a sense, Elizabeth had two arms of government. There was the political system and there was the Church, and so through a hierarchy of bishops and the English parish system, she had some measure of control over what happened in every single village in England. In many ways, this network of local churches and bishops spread out across the country was essential to government.
When the separatists said ‘we’re not going to be part of your church’, that’s not simply about freedom of belief; it’s putting yourself outside the system. In a way, it was like saying: ‘we’re not going to be part of your government; you’re not going to govern us anymore.’ Almost as if they were setting up their own little country.
CT: This period in our history doesn’t cast the Church of England in a very positive light!
Stephen: Yes, it was the Church of England that these people were escaping from! Four hundred years ago, the Church of England was a bit of a monster in many ways – in this story at least. But to be fair, it is a completely different entity now. It doesn’t behave in the same way, it doesn’t think in the same way – certainly not about people that are outside of its fold. We’ve all had to get our heads around the fact that we have to agree to disagree on a lot of things!
CT: What was the attitude of Church leaders at the time towards the separatists? Were Church of England clergy preaching against them in the pulpit?
Stephen: Yes, they were preaching against them and at this time, bishops employed constables – a kind of police force of their own – that they would send out to arrest the separatists, raid their meetings and even their houses, and take them to prison.
The Archbishop of Canterbury and the Bishop of London personally tried the separatists but they didn’t have the power to execute them. They could keep them in prison as long as they wanted to and they did this, causing many separatists to die in prison. Eventually the Archbishop of Canterbury persuaded the government to pass a law making separatism a felony and that was how he got the three leaders of the movement executed in 1593. That was very much the work of the Archbishop of Canterbury, so he is another ‘villain’ of my book!
CT: What was it about the Church of England that the separatists just couldn’t accept?
Stephen: The original reason they left was because of the great complaint that Puritans had in general with the Church of England – that it wasn’t reformed enough. The focal point for that was the fact that the ministers were still supposed to wear the priestly robes of Catholic tradition and they thought that the Reformation got rid of all that. They viewed it like going back to the old ways.
Their thinking was: there are no priestly robes in the Bible, our Church should be more biblical than that. The separatists were the ones among the Puritans who felt so strongly about this that they left the Church of England and set up their own churches. They were prepared to go through all that just because of the clothes the ministers were wearing.
The newly renovated Mayflower II, a replica of the original ship that sailed from England in 1620, sails back to its berth in Plymouth, Massachusetts, August 2020.(Photo: Reuters/Brian Snyder)
There were other complaints of course, like kneeling, the sign of the cross, and stained glass – basically anything that wasn’t mentioned in the Bible. I imagine a lot of Christians today not having a lot of sympathy for these attitudes, but on the other hand, once they had left the Church of England over the matter of the priestly robes, that then become much less of a focus for them.
What they started to realise was that the true difference between them and the Church of England was that for them the Church was a voluntary community, a people of God. It was for Christians, true believers, people who lived out their faith, and the Church had no business forcing people to join who didn’t want to, and no business punishing people who didn’t go to church.
They also thought the Church should be democratic; not ruled by a monarch who could determine what happened in every church in the country. They believed the Church was the people of God and they should listen to God for themselves, and decide among themselves how God was calling them to be.
To my mind, at least, although they did not start out for the best of reasons, who they ended up being, what they ended up advocating for and why they couldn’t go back to the Church of England are, I think, something quite prophetic.
CT: If we were to put ourselves back into the shoes of a separitist in England at that time, what would it have been like?
Stephen: The separatists were an underground movement so they would meet in their houses, caves, woods, fields, ships, pubs, and they worshipped in prison as well. They had an underground printing concern and wrote books in prison. They weren’t supposed to have pen or paper in prison but they still managed to write maybe a few in a year.
One of their books has survived actually written in the margins of someone else’s book. These manuscripts were smuggled out of prison and then taken to the Netherlands where they could be printed and then smuggled back into England again. Maybe 3,000 books a year were being smuggled by the separatists into England at this time.
So it was a serious resistance movement and underground operation. It reminds me of (Open Doors founder) Brother Andrew, ‘God’s smuggler’ smuggling Bibles into Eastern Europe in his VW Beetle.
For the separatists too, it was a very dangerous underground operation, except that it wasn’t the Bible they were smuggling but their own theological works.
And you have to remember that Elizabethan prisons were outlandishly unhealthy places. A lot of the separatists suffered and got ill in prison, and sadly died there.
CT: So it wasn’t an easy choice to become a separatist?
Stephen: No, and that’s why a lot of them ended up leaving the country and going to the Netherlands, where they enjoyed religious freedom. They weren’t persecuted there and so it was an improvement in many ways, but obviously they were migrants in another country with all the problems that entailed. They lived in poverty and had to learn new ways of making a living. It was a serious decision and not everyone managed to pursue it to the end. Some saw it through to the end and died for their faith; others did give up and go home.
Pilgrims John Carver, William Bradford and Miles Standish at prayer during their voyage to North America in the 1844 painting by Robert Walter Weir, Embarcation of the Pilgrims.(Photo: Architect of the Capitol)
CT: Was there a single event that prompted the Puritans to decide that they just couldn’t stay in England any more?
Stephen: People went at different times and for different reasons, but in terms of a single event, when separatism became a felony and the three separatist leaders were executed, it brought being an outlaw – which is what the separatists were – to a whole new level.
That was the point, really, when en masse a lot of them left the country. Their first attempt at settling North America was Newfoundland in Canada, but it didn’t work out and so they settled in the Netherlands instead. The Mayflower was actually their fourth attempt to colonise North America.
CT: By the time of the Mayflower, James I is on the throne. Had there been no improvement since the days of Elizabeth I?
Stephen: Sadly, there was no improvement. They had hoped for that when James I came to the throne but almost as soon as he became king, the Archbishop of Canterbury died and he replaced him with Richard Bancroft. This new Archbishop led the campaign not so much against the separatists but against Puritans remaining in the Church of England and drove them out. That led to a whole new wave of the separatist movement because they were literally driven out of the Church. Many of them went over to the Netherlands and then eventually to New England.
CT: We often focus on the journey of the Mayflower, but your book is called the Journey to the Mayflower. Why is that?
Stephen: For me, the real story is this underground movement in England that was driven eventually to the Mayflower, the ship that sailed to New England. But it was an awful lot of work just to get to that point and, as I said earlier, the Mayflower was actually their fourth attempt at settling in North America.
You have to remember that they were based in the Netherlands and so they had to send people to England to try and sort all these things out, like getting permission, getting land etc. There was all the paperwork to sort out and of course they had to be very subtle about it; they wanted to be honest in their witness but at the same time not let on how radical they were, because they wanted the government’s support in joining the settlement in Virginia. This settlement was already established; if they had landed there as originally intended, they would have been joining an officially recognised colonial enterprise.
It was by accident and bad weather that they ended up in New England, where there was no English settlement at all and they just had to work it out for themselves. That’s why they were so independent and have gone down in American history, because it wasn’t an English government enterprise; it was the real Puritan spirit. They were out there on their own.
CT: In order to sail to the New World, they needed the help of investors. Why was that?
Stephen: These were not people who could afford to buy their own ship. It was just too expensive. Of course, to settle in North America, you’ve got to take a lot of stuff with you that you’re not going to find waiting for you on your arrival, like tools and weapons. That all costs money, so they needed the investment bankers of their day to put money into the enterprise.
That meant in theory being tied to these investors and working for them for however many years so that they would see a return on their investment, so sending back things like furs, skins, wood and any crops they could grow. That was supposed to be how it worked but, as I said, they ended up in New England sort of doing their own thing and having to start everything from scratch.
CT: Every step of the way, being a Puritan seems to have come at enormous personal cost. They seem to have been an incredibly determined group of people.
Stephen: Yes, and I think it’s really important to understand something that’s often missed out in this story: absolutely central to understanding what they did is that they believed they were called by God and were being led to the promised land.
They believed they, as the people of God, were the new children of Israel. They looked to the Bible to see the patterns in how God dealt with Israel in order to understand their own lives, and that was why they left England for the Netherlands. They did that in the belief that God was calling them out of Egypt – out of England, this land of cruelty and slavery – across the sea to a new life.
In the end, the Netherlands didn’t turn out to be much of a promised land for them; life was really hard there. That’s when they thought about the Exodus story a bit more and how after Israel came out of Egypt, they had the 40 years in the wilderness. They decided that was where they were now in their own lives. They had left England – Egypt – and were in the wilderness, and that meant God still had another journey in store for them. So they crossed the Atlantic in the conviction that God was leading them on.
It’s hard to overstate just how crushing it would have been for them to go back to England because in the Exodus story the people who want to go back to Egypt were the ones who were turning their backs on God and his deliverance. They would have viewed returning to England like turning their back on their faith. They knew they had not reached the place God had in store for them; they couldn’t go back and yet they couldn’t stay where they were.
So everything about their faith told them that God was leading them on, forwards, and even though it was a terrifying, dangerous, daunting journey to cross the Atlantic, they were convinced that it was God who was calling them to do it, to reach the promised land that God had in store for them.
… Union speech at the European Parliament in Brussels, Wednesday, … State of the European Union address to the EU legislators. Weakened … Union speech at the European Parliament in Brussels, Wednesday, … der Leyen told the European Union‘s legislature that …
BRUSSELS —
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said Wednesday that the United Kingdom cannot unilaterally change the EU-U.K. bilateral withdrawal agreement without destroying global trust in the country.
Insisting that chances for a future trade deal are slipping away by the day, von der Leyen told the European Union's legislature that plans by British Prime Minister Boris Johnson to renege on parts of the withdrawal agreement signed by both of them dimmed those hopes even further.
What's more, she insisted that Britain is throwing its good name to the wind by not respecting a deal it signed and approved last December.
"It cannot be unilaterally changed, disregarded or disciplined. This is a matter of law and trust and good faith," she said in her State of the Union address.
She rubbed it in by quoting from a 1975 speech by British conservative icon Margaret Thatcher.
"Britain does not break treaties. It would be bad for Britain, bad for our relations with the rest of the world and bad for any future treaty on trade," von der Leyen quoted from Thatcher.
Johnson has called his plan to unilaterally rewrite Britain's divorce deal with the EU an insurance policy against the bloc's unreasonable behaviour.
Johnson said a planned law designed to override portions of the Brexit withdrawal agreement he agreed to was needed because the EU might "go to extreme and unreasonable lengths" in its treatment of former member Britain.
Von der Leyen said, however, that the EU will always respect its signature -- "We will never backtrack on that."
The EU’s most powerful senior official unveiled plans to reboot the bloc’s battered economy with what is being dubbed a “green new deal.”
Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Commission, said the EU should significantly toughen its emissions-cutting target to at least 55% by 2030.
“I recognize that this increase from 40 to 55 is too much for some, and not enough for others,” she said in a speech to EU lawmakers in Brussels. “But our impact assessment clearly shows that our economy and industry can manage this.”
She suggested that 30% of the bloc’s €750 billion coronavirus recovery package should be raised through green bonds, which are financial instruments aimed at supporting climate-friendly projects.
The EU agreed the stimulus plan in July that will allow the European Commission to raise billions of euros on the global financial markets.
MEPs and EU governments would still need to agree to the plan.
Some countries argue such green targets are harder to meet because they rely on high-polluting energy sources such as coal.
Campaigners say 55% is not enough to hit the EU’s longer-term goal of climate neutrality by 2050.
“The Commission has very good arguments for a new goal of at least 55%,” German Environment Minister Svenja Schulze said in response to von der Leyen‘s speech.
Schulze said her EU counterparts would discuss adopting the measure at the end of September: “I hope we at these talks will come closer to an agreement.”
Bavarian lawmaker Georg Nusslein from the Christian Social Union, a sister party of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democrats, said the new climate strategy comes with “high risks” for German industry.
The EU’s climate goals should be met through “fair burden-sharing,” Nusslein was quoted by the DPA news agency as saying.
Germany is already “walking the fine line economically and socially responsible,” he added.
Coronavirus a chance for ‘EU to lead the way’
Speaking at the European Parliament in Brussels, the former German defense minister said that the coronavirus crisis presented the bloc with “a moment for the EU to lead the way.”
She urged EU governments to work on common health care policies, promising a biomedical research agency and a global summit.
Von der Leyen said the coronavirus pandemic had underlined the need for closer cooperation. “The people of Europe are still suffering,” she said.
The speech was set to be held at the body’s Strasbourg seat of the European Parliament but was moved to the Belgian capital after the French government designated the eastern city as a coronavirus “red zone.”
Von der Leyen warns UK
Von der Leyen made only a passing reference to Brexit because talks are being led by the EU’s chief negotiator Michel Barnier.
She warned Downing Street that it would fail to seal a trade deal with the EU if it tried to rewrite last year’s withdrawal agreement.
“With every day that passes, the chances of a timely agreement do start to fade,” von der Leyen said.
She stressed that the Brexit divorce treaty, agreed and ratified by both the UK and EU, “cannot be unilaterally changed, disregarded or disapplied.”
“This is a matter of law and trust and good faith,,” the EU chief said, recalling that British former-Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher said breaking treaties was “bad for Britain, bad for relations with the rest of the world and bad for any future treaty on trade. The comments drew an enthusiastic response from the Republic of Ireland’s Foreign and Defense Minister Simon Coveney.
EU chief urges bloc to do more on human rights
The Commission president attacked Poland’s government overs its “LGBT-free zones,” which she branded as “humanity free zones.”
“Breaches of the rule of law cannot be tolerated,” von der Leyen said.
On Monday, MEPs called for Poland’s conservative government to lose EU funding over its attack on LGBT+ people and rule of law record.
Von der Leyen told EU governments to work together on tackling the migration crisis, after a fire at a refugee camp in Greece left several people homeless.
“I expect all member states to step up, too,” she told the European Parliament. “Migration is a European challenge and all of Europe must do its part.”
Sustainability is a balancing act. This goes for every sector, but none more so than the livestock sector, one of Europe’s key focus areas in the EU Green Deal.
Roxane Feller is the Secretary-General of AnimalhealthEurope.
Repeating comments by Germany’s Agriculture Minister for Food and Agriculture Julia Klöckner during a July meeting of the European Parliament’s ENVI Committee meeting – “Organic farming isn’t the holy grail and conventional farming isn’t the devil. Organic farming must become more efficient and conventional farmers must become more sustainable. It’s an opportunity for us all to work together.” [taken from the English translation] – I can say that when it comes that desired balance for true sustainability, I couldn’t agree more.
When you take animal health as the pivotal point for livestock farming, the balancing act becomes a much easier task. Any well-established and practised animal health management plan will deliver on the three main pillars of sustainability.
Taking the social aspect first, any sustainable business should have the support of its employees and the community it operates in, as well as the support of the consumers it serves.
Social acceptance is growing in influence and due care must be taken to not let emotion and opinion outweigh what matters: securing a sustainable food supply at affordable prices that is respectful of both the environment and animal welfare.
Animal health is a prerequisite for good animal welfare. Veterinary vaccines and medicines help to prevent and treat animal diseases, as well as reduce pain and discomfort. And in terms of our shared health, healthy animals are the cornerstone of Europe’s high levels of food safety.
Careful animal health management focused on prevention also reduces the occurrence of bacterial infections, and therefore the need to use antibiotics.
Healthy animals also deliver on the environmental pillar. Efficiencies that are beneficial for our environment are most often created when herds or flocks benefit from good health. Innovative tools can be implemented by farmers which help with monitoring factors such as feed intake, weight, temperature, etc. assisting with more targeted management of animals both individually and as a group.
Healthy animals require fewer natural resource inputs like feed and water as they move through the production system, so excess need for such inputs can be avoided. Livestock can also consume crop residues and other by-products that could otherwise become an environmental burden as 86% of livestock feed is not suitable for human consumption.
Well-managed animals can also lead to a 30% decrease in greenhouse gas emissions according to the Food and Agriculture Organisation. And in terms of biodiversity, grazing animals help to maintain grasslands that act as important carbon traps and cannot be used to grow other foods.
And finally on the economic pillar, ensuring the viability of livestock farming is also linked to the creation of efficiencies. This means using the necessary animal health tools and services to reduce animal mortality and avoid any food or other product losses directly at farm level.
Taking parasite infections in sheep for example – which can also apply to other grazing animals – such infections can lead to losses in milk yield, along with slower growth, and even reduced wool production. So by ensuring accurate attention to the animals in their care, farmers can run their farms efficiently and sustainably.
There is not one sole example of a farming system that will deliver optimally on all three pillars of sustainability.
The animal health industry believes that sustainable livestock production systems are those where there are regular veterinary visits, good animal health management plans, use of preventive vaccines where possible, good biosecurity measures and housing, appropriate nutrition and careful attention to animal well-being, on both a group and individual basis.
In short, Animal Health Matters in all different farming systems, no matter the size, no matter the degree of inputs used. All means that support sustainable practices should be both included and incentivised via the EU Farm to Fork Strategy and its subsequent measures if we are to achieve the balance needed for a fair transition.
Progress made so far in Europe deserves recognition. This will go a long way in maintaining not only balance but the continuity of our food supply. Europe’s farmers are in a great majority heading towards senior years.
Eurostat figures state that only 11% of farm managers in the EU were under the age of 40 years in 2018.
So ensuring that all progress is recognised and that farmers can access all the tools they need to perform their job in a sustainable and rewarding manner is an important step in attracting new young farmers to agriculture and ensuring the vitality of Europe’s rural areas.
Just down the road from Belgrade’s historic city centre, gates open for trucks to pass to the banks of the Danube, where they dump raw sewage into Europe’s venerated river.
It’s not a secret operation, but rather a business nobody likes to mention in the Serbian capital — the only one in Europe to spew all of its unfiltered wastewater into the continent’s second-longest river.
A heavy odour rises as the brown stream of faeces flows into the waterway, a far cry from the colours that inspired Johann Strauss to write his famous waltz “On the Beautiful Blue Danube”.
For fishermen who live off the fruits of the Danube and the Sava rivers that join in a beautiful, broad confluence around Belgrade’s old fortress, this daily practice is “disastrous”.
“I want to cry, and nobody cares,” Dragoljub Ristic, a 59-year-old fisherman told AFP.
Around a third of Belgrade, a city of 1.6 million, has no connection to drainage systems and instead relies on the septic tanks that the trucks empty straight into the rivers.
The rest shunt their unprocessed waste into the river through around 100 sewage drains.
Roughly 190 million cubic meters of wastewater — or 60,000 Olympic-sized swimming pools — are poured into the rivers annually, according to estimates made by infrastructure minister Zorana Mihajlovic.
“No big city in Europe commits such a crime towards its rivers,” claims Belgrade Deputy Mayor Goran Vesic, who has called for a proper wastewater treatment system.
The Danube begins in Germany and snakes through nine other countries over 2,850 kilometres (1770 miles) before draining into the Black Sea.
A group of Austrian scientists in 2019 noted a “critical” presence of E. coli bacteria in Serbia’s strip of the river, which local experts say is a sign of the high levels of organic pollution.
If consumed, the bacteria can cause infections, said Igor Jezdimirovic, from the local NGO Environment Engineering.
Thanks to its sheer size and power, the Danube mostly manages to “cleanse itself”, said Bozo Dalmacija, a chemistry professor leading a water quality research team in Serbia.
For most of the year bacterial particles stay below 500 micrograms per millilitre, the level at which they pose a health hazard, he told AFP.
Those who spend their lives on the river say they have already seen it change, with a build up of waste shallowing out the riverbed.
While scientific studies are hard to come by, fishermen say the sewage has altered the variety of fish that end up in their nets.
Whitefish are harder to find whereas bottom feeders like catfish, which eat the waste, are more abundant.
“We have killed all our rivers, we will kill this one too,” lamented Mladen Jovic, a 59-year-old fisherman.
“The Danube is a very strong and powerful river that manages (the pollution), but it can’t do it forever,” he added.
Promises to purify
Serbia is an EU candidate country which hopes to join the bloc by 2025.
Its environmental record is a major obstacle, with the country needing a five billion euro investment to build the necessary eco-friendly infrastructure.
The country has already stated it will not be able to meet the demands, proposing an 11-year transition period after it joins the bloc.
“It can’t be done in five years. We are already late,” Dalmacija told AFP.
In late July, President Aleksandar Vucic announced that 70 municipalities around the country will get “water purifying plants and sewage systems”.
But there has been no news since, with the Ministry of Environmental Protection refusing to comment on the matter or clarify who would finance such a project.
“We can’t do that with our current budget,” said Dalmacija. “Maybe he (Vucic) has other information.”
It wasn’t the first such announcement. Belgrade’s deputy mayor pledged five years ago that a sewage system for the capital would be finished by 2020 — a deadline that has since been extended twice, to 2025 and recently to 2029.
In January, Belgrade authorities signed an agreement with the China Machinery Engineering Corporation (CMEC)to start work on a wastewater treatment plant for the city, but construction hasn’t started as Serbia is yet to allocate money in the budget.
Jezdimirovic, from the environmental NGO, is waiting to see real results.
“As the old Latins used to say — deeds, not words.”
(Photo: Pew Research Center)Family praying at home.
American teenagers and their parents tend to have a lot in common – though not quite as much as the parents may think as they share a religious identity, a new analysis of a Pew Research Center survey data shows.
It shows that most U.S. teens share the religious affiliation of their parents or legal guardians.
Protestant parents are likely to have teens who identify as Protestants, while Catholic parents mostly have teens who consider themselves Catholics, while the vast majority of religiously unaffiliated parents have teens who describe themselves as atheists, agnostics or “nothing in particular.”
Yet withing the broad Protestant category there are stark differences.
EVANGELICAL PROTESTANTS
Eight-in-ten parents who affiliate with an evangelical Protestant denomination have a teen who also identifies as an evangelical Protestant.
But among parents who belong to mainstream Protestant denominations such as the United Methodist Church, the Episcopal Church and the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), 55percent have a teen who identifies in the same way – and 24percent have an unaffiliated teen.
Among adults, women tend to be more religious than men, but this gap isn’t nearly as pronounced among teens. In the United States, for example, women are more likely than men to say religion is “very important” in their lives (60 percent against 47 percent), according to a 2014 Pew Research Center survey.
Adolescent boys and girls are equally likely to be religiously affiliated, say religion is very important in their lives, pray daily and say they regularly attend religious services. Furthermore, roughly six-in-ten teenage boys (58 percent) and girls (61 percent) say they have ever been in a religious education program.
Girls do stand out, however, on religious youth group participation: 57 percent say they have participated in a religious youth group, compared with 44 percen of boys who say the same.
Generally, U.S. teens attend religious services about as often as their parents.
The survey shows that 44 percent of U.S. teens say they go to religious services at least once a month, almost exactly the same as the share of their parents who say they attend monthly (43 percent).
Parents are more likely than teens to say religion is extremely very important in their lives.
When there are religious differences between adults and their 13- to 17-year-old children, however, it’s usually the teens who are less religious than the parents.
For instance, far fewer teens (24 percent) than parents (43 percent) say that religion is extremely important in their lives.
The survey also asked parents and teens about how important they think religion is in the other person’s life.
It found that, overall, most follow the same pattern.
For example, 73 percent of teens give the same answer as their parent about how important religion is to the parent, and 68 percent of parents give the same answer about how important religion is to their teen.
But among those who do not agree, parents are far more likely to overestimate the importance of religion to their teen than to underestimate it.
MORE IMPORTANCE FOR PARENTS
For example, among all parents who give a different answer than their teen does regarding the importance of religion to the teen, 69 percent think religion is more important in the life of their teen than their teen does.
And 29 percent believe it is less important to their teen than their teens says. Meanwhile, among all teens who give a different answer than their parent on the importance of religion in their parents’ lives, 43 percent overestimate how important religion is to their parent, while 55 percent underestimate it.
Half of teens say they hold all the same religious beliefs as their parent …And of approximately 1,800 teenagers who were surveyed alongside one of their parents, about half the teens (48 percent) say they have “all the same” religious beliefs as their parent.
But among the other half of all teens – those who say they share “some of the same” beliefs or hold “quite different” beliefs from their parent – about one-third (34 percent) say their parent doesn’t know that they differ religiously. And one-in-six (17 percent) say this difference causes at least some conflict in their household.
When asked how many of their religious beliefs they hold in common, most teens and parents give the same answer.
That includes 40 percent of teen-parent pairs who say they hold “all the same” beliefs and 30 percent who agree that they hold “some of the same” beliefs.
But in roughly a quarter of cases (27 percent), their responses do not align – and most of those are situations in which the parent assumes a higher level of agreement.
For example, 12 percent of the pairs consist of a parent who says they share all the same religious beliefs as their teen, but a teen who disagrees. And another 4 percent consist of a parent who says they share some beliefs with their teen, while the teen says their beliefs are quite different.
Four-in-ten teens say they share all the same religious beliefs as their parent – and their parent agrees
Less-religious parents are highly likely to have teens who also are less religious.
Naturally, differences can occur in both directions:
There are nonreligious parents who have highly religious teens, as well as the other way around.
But the survey data suggests that, by some traditional measures of religious observance – religious importance and prayer – highly religious parents are less likely to have teenagers who share their beliefs than nonreligious parents are to have teenagers without strong religious beliefs.
For the first time, the WHO Regional Committee for Europe took place virtually due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. Among the highlights of this year’s session was the endorsement by Member States of the European Programme of Work (EPW). The EPW sets down a 5-year vision of how WHO/Europe and Member States will work together to meet citizens’ expectations for health.
At the opening of the virtual session, outgoing President of RC69 Mr Magnus Heunicke, Minister of Health and Senior Citizens of Denmark, handed the position over to Dr Alexey Tsoy, Minister of Health of Kazakhstan, the elected President of RC70.
Other officers elected were:
Dr Søren Brostrøm of Denmark as Executive President
Dr Iva Pejnović Franelić of Croatia as Deputy Executive President
Ms Nora Kronig Romero of Switzerland as Rapporteur.
Address by Her Royal Highness Crown Princess Mary of Denmark
Crown Princess Mary of Denmark, Patron of WHO/Europe, addressed delegates, describing the pandemic as a “tough teacher” and underlining that there can be no health care without the health workforce. “To all the nurses, midwives, health and care workers across the European Region, you have my deepest respect and admiration, and I thank you,” she said.
Re-emphasizing her commitment to advocating for maternal and child health, immunization, and addressing antibiotic resistance, Her Royal Highness concluded, “Working together to make the world a safer and healthier place for everyone is the most fitting of legacies to honour those we have lost as a result of this virus, and an invaluable gift to the children of the future.”
Address by Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, WHO Director-General
Speaking remotely to RC70, Dr Tedros expressed his support for the EPW on this year’s agenda, and its close alignment with WHO’s 13th General Programme of Work (GPW 13). “Health and well-being, universal health coverage and health security are the legs of a 3-legged stool that provide social, economic and political stability,” he said.
Considering lessons from the COVID-19 pandemic, Dr Tedros warned that WHO and Member States must follow through on these reviews and recommendations. “Working together in humility and solidarity, we can ensure that a pandemic of this magnitude and severity never happens again,” he concluded.
Address by Dr Hans Henri P. Kluge, WHO Regional Director for Europe
The address by Dr Kluge – his first as WHO Regional Director for Europe – had 2 parts: the first focused on laying the foundations for the future beyond COVID-19, and the second on the COVID-19 response. On the first point, Dr Kluge explained that the work is based on 3 axes:
maintaining direct contact with each country for a more targeted response
strengthening partnerships with other organizations working in the WHO European Region
restructuring WHO/Europe to be fit for purpose.
Speaking of the COVID-19 response, Dr Kluge sent his condolences to the victims, families and communities that have been hit hard by the pandemic. He paid tribute to the health and social workers and other front-line workers, such as teachers, who have kept society running.
“The whole world has recognized their merit and bravery,” he said. Dr Kluge also announced that he will extend the Year of the Nurse and the Midwife through 2021.
In addition to his emphasis on providing specific support to Member States and working across WHO and with the international community and civil society to tackle the virus, the Regional Director outlined some key lessons learned from COVID-19 that must be applied now.
He underlined that there is no health without the health workforce. He drew attention to the need to maintain immunization services and health services for people with chronic conditions, including cancer. Further, he called on countries to continue to cooperate in the spirit of solidarity and to review the International Health Regulations (2005) in the light of this pandemic.
Regarding lessons learned from the pandemic, Dr Kluge emphasized the reciprocal relationship between health and the economy, the recognition of which is essential to moving towards an economy of well-being. The recently formed Pan-European Commission on Health and Sustainable Development will rethink policy priorities in this context.
In his final comments, the Regional Director spoke of historical precedents for transforming European society in the face of challenges and building back better as examples to the world. “Those successful transformations were based on 4 ingredients. Two we have already: necessity and innovation. What we need to gather now is courage and collaboration.”
Statement by Professor Mario Monti, Chair of the Pan-European Commission on Health and Sustainable Development
Professor Monti, President of Bocconi University in Milan, Italy, former Prime Minister of Italy and former European Commissioner, spoke to delegates in his capacity as Chair of the recently formed Pan-European Commission on Health and Sustainable Development.
Referring to the Commission’s mandate to make forward-looking recommendations on health and social policy, Professor Monti made an appeal to Member States. “The Commission will seek to establish partnerships with countries, and I trust I can count on your valuable engagement and expertise as we are about to sail these uncharted waters.”
Reflections by Member States
Many representatives of Member States and international partners took the floor, offering insights and experiences of the COVID-19 response. Common themes emerged, with many recognizing the value of WHO and its crucial role in global health. Countries thanked Dr Kluge for his transparency in leading WHO/Europe’s response and the constant communication he has maintained.
Many also acknowledged the essential role of health workers, the need to strengthen health systems, the importance of solidarity in vaccine and treatment development, and that health and the economy go hand in hand.
Introduction to the EPW
The Regional Director explained that the proposed EPW for 2020–2025 was developed from the starting point of what people across the Region hold their health authorities accountable for. Under the EPW, European Member States will implement 3 core priorities:
guaranteeing the right to universal access to quality care without fear of financial hardship;
protecting against health emergencies; and
building healthy communities, where public health actions and appropriate public policies secure a better life in an economy of well-being.
The EPW was informed by an extensive consultative process with Member States, non-State actors and other international partners.
Video statement by Her Majesty Queen Mathilde of the Belgians
Her Majesty Queen Mathilde of the Belgians addressed delegates on the subject of mental health, a topic that is the focus of her work as an advocate for the Sustainable Development Goals.
“Good mental health helps us all to achieve our full potential. It boosts our resilience and ability to manage change and uncertainty. Investing in mental health is essential for societies to prosper,” she said. She described the inclusion of mental health in the EPW as “encouraging”.
Video statement by European Commissioner for Health and Food Safety Dr Stella Kyriakides
Dr Kyriakides spoke of the renewed collaboration between WHO/Europe and the European Union, particularly in the context of the pandemic. She expressed her support for the EPW, commenting that it provides an excellent framework for improving health in the Region and offers opportunities for synergies in common priority areas, such as immunization.
WHO/Europe and the European Commission released a joint statement outlining closer partnership in 5 areas of shared interest.
Interventions by Member States on the EPW
Countries expressed their support for the EPW, and commended WHO/Europe for the accelerated and inclusive process to develop it. Common themes in interventions included appreciation for integrating COVID-19 and emergency preparedness and response, as well as access to affordable medicines; the importance of emphasizing primary health care; the need to address the epidemic of noncommunicable diseases in the Region; and the need to prioritize health systems strengthening.
Many speakers underlined their support for the 4 flagship initiatives covering mental health, immunization, behavioural and cultural insights, and digital health. Overall, they expressed that the EPW will make WHO/Europe more proactive and that it fully aligns with the GPW 13.
On 14 September 2020, Member States adopted the EPW 2020–2025, “United Action for Better Health in Europe”, by consensus.
Election to the Standing Committee of the Regional Committee (SCRC)
In a private session, Czechia, Kazakhstan, Norway and the United Kingdom were elected as new members of the SCRC for a 3-year term until 2023.
Transformation in the WHO European Region
Dr Kluge explained that for WHO/Europe, the WHO transformation is about enhancing country impact in all 53 Member States while building a safe, respectful and optimal working environment grounded in WHO values.
He explained that the restructuring of WHO/Europe will largely be complete by the end of October 2020. One specific initiative to be piloted by 5 countries is the Pan-European Transformational Leadership Academy, which will offer public health experts opportunities to gain experience at WHO/Europe and exchange knowledge.
Proposed high-level programme budget for 2022–2023
Mr Imre Hollo, Director of Planning, Resource Coordination and Performance Monitoring, explained that the process for developing WHO’s global programme budget for 2022–2023 will be presented for consideration to the Executive Board in January 2021 and for approval at the World Health Assembly in May 2021.
The financial estimates for the GPW 13 anticipated a base budget of US$ 4.254 billion, a 7.8% increase compared to 2020–2021. This increase will need to be reviewed in the light of COVID-19 response activities, WHO transformation initiatives and country-level poliomyelitis-related activities. Mr Hollo therefore asked the Regional Committee to expect that a revised budget will be submitted to the World Health Assembly in May 2022. There will be a proposal to extend the GPW 13 to 2025 in recognition of the impact of COVID-19 on the achievement of the triple-billion targets.
Accreditation of non-State actors
EUROCAM, the European Hospital and Healthcare Federation, the European Stroke Organisation and the Finnish Association for Substance Abuse Prevention were accredited by the Regional Committee.
Future Regional Committee sessions
The 71st session will take place on 13–15 September 2021 in Copenhagen, Denmark.
The 72nd session will take place on 12–14 September 2022 in Tel Aviv, Israel.
The 73rd session will take place on 11–13 September 2023.
In the future, Regional Committee sessions will be held over 3 days rather than 4.
Closure of the session
In his closing remarks, Dr Kluge thanked all participants for the “free, frank and friendly debates” that prevailed at this virtual Regional Committee session.
“Your adoption by consensus of the EPW is a strong act, and promising for the future. I consider this a contract of trust between you and us – a sign of the solidarity we so frequently refer to these days. Your feedback over these 2 days has provided powerful insight into the future implementation of our vision,” he said.
/https://www.thestar.com/content/dam/thestar/news/world/europe/2020/09/16/eu-chief-says-uk-cannot-change-eu-uk-withdrawal-agreement/VLM126-916_2020_084652.jpg?w=696&resize=696,0&ssl=1 "EU chief says UK cannot change EU-UK withdrawal agreement")
