Explanation of vote before the vote on the draft Resolution “Ensuring equitable, affordable, timely and universal access for all countries to vaccines in response to the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic”

31 March, 2022

Delivered by H.E. Andranik HOVHANNISYAN, Permanent Representative

President,

A year ago, during the deliberations on the previous iteration of this resolution Armenia expressed reservation on one of its preambular paragraphs. Our concerns have not been addressed then and our drafting suggestions made in this regard have been ignored again during the informal consultations of the current draft resolution.

Hence, Armenia is obliged to reiterate its concern with regard to the reference to the thirty-first special session of the General Assembly held on 3^rd and 4^thof December 2020, which we believe was manipulated by Azerbaijan in a sheer abuse of its NAM presidency. Armenia questioned then in New York the added value and integrity of Azerbaijan’s initiative to hold the session in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Azerbaijan’s true motivation has been to instrumentalize the pandemic and the humanitarian challenges around it. Suffice to recall that Azerbaijan was among those very few countries that dared not to support the call of the Secretary General, endorsed by the Security Council, to cease fire in armed conflicts during the pandemic. Moreover, it waged an aggression against Nagorno-Karabakh in a time when the whole world was combatting the pandemic and addressing its humanitarian consequences. Instead of joining the global efforts for this noble agenda, Azerbaijan did everything to exacerbate the already dire humanitarian situation in our region.

Furthermore, Azerbaijan officially used the analogy of eradication of pandemic to portray Armenians of Nagorno-Karabakh as a virus that needs to be extinguished. Therefore, Armenia cannot give a blank check welcome to Azerbaijan without recalling its sheer hate speech campaign and suffering its violence brought during the pandemic.

However, in the spirit of shared values and enhanced cooperation harbored by the United Nations and this august Council, Armenia decided to join consensus on this draft resolution. We find that its subject is important for the global multilateral cooperation.

In the light of the abovementioned, Armenia disassociates from recalling the thirty-first special session of the General Assembly held on 3 and 4 December 2020 mentioned in the preambular paragraph 12 of the resolution and requests this statement to be reflected in the official records of the meeting.

I thank you.

MFA RA
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