AS a correspondent normally used to travelling the world covering conflicts, human rights and humanitarian stories, I’ve learned over the years that access is everything.

No access, no story – or at least, no coverable story, is the simple answer I’ve often given journalism students whenever asked during guest visits at universities about the importance of actually being there when significant events are unfolding.

Hence the reason why reporters have sometimes gone to great or dangerous lengths to gain that access, be it into distant countries and regions or through contacts closer to home during a journalistic investigation.

Aside from the obvious impact of the coronavirus pandemic on all our lives, it has also served to shut down such access to many places, making global stories that were already challenging even more difficult to cover.

It goes without saying that this is a politically unhealthy and invidious position to be in, for it suits those governments, autocratic leaders and their oppressive regimes who would rather the world didn’t see what they were up to. What’s happening in Myanmar right now is a prime example.

In one fell swoop the global pandemic has both deepened inequality and provided cover for human rights abuses all the while making it more difficult to expose them.

Such concerns were borne out this week by the findings of the latest annual report by the human rights group Amnesty International.

Put quite simply, the pandemic has had a severe impact on the rights of millions of people around the globe. Even a cursory glance at the report’s key finding makes for a sobering read, telling as it does of how “decades of toxic leadership have left ethnic minorities, refugees, older persons and women disproportionately negatively affected by the pandemic”.

It reminds us, if we should need reminding, that there is a terrible price to pay at times like these for years of government neglect that result in collapsed health and welfare systems.

It reminds us that across the world those privileged few who cynically protect their interests at all costs care nothing for the plight of the most vulnerable in their nations and communities when the chips are down.

Only yesterday Brazil recorded more than 4000 Covid-related deaths in 24 hours for the first time, making a total death toll now of almost 337,000. This in a country where its right-wing president Jair Bolsonaro has been accused of being “genocidal” in his approach to handling the pandemic yet tells his citizens to “stop whining.”

That the increasing variants of the virus gripping Brazil pose a threat not just to its own citizens but those of the world matters little to a leader like Bolsonaro, typical of those who pull the ladder of privilege up behind them.

“The poor and vulnerable can go to the wall” is the political modus operandi at work here. Everywhere you look you see evidence of this right now with governments, the rich and powerful having cynically seized the chance to exploit the pandemic to their advantage and let human rights be damned.

In Hungary and in the Gulf, leaders have introduced new laws against spreading false news, which have been used to silence criticism of governmental responses to the pandemic.

Meanwhile in India it has enabled the ushering in of a crackdown on civil society, while in China it has conveniently drawn attention away from the persecution of Uighur Muslims and others in Xinjiang.

But before anyone thinks that this only applies to far-flung nations or those with authoritarian or despotic regimes, then it’s time to think again. Here in the UK the pandemic has exacerbated political opportunism and outright profiteering, not least in the shape of PPE and other coronavirus contracts awarded to Tory party donors.

The UK Government, under cover of the crisis, has sped through reviews in the Human Rights Act and judicial review. And while most of us were understandably looking the other way because of the pandemic, Boris Johnson’s cadres thought it a good time to save a quid or two and bring more suffering to children in Yemen and elsewhere by cutting the international aid budget – while resuming arms sales to Saudi Arabia to the tune of £1.4 billion.

In Britain, as elsewhere, many at the sharp end of the pandemic – health workers, migrant workers and those in the informal sector – have been betrayed by long-neglected health systems and economic and social support, sometimes woefully not fit for purpose.

As Agnes Callamard Amnesty International’s new secretary general put it sharply and succinctly: “Cruelly, those who gave the most, were protected the least, and even the most deluded leaders would struggle to deny that our social, economic and political systems are broken.”

But the real problem here is that many such leaders are not as deluded as they might appear. More often it’s been the case that over the years they have willingly acquiesced in such neglect to squeeze out whatever political advantage or profit they can. The same goes right now for the “golden” opportunity presented by the pandemic.

Two things above all have starkly emerged from the lessons learned from the ongoing crisis. The first is that in the months and years ahead those responsible for such mercenary and predatory political opportunism who deliberately exploited human rights at the cost of many lives must be investigated and if found guilty held accountable.

Doubtless before long some UK Government body will be set up – if it hasn’t already – to work round the clock on various nefarious strategies to avoid proper independent scrutiny.

Likewise, in other parts of the world brutal and oppressive regimes will be quickly covering their tracks before a degree of “normality” with regards to media access returns, shining a damning light on the darkest of human rights abuses perpetrated under cover of the pandemic.

Which brings me to the second of the lessons it’s important to learn from this global experience. This being that we should never take for granted the commitment needed to better our understanding and prepare our defences against those who would seek to exploit the most vulnerable during such widespread suffering.

Turning a blind eye to what is happening elsewhere in the world is not an option. For only by being universally vigilant will it be possible either at the time or later to hold unscrupulous leaders and governments to account.