dumping of surplus doses allowed to expire was a shocking symptom of a world without moral compass; a world that has lost its way. While companies’ CEOs and investors bagged big profits, those desperately needing the vaccine were told to wait. And die. In the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic, new conflicts were incubated, and unresolved conflicts deepened. In Afghanistan, Burkina Faso, Ethiopia, Israel/ Palestine, Libya, Myanmar and Yemen, to name a few, conflict caused violations of international human rights and humanitarian law on a vast scale. In far too few instances did the needed international response come; in far too few cases were justice and accountability provided. Instead, conflict expanded. Extending over time, its impacts worsened. The numbers and diversity of intervening parties rose. New theatres of conflict opened. New weapons were tested. More deaths and injury were exacted. Life was cheapened. In no other place was the world’s decaying order more evident than in Afghanistan where, following the withdrawal of all international troops, the collapse of the government, and the takeover of the country by the Taliban, Afghan women and men on the front line of the fight for human rights and democratic values were left to fend for themselves. Meanwhile, the global failure to build a global response to the pandemic sowed the seeds of greater conflict and greater injustice. Rising poverty, food insecurity and government instrumentalization of the pandemic to repress dissent and protests – all were well planted in 2021, watered by vaccine nationalism and fertilized by greed of the richer countries. Such a legacy of 2021 was also evident at the COP26 climate conference. Plagued by short-termism and thwarted by selfishness, a fortnight of negotiations ended in betrayal. Governments betrayed their people by failing to agree a deal to prevent catastrophic climate warming. In doing so, swathes of humanity were condemned to a future of water scarcity, heatwaves, flooding and starvation. The very governments who turn migrants away at their borders sentenced millions to flee their homes in search of safety and better living conditions. Countries already floundering in unsustainable levels of debt were left without sufficient climate finance to tackle deadly environmental change 2021 incubated further acceptability of racist policies and ideologies whose practices forced millions to live at the very edge of life itself. We saw this in vaccine producers steadfastly refusing to share their knowledge and technology with low-income countries, preventing the expansion of manufacturing needed to close the gap. We saw this again in many wealthy governments’ refusal to support global initiatives such as the proposed TRIPS waiver which could have scaled up vaccine production. We saw this in governments’ policies predicated on “risk of death” as an acceptable deterrent for the record number of refugees, migrants, internally displaced people and asylum seekers; policies that went so far as to criminalize those trying to save lives. We saw this again and again in the rise of public political discourse demonizing minorities, pitching arbitrary ideas of freedoms (including of “freedom to hate”) into toxic contest against universal rights, norms and standards that are there to protect us from racism and sexism. We saw this in the withdrawal of essential services for sexual and reproductive health with devastating consequences for women and girls in particular. Amnesty International Report 2021/22 x