The world is ablaze. Xi, Putin and Biden must join the firefighters | Simon Tisdall

Covid has aggravated a crisis in the global humanitarian system, and an ineffective UN is being sidelined

It's hard to look beyond your own front door when a lethal disease threatens your family. Governments often exhibit similar introspection when facing emergencies beyond national borders. So what if the world is on fire? In the age of Covid the quest for protection and recovery is primarily, myopically, obsessively domestic. Charity, it's said, begins at home.

So look away now, if you wish, because much of the world beyond the inoculated shores of Europe and America presents a very disturbing picture. The pandemic has coincided with, and greatly exacerbated, a crisis in an already struggling international humanitarian system. Existing weaknesses and long-neglected problems are ruthlessly exposed.