United Nations (United States) (AFP)

At the initiative of the United Kingdom, which prides itself on having put in place an effective vaccination process, the UN Security Council will discuss access to vaccines against Covid-19 on Wednesday and must address several questions likely to divide its members.

How to ensure their global distribution and prevent them from being preempted by the rich countries of the northern hemisphere at the expense of the southern hemisphere?

Should priority be given to the vaccination of peacekeepers mobilized in some fifteen operations and members of UN agencies, including in countries that do not have access to vaccines?

And who should do it: the UN, the country of origin or the country of deployment?

"Vaccines, vaccination, it is not really the job of the Security Council", notes on condition of anonymity an ambassador of a member country of the Council.

But "the Council can make a contribution", he adds, excluding the adoption of a resolution as early as the ministerial session organized this week.

Responsible for guaranteeing peace and security in the world, the UN Security Council has no particular competence in the field of global health.

In July 2020, he adopted, after more than three months of laborious negotiations, hostages of a Sino-American duel, his only resolution to date on the pandemic.

It therefore aimed to encourage an end to hostilities in countries in conflict in order to facilitate the fight against the spread of the disease.

According to diplomats, the UK recently shared a draft resolution on vaccine management with a few countries.

"There is a draft resolution, the negotiations have just started, it will take time," said one of them.

Vaccination, "it is the big challenge of the moment" and "it will take a long time before everyone is vaccinated", underlines the ambassador of the European Union (EU) to the UN, the Swede Olof Skoog.

He recalls that the EU helped create the Covax mechanism which, under the aegis of the UN, should allow "the delivery of at least 2 billion doses before the end of 2021, including at least 1.3 billion at 92 lower income countries ".

- "No vaccine-apartheid" -

"What we don't want is an apartheid vaccine" with a North that has it and a South that cannot get doses, as South Africa recently denounced, explains the ambassador speaking anonymously.

According to him, the negotiations on a resolution at the Security Council risk "being complicated", some members of the Council not being very favorable to the idea of ​​"transparency" which should accompany a priori a universal commitment not to leave any country next to.

Several states, including China, Russia and some Gulf countries, have already embarked on "vaccine diplomacy", highlighting their national production or facilitating access to doses.

In his speeches, UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres reiterates that with the spread of the virus and its variants, security will only be ensured if everyone enjoys the same protection.

He calls for vaccines to become a "common public good", without real materialization so far.

Asked recently about the role of the UN in establishing a kind of "vaccination certificate" that cannot be counterfeited, the spokesperson of the Organization, Stéphane Dujarric, considered that there was "the need for international standardization and coordination "in this regard.

"The other worrying thing is the criminal element. People who falsify vaccination certificates or, even worse, who give people fake vaccines," he added, stressing the importance of an "international cooperation in this field".

© 2021 AFP