December 02, (THEWILL) – The African Union (AU) says the travel ban on some African countries over the COVID-19 Omicron variant is a stigmatisation against the continent.
Chairperson of the AU Commission, Moussa Faki Mahamat made the remarks while reacting to restrictions placed on travelers from the Southern Africa countries during a news conference at the UN headquarters in New York on Wednesday.
He described the travel ban as stigmatisation which could not be justified scientifically or logically.
Mahamat, who addressed journalists in the company of UN Secretary-General António Guterres, said both multilateral organisations had condemned the unfair measures.
“They are condemning a country (South Africa) for having been transparent because its experts have worked tirelessly to inform the international community of the emergence of new variants.
“It hasn’t been scientifically proven that these types of measures are able to deal with this type of issue. It’s clearly, as you say, an expression rather of a form of injustice.
“I think that now I’ll take up the terms used by the Secretary-General. It’s immoral to condemn Africa in that way.
“We are a world, a global world and we’re face… and when facing an enemy like the virus, like COVID-19, humankind as a whole must go hand in hand to fight the virus because a man’s life is man’s life”, Mahamat said.
According to Mahamat, with vaccines, with treatment, with debt service, with our will to allow African states to recover following the pandemic or during it, we saw the same type of treatment.
“As I was saying to the Secretary-General, we need to be collectively outraged as leaders in the African Union and as the United Nations.
“Our message to the world as a whole is that we need to keep a cool head. We need to follow the well-being of humankind as a whole.
“We need to genuinely demonstrate greater solidarity and justice.
“That’s the very least we can ask for, namely from our leaders, our political and social leaders”, Mahamat added.
The Omicron variant, a new strain of the coronavirus disease, was reported by South Africa and first detected in Botswana.
Several European, Asian countries, along with the United States and Canada, have ban travellers from Southern African countries into their countries except their citizens and legal residents returning from South Africa, Botswana, Zimbabwe, Namibia, Lesotho, Eswatini, Mozambique and Malawi
On Tuesday, Canada, added Nigeria, Egypt and Malawi, to its list of travel ban.
The World Health Organization (WHO) which declared Omicron as a variant of ‘great concern’ had on Tuesday called on countries to keep calm and take “rational” measures in response to the new variant.
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