Demonstrators display a banner in the colours of the Ukrainian flag reading "Stop [Russian President] Putin, Stop war" during a protest at Berlin's Brandenburg Gate on January 30, 2022. - Demonstrators criticised Putin's massing of troops near the Ukrainian border and called on Germany to play a more active role in defending Ukraine's interests. John MACDOUGALL-AFP

It is a crucial moment for all of us who believe in democracy to defend it in our society today. Putin’s invasion is not just an attack on Ukraine. It is an attack on freedom. An attack on democracy. An attack on truth. 

“Today, I have contacted Martha, the delegate of the IYCW International Council 2016. Her family and herself are fine and have left Lviv to move to Ivano-Frankivsk, while Ana, the former leader of YCW Ukraine fled to Poland but her family is in the Chernigov region where the war is taking place,” said Leizyl, the IYCW international treasurer in Brussels.

Leizyl said that she keeps trying to contact Ana by phone, hoping she will read her message.

The Australian Cardijn Institute launched the Joseph Cardijn Digital Library (JCDL) (www.josephcardijn.com)  in August 2020. The site already hosts more than 500 original documents written by Cardijn in French from every period of his life from 1907 until shortly before his death in 1967. Over 100 of these articles have been translated into English.

The site also hosts a wide variety of other biographical resources on Cardijn’s life, including photos and videos. So far, the JCDL has received nearly 16,000 unique visitors, averaging 40 people per day over the course of this year (2021) with nearly 106,000 document views.

“The US is providing lots of vaccine doses to other countries right now, including the Philippines, as a gift. But they also do so because they have too many doses which will expire.” (Male, Philippines)

Access to vaccines differs tremendously from one country to another. While restrictions are lifted thanks to rising percentages of people being vaccinated in some nations, others are confronted with rising cases and deaths. By mid-June 2021, less than 1% of the African continent’s population had been vaccinated.[1]

This inequality in access to vaccines just adds to the overall increase in inequalities the pandemic has been showing since it began: inequalities based on age, gender, nationality and wealth. Ironically, this inequality in access to vaccines leads to an even bigger inequality: apart from health risks for those with far fewer vaccines, the virus continues affecting their society and economy.

Seeing this reality, we remember political statements from 2021 promising a different scenario. One of them was a promise from the EU Commission’s head who spoke about a vaccine against Covid-19 as “our universal, common good”[2]. She expressed that announcing a “Coronavirus global response”. COVAX was established based on that principle of global solidarity and common global humankind, aiming at an equal distribution of vaccines starting with 20% of each country’s population to be vaccinated first. However, that obviously did not work, due to Covax lacking money and even more to countries making their own contracts with pharmaceutical companies.[3]