Quartz, an American online news platform, has named Winnie Byanyima among its six “Unheralded People of the Year”.
Quartz, focused on international business news, is privately held and was established in New York City in 2012.
Quartz journalists picked six individuals who shaped the world powerfully in 2022—without hogging the headlines in the process.
They include; Winnie Byanyima, Lina Khan, Sherry Rehman, Walid Regragui, Ian Allison and Edward Fitzalan-Howard.
Byanyima was also recognized among the 100 Most Reputable People of 2023.
THE CRUSADER: WINNIE BYANYIMA
Quartz recognized Winnie Byanyima for her crusade for equitable health and vaccine inequality.
“After lofty promises, rich countries only took care of their own, leaving the global south scrambling for leftovers. To protect their financial interests, big pharmaceutical companies trotted out the same myths they’d used to prevent access to lifesaving AIDS drugs,” writes Quartz journalist Annalisa Merelli.
Byanyima criticized rich global powers for hoarding vaccines when poor countries were grappling with the Covid-19 pandemic.
This year, Winnie Byanyima, the UN under-secretary-general who heads UNAIDS, the initiative to tackle the AIDS epidemic, publicly called out the reason behind the lopsidedness in global health: racism.
“Byanyima chose the belly of the beast to deliver her message, describing the way racism is entrenched in global health and the economic system while speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos, which she had co-chaired in 2014,” wrote Merelli.
This year, in her speech, she described the global response to covid as racist, calling it a form of “policy violence.”
“The condemnation of such dynamics should hardly be controversial or groundbreaking, but it is. Byanyima’s willingness to be outspoken while representing a high diplomatic body has offered an important opportunity to elevate the need to “decolonize global health” and to reform its institutions.”
Find the other unheralded people of the year here.