Duque: "Access to vaccines must be guaranteed for all Ibero-Americans"

The President of Colombia, Iván Duque, affirms that it is necessary to guarantee access to vaccines against COVID-19 to all the countries of Ibero-America, before the celebration of the XXVII Summit of this community that is being held this Wednesday in Andorra.
Among the issues that the heads of state and government will discuss this Wednesday in a semi-presential format are the challenges facing Ibero-America in the face of the coronavirus pandemic, and in this regard Duque assured in an interview with Efe that if there is no equitable distribution of vaccines throughout the world, no one will be safe.

President, what does Colombia expect from the 27th Ibero-American Summit?

There are three important issues: environmental, economic and social sustainability. I would also like to stress that it will be an opportunity for all of us to make unequivocal calls for (...) equity in the distribution of vaccines, measures to mitigate the effects of the pandemic and, of course, sustainable economic reactivation.

Do you think that this summit can provide the backbone for a strategy on vaccination?

Certainly we see that there is inequitable distribution in the world today, and why is this happening? Because of the same dynamics in which we have seen that there are countries that have bought four, five, six, seven times their population in vaccines, which of course generates distortions.

Additionally we see that there are still logistical complexities that have to be overcome and we have to ensure that distribution is equitable around the world on the very clear basis that no one is safe until we are all safe.
That implies that the multilateral Covax strategy has to be strengthened, we all have to do more to make it an increasingly dynamic entity. Colombia co-chairs the Covax initiative in its board of directors and it seems to me that we have to take a message to the Summit: that there are countries in Latin America, in Ibero-America, that are lagging behind and that we also need to guarantee them access (to vaccines).

In the particular case of Colombia, will the vaccination target set for this year be reached?

Our goal is to reach 35 million Colombians (vaccinated) this year. We have always been ahead of our own goals, we said we were going to start the vaccination plan on 20 February, we started it on 17 February; we achieved the first million before the 30th; then we achieved the second million in an accelerated manner; the third million in 10 days, and we are now approaching the fourth million vaccinated.

Could the inequity in the distribution of vaccines and the supply problems of some laboratories affect this plan?

Those have always been variables and that happens to any country in the world. Countries that are buyers of vaccines are always subject to the fulfilment of logistical conditions, but we have been fulfilling our plan because we have diversified our purchases, because we have had a responsible application of vaccines, because we have had a presence throughout the country and we are on track to reach the goal of 35 million Colombians vaccinated by the year 2021.

Your government has emphasised economic reactivation even during the pandemic. Will you be taking any proposals in this regard to the Ibero-American Summit?

I think it is very important that we all have access to financing. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) warned on 1 April that the world average debt to GDP ratio will end 2021 at around 99%. This is a huge challenge and means that in the coming years countries will be competing to access resources to finance their deficits, to finance their recovery, so the most important thing to maintain the credibility of the markets is that we can protect the most vulnerable and at the same time stabilise public finances.

But we also have to send a very clear message to the international (risk) rating agencies that emerging countries have to be seen not with pre-COVID lenses but in scenarios where the world is recovering from the worst crisis since the Second World War.

This week, after the Ibero-American Summit, you will participate in the summit of 40 world leaders against climate change convened by US President Joe Biden. What will be your proposals at that meeting?

Colombia, although it represents only 0.6% of global greenhouse gas emissions, is one of the 20 countries most exposed to the effects of climate change and we are going to go to that summit with three messages: First, Colombia will go to Glasgow, to the Climate Summit (from 1 to 12 November), with a goal of reducing its greenhouse gas emissions by 51% by 2030.

Secondly, Colombia will ratify the message that we will reach the year 2050 with the objective and purpose of being a carbon neutral country.

And the third message is the combination of two policies: nature-based solutions, what is known in English as "Nature Based Solutions", which involve reforestation, protection of our Amazon, a culture to reduce individual greenhouse gas emissions and the other is Colombia as a leader in the energy transition, a country that is going to go from 0.5% of its matrix in non-conventional renewable energies to 14% during our government and leaving a roadmap to have an increase of an additional 20% in the next decade.

With these objectives, the message is: if a country like Colombia has this conviction and these objectives, so should the more developed economies.

In February you announced the Temporary Protection Status for Venezuelan migrants. Is the international community contributing enough to address these crises?

We announced the regularisation of 2.8 million migrants and I hope by December or early January 2022 to have the first 900,000 migrants with their Temporary Protection Status card with biometric recognition, and by August next year 1.8 million.

We know that it is very demanding to meet this goal, but we are counting on the support of the IOM (International Organisation for Migration), also the UNHCR (United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees) and we have also received very clear messages from them to support us with resources for this purpose.

But we have also received messages, for example from the Chancellor of the Spanish government, Arancha González, who has told us: 'We want to continue financing', the United States has said it wants to enter and what we also want is to make a call to several countries so that this measure can be extended.

In fact, the president-elect of Ecuador (Guillermo Lasso) has said he wants to follow a similar pattern and the message to the international community is that it is time to move from declarations to disbursements and actions.

This, the world's largest migration crisis, is significantly below the donor community's contributions to the Syrian crisis or the Sudan crisis.

Will you take the issue of Venezuelan migration to the Ibero-American Summit?

I am going to refer to this issue. We cannot have an Ibero-American Summit and not address the most sensitive issues in our region. If our region has the biggest migratory crisis in the world, it is all the more reason for us to show the mechanisms to deal with it, not only to attend to the migrants who flee the ignominy of the dictatorship every day, but also to send a clear message: that the way forward for Venezuela is a return to democracy.

Is there any possibility of rapprochement with the regime of Nicolás Maduro, even if it is on humanitarian issues related to migrants?

We have to start from a basic premise: what we have in Venezuela is an illegitimate regime that is also a narco-dictator and criminal (...) So we have to be very careful, because when we get close to dictators, the only thing we end up doing is validating their oppressive power.

Those of us who are democrats and defenders of the Inter-American Democratic Charter cannot have weak relations with those who want to trample on democratic institutions, which is why we continue to help the Venezuelan people with brotherhood and we also continue to accompany the democratic resistance and accompany the (National) Assembly and (interim) President (Juan) Guaidó.