Since 2010-11, Cuba has engaged in legal and constitutional reform intended to provide a greater role for private enterprise and foreign investment in the country's state-run economy. New rules have been introduced to provide greater scope and guarantees for foreign investment and adjustments have been made to allow private ownership of land – and in a handful of cases 100 per cent share in ownership of investments.

At the same time, Cuba remains subject to US sanctions and an embargo regime that has left foreign investors weary when deciding whether or not to invest in the country. To what extent have these changes provided the security and confidence for foreign investors to seize on Cuba’s efforts to engage internationally around a range of industries including infrastructure, hospitality, hydrocarbons and small and medium enterprise.

Rodrigo Malmierca, Cuba's minister for trade and investment since 2009, will discuss the most recent changes in Cuba, their implications for development and investors and the viability of the official Economic Development Zone situated at Mariel.

The US and Americas Programme would like to thank BTG Pactual, Cairn Energy plc, Diageo, Fresnillo Management Services, HSBC Holdings plc and Wintershall Dea for their generous support of the Latin America Initiative.

Attendance at this event is by invitation only. 

2019 has seen a record number of people migrating from Central America’s Northern Triangle – an area that covers El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras. Estimates from June 2019 have placed the number of migrants at nearly double of what they were in 2018 with the increase in numbers stemming from a lack of economic opportunity combined with a rise in crime and insecurity in the region. The impacts of migration can already be felt within the affected states as the exodus has played a significant role in weakening labour markets and contributing to a ‘brain drain’ in the region. It has also played an increasingly active role in the upcoming US presidential election with some calling for more security on the border to curb immigration while others argue that a more effective strategy is needed to address the sources of migration. 

What are the core causes of Central American migration and how have the US, Central American and now also Mexican governments facilitated and deterred migration from the region? Can institutions be strengthened to alleviate the causes of migration? And what possible policy alternatives and solutions are there that could alleviate the pressures individuals and communities feel to migrate?   

Anita Isaacs, professor of Political Science at Haverford College and co-director of the Migration Encounters Project, and Juan Ricard Ortega, principal advisor for Central America at the Inter-American Development Bank, will join us for a discussion on the core drivers of migration within and across Central America.

Attendance at this event is by invitation only. 

The Chagos archipelago in the Indian Ocean has garnered media attention recently after the UK failed to abide by a UN deadline to return the islands to Mauritius. The US has landed in the middle of the dispute as a 1965 agreement with the UK has allowed the US to establish a military base on one of the islands, Diego Garcia, which has since become instrumental in US missions in the Asia-Pacific and the Middle East. 

In February 2019, an Advisory Opinion of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) found that the Chagos archipelago was unlawfully dismembered from Mauritius, in violation of the right to self-determination and that the United Kingdom is under an obligation to end its administration of the Chagos archipelago ‘as rapidly as possible’. The UN General Assembly subsequently voted overwhelmingly in favour of the UK leaving the islands by the end of November 2019 and the right of the former residents who were removed by the UK to return. The UK does not accept the ICJ and UN rulings and argues that the islands are needed to protect Britain from security threats while Mauritius has made clear the base can remain.

Professor Philippe Sands QC, professor of law at University College London and lead counsel for Mauritius on the ICJ case on Legal Consequences of the Separation of the Chagos archipelago from Mauritius in 1965, will be joining Ambassador Richard Burt, US chief negotiator in the Strategic Arms Reduction Talks with the former Soviet Union for a discussion on the fate of the archipelago including the future of the military base and the right of return of former residents.  

Attendance at this event is by invitation only. 

In the run-up to the 2016 US presidential election, then-candidate Donald Trump made a series of campaign promises concerning US foreign policy towards the Middle East. Since assuming office, President Trump has withdrawn the US from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, withdrawn troops from Syria, relocated the US embassy in Israel to Jerusalem and orchestrated the strike against ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.

Against a backdrop of Trump's inclination towards withdrawing from the region, countries across the Middle East are being rocked by protests, Turkey’s purchase of Russia’s S-400 missile has threatened to undermine cohesion within NATO and the much hoped for ceasefire in Libya between UN-backed government leader, Fayez al-Sarraj, and opposition leader, Khalifa Haftar, failed to materialize.

In light of the upcoming US elections in November 2020, the future of US national security policy promises to be a prominent issue for the next administration. In this vein, the US and Americas Programme at Chatham House plans a yearlong focus on the pivotal US 2020 elections.

At this event, Dr Kori Schake, director of foreign and defense policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute will discuss the future of US foreign policy towards the Middle East. How have domestic and party politics in the US – and the unfolding presidential campaign – shaped recent policy decisions by the Trump administration? Should we expect policy objectives in the Middle East to remain consistent or shift under a second Trump term? And what direction could US foreign policy towards the region take under a Democratic administration?

Attendance at this event is by invitation only. 

Drawing on his experience as commander of US forces in Iraq and Afghanistan and director of the CIA, General David Petraeus (Ret) will reflect on the current state of global security focusing in particular on the role of the US within the international security infrastructure and the world order.

This event is only open to Major Corporate Member and Partner organizations of Chatham House. If you'd like to attend, please RSVP to Linda Bedford.

To enable as open a debate as possible, this event will be held under the Chatham House Rule.

The US and China have entered into an increasingly confrontational relationship over trade and technology. This may force Europe to make difficult choices between the two economic superpowers – or perform a balancing act. Although the recent US-China phase-1 trade deal has eased the relationship for now, the trade and technology tensions are a structural issue and are likely to persist.

The debate over Huawei’s participation in 5G networks is an example of how the UK and other countries may face competing priorities in economic, security and foreign policy. Can Europe avoid a binary choice between the US and China? Is it possible for the EU to position itself as a third global power in trade, technology and standard-setting? What strategies should Europeans adopt to keep the US and China engaged in the rules-based international order and what does the future hold for trade multilateralism?

Sir Simon Fraser will join us for a discussion on Europe’s future role between the US and China. Sir Simon is Managing Partner of Flint Global and Deputy Chairman of Chatham House. He previously served as Permanent Secretary at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) and Head of the UK Diplomatic Service from 2010 to 2015. Prior to that he was Permanent Secretary at the UK Department for Business, Innovation and Skills. He has also served as Director General for Europe in the FCO and Chief of Staff to European Trade Commissioner Peter Mandelson.

We would like to take this opportunity to thank founding partner AIG and supporting partners Clifford Chance LLP, Diageo plc, and EY for their generous support of the Chatham House Global Trade Policy Forum.

In the aftermath of World War II, the United States cemented its role as the leader of a new global order, characterized by the creation of international institutions and treaties like the United Nations and North Atlantic Treaty Organization. More recently, however, the United States has appeared to take an inward turn, a trend which has been mirrored across the globe and has led to the international order being challenged more now than ever before.

As the Trump administration and US members of Congress attempt to address multiple challenges from a rising China and a disruptive Russia to a nuclear North Korea and shifting Middle East, Senator Chris Coons will offer his vision for restoring American leadership on the world stage.What is the role of Congress in setting and shaping US foreign policy?  How will the outcome of the consequential 2020 elections shape the future of America’s global role? Would a change in administration necessarily increase prospects of American reengagement, and if so, across which international spheres?

The end of 2018 was a monumental year for Latin America’s two biggest economies. In December 2018, Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) was inaugurated as Mexico’s 58th president. The following month saw another political shift further south, as Jair Bolsonaro became Brazil’s 38th president. While sitting on opposite ends of the political spectrum, both AMLO and Bolsonaro were considered to be political outsiders and have upended the status quo through their election to office. 

To what extent does the election of AMLO in Mexico and Bolsonaro in Brazil represent a shift in those countries’ definitions of national interest and foreign policy priorities? How will this affect these states’ policies regarding international commitments and cooperation on issues such as human rights, environment and climate change, migration, and trade? To what extent do possible shifts reflect changing domestic opinions?  Will any changes represent a long-term shift in state priorities and policies past these administrations?

The US 2020 election season enters a potentially decisive next phase with the Super Tuesday primaries on 3 March. With these fifteen, simultaneously-held state elections, the Democrats hope to have greater clarity about their party’s likely nominee for the general race against President Donald Trump in November. Concerns around intraparty divisions in the Democratic party between progressives (represented by Senators Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders) and moderates (represented by former Vice President Joe Biden and former mayor Pete Buttigieg) have surrounded the primary races so far, and are unlikely to dissipate even if one candidate emerges from the field on 3 March.

Against this backdrop, Chatham House brings together a panel of experts to discuss the state of the Democratic primary race, implications for the general election, and the Trump campaign’s priorities ahead of its re-election bid. Will the Democratic party resolve its divisions and unite behind a progressive or moderate in light of the Super Tuesday election results? How is Trump positioned to fair against the Democratic candidates left in the race? Did Former Mayor of New York Michael Bloomberg’s primary gamble to focus on Super Tuesday pay off? And what policy priorities are likely to be pursued under either a Trump 2.0 or a Democratic administration?

There has been a renaissance in the study of how the backgrounds of individual leaders affect foreign policy outcomes. Donald Trump's presidency highlights the limits of this approach. Trump's psychology is so unique, and so akin to that of a small child, that studying his background alone is insufficient to explain his decision-making. The evidence for this characterization of Trump's leadership comes not from his political opponents, but his allies, staffers and subordinates. Trump's lack of impulse control, short attention span and frequent temper tantrums have all undercut his effectiveness as president as compared to his predecessors. Nonetheless, the 45th president helps to clarify ongoing debates in American politics about the relative strength of the presidency as an institution. In particular, the powers of the presidency have become so enhanced that even comparatively weak and inexperienced leaders can execute dramatic policy shifts. The formal checks on presidential power, from the legislative, judicial and executive branches have all eroded. Similarly, the informal checks on the presidency had also degraded before Trump's inauguration. This article uses Trump's presidency—and his severe limitations as a decision-maker—to highlight the ways in which even a weak leader can affect change by holding a powerful office.

In international policy circles, conflict-related sexual violence (CRSV) is commonly viewed as a weapon of war, a framing that researchers have criticized as overly simplistic. Feminist scholars in particular caution that the ‘weapon of war’ framing decontextualizes sexual violence in conflict from the structural factors of gender inequality that underpin its perpetration. In light of these tensions, how do politically relevant local actors perceive the nature and the origins of conflict-related sexual violence? Civil society organizations often actively confront conflict-related sexual violence on the ground. A better understanding of how their perceptions of this violence align or clash with the globally dominant ‘weapon of war’ narratives therefore has important policy implications. Interviews with representatives of Colombian women's organizations and victims' associations reveal that these civil society activists predominantly view conflict-related sexual violence as the result of patriarchal structures. The mobilized women perceive sexual violence as a very gendered violence that exists on a continuum extending through peace, the everyday and war, and which the presence of arms exacerbates. Strategic sexual violence, too, is understood to ultimately have its basis in patriarchal structures. The findings expose a disconnect between the globally dominant ‘weapon of war’ understanding that is decontextualized from structural factors and a local approach to CRSV that establishes clear linkages to societal gender inequality.

For decades, Venezuela has struggled to appropriately maintain production, redistribute profits and sustain investment in its nationalized oil industry to support its sagging economy. 

Compounded by recent political instability, corruption, US sanctions and the increased flow of human capital out of the country, Venezuela’s energy sector continues to spiral downward. But to what extent can Venezuela’s energy crisis be attributed to domestic politics, national mismanagement and a lack of investment and infrastructure? And how can the international community support the renewal of energy production in Venezuela especially with an eye toward lowering the country’s carbon footprint?
 
This webinar explores the challenges Venezuela currently faces in rebuilding its energy sector. Why did the Venezuelan oil industry collapse and how can it be recovered? How are trends in the Latin American energy sector, from the emergence of new players to the rise of renewables, impacting Venezuela’s oil industry? 

And with global crude prices in fluctuation due partly to the COVID-19 outbreak, how will Venezuela’s oil industry fare against global trends?

 

As coronavirus spreads across the globe, states grapple to find the ideal strategy for coping with the global pandemic. And, in China, Singapore, South Korea, the US, the UK, and Europe, divergent policies are a product of state capacity and legal authority, but they also reveal competing views about the optimal role of centralized state authority, federalism, and the private sector.

Although it is too soon to know the longer-term effects, the apparent capacity of centralized state authority in China, South Korea and Singapore to respond effectively and rapidly is making headlines. In the United States, the opposite has been true. 

America’s response is being shaped by its federal structure, a dynamic private sector, and a culture of civic engagement. In the three weeks since the first US case of coronavirus was confirmed, state leaders, public health institutions, corporations, universities and churches have been at the vanguard of the nation’s effort to mitigate its spread.

Images of safety workers in hazmat suits disinfecting offices of multinational corporations and university campuses populate American Facebook pages. The contrast to the White House effort to manage the message, downplay, then rapidly escalate its estimation of the crisis is stark.

Bewildering response

For European onlookers, the absence of a clear and focused response from the White House is bewildering. By the time President Donald Trump declared a national emergency, several state emergencies had already been called, universities had shifted to online learning, and churches had begun to close.

By contrast, in Italy, France, Spain and Germany, the state has led national efforts to shutter borders and schools. In the UK, schools are largely remaining open as Prime Minister Boris Johnson has declared a strategy defined by herd immunity, which hinges on exposing resilient populations to the virus.

But America has never shared Europe’s conviction that the state must lead. The Center for Disease Control and Prevention, the leading national public health institute and a US federal agency, has attempted to set a benchmark for assessing the crisis and advising the nation. But in this instance, its response has been slowed due to faults in the initial tests it attempted to rollout. The Federal Reserve has moved early to cut interest rates and cut them again even further this week.

But states were the real first movers in America’s response and have been using their authority to declare a state of emergency independent of the declaration of a national emergency. This has allowed states to mobilize critical resources, and to pressure cities into action. After several days delay and intense public pressure, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo forced New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio to close the city’s schools.

Declarations of state emergencies by individual states have given corporations, universities and churches the freedom and legitimacy to move rapidly, and ahead of the federal government, to halt the spread in their communities.

Washington state was the first to declare a state of emergency. Amazon, one of the state’s leading employers, quickly announced a halt to all international travel and, alongside Microsoft, donated $1million to a rapid-response Seattle-based emergency funds. States have nudged their corporations to be first movers in the sector’s coronavirus response. But corporations have willingly taken up the challenge, often getting ahead of state as well as federal action.

Google moved rapidly to announce a move allowing employees to work from home after California declared a state of emergency. Facebook soon followed with an even more stringent policy, insisting employees work from home. Both companies have also met with World Health Organization (WHO) officials to talk about responses, and provided early funding for WHO’s Solidarity Response Fund set up in partnership with the UN Foundation and the Swiss Philanthropy Foundation.

America’s leading research universities, uniquely positioned with in-house public health and legal expertise, have also been driving preventive efforts. Just days after Washington declared a state of emergency, the University of Washington became the first to announce an end to classroom teaching and move courses online. A similar pattern followed at Stanford, Harvard, Princeton and Columbia - each also following the declaration of a state of emergency.

In addition, the decision by the Church of the Latter Day Saints to cancel its services worldwide followed Utah’s declaration of a state of emergency.

The gaping hole in the US response has been the national government. President Trump’s declaration of a national emergency came late, and his decision to ban travel from Europe but - at least initially - exclude the UK, created uncertainty and concern that the White House response is as much driven by politics as evidence.

This may soon change, as the House of Representatives has passed a COVID-19 response bill that the Senate will consider. These moves are vital to supporting state and private efforts to mobilize an effective response to a national and global crisis.

Need for public oversight

In the absence of greater coordination and leadership from the centre, the US response will pale in comparison to China’s dramatic moves to halt the spread. The chaos across America’s airports shows the need for public oversight. As New York State Governor Cuomo pleaded for federal government support to build new hospitals, he said: ‘I can’t do it. You can’t leave it to the states.'

When it comes to global pandemics, we may be discovering that authoritarian states can have a short-term advantage, but already Iran’s response demonstrates that this is not universally the case. Over time, the record across authoritarian states as they tackle the coronavirus will become more apparent, and it is likely to be mixed.

Open societies remain essential. Prevention requires innovation, creativity, open sharing of information, and the ability to inspire and mobilize international cooperation. The state is certainly necessary, but it is not sufficient alone.

This event is part of the Inaugural Virtual Roundtable Series on the US, Americas and the State of the World and will take place virtually only.  Participants should not come to Chatham House for these events

This  event is  part of the US and Americas Programme Inaugural Virtual Roundtable Series on the US and the State of the World and will take place virtually only.

Please note this event is taking place between 2pm to 3pm BST. 

As governments in the Americas grapple with the economic and health emergencies posed by COVID-19, the region continues to face socioeconomic and political challenges reflected in the protests that erupted in many countries in 2019. According to an annual survey by Latinóbarometro, of 18 countries across Latin America, trust in government dropped from 45 per cent in 2009 to 22 per cent in 2018, and those expressing dissatisfaction with democracy has increased from 51 per cent to 71 per cent. 

Recently re-elected to a new term, Luis Almagro, secretary general of the Organization of American States, will reflect on the state of democracy in the Americas. What are the greatest threats and opportunities to democratic governance and political participation in the region? How can multilateral organizations and states defend democratic institutions and human rights in a changing global environment? To what extent might the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic provide leaders with an opportunity to undemocratically consolidate power? Or, conversely, might the crisis spark a new understanding of the social contract between states and governed and greater consensus around national policies and leadership?  

This event is only open to Major Corporate Member and Partner organizations and selected giving circles of Chatham House. If you'd like to attend, please RSVP to lbedford@chathamhouse.org.

Differing approaches across the hemisphere have had different impacts on presidential popularity and, at least in one case, on democratic institutions and human rights. Yet, even within that diversity, South America’s Southern Cone countries (Argentina, Chile, Paraguay and Uruguay) have shown a sign of solidarity: protecting and facilitating trade flows, sponsoring cross-border research and ensuring citizens’ return to their home countries.    

The response from populist leaders

On the extreme have been the responses of presidents of Brazil, Nicaragua and Mexico, all of whom have ignored the science of the virus and of experts and refused to implement isolation policies.  President Jair Bolsonaro of Brazil fired his health minister, Luis Henrique Mandetta on 16 April for contradicting him and earlier had claimed that the pandemic was a hoax or little more than a ‘measly cold.' 

Meanwhile, Nicaraguan president Daniel Ortega has resisted closing businesses and schools.  After a mysterious 34-day absence, Ortega appeared on television on 15 April reinforcing his refusal to close businesses saying that Nicaraguans must work or they will die and claiming that the virus was ‘imported.’ 

Mexico’s Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador (AMLO) has also resisted the call for strict stay-at-home policies, though with his Deputy Health Minister, Hugo López-Gatell, has closed schools – recently extending the closure to the 1st of June and urging non-essential businesses to close – but focusing primarily on social distancing. 

In contrast to his deputy health minister and Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard – who had declared the situation a health emergency on 30th March, later than many neighbouring countries – AMLO has largely attempted to avoid discussion of the pandemic, claiming that in his case he has lucky charms that prevent him from contracting the virus. 

And both Bolsonaro and AMLO have participated in large public rallies, doing all the things that politicians love, shaking hands and hugging babies, and in the case of the former even wiping his nose before embracing an elderly woman.

The Nicaraguan, Brazilian and Mexican presidents make an odd grouping since one (Bosonaro) is considered of the extreme populist right and the others (Ortega and AMLO) of the populist left. What unites them is good old-fashioned populism, a belief in a leader who represents the amorphous popular will and should be unfettered by checks and balances on his power, including something like… science.  

An eclectic group

At the other extreme have been the quick responses by governments in Peru, Argentina, Chile, El Salvador and Colombia which put quarantine measures in place in mid-March. In these cases, governments have even banned outdoor activities and in the case of Peru and Colombia (in the large cities) have imposed alternating days for when women and men can leave the house so as to better control outside movement.  

This too, though, is an eclectic group. It includes a Peronist president Alberto Fernández in Argentina, conservative presidents Sebastian Piñera in Chile and Ivan Duque in Colombia, interim president and relative political neophyte Martin Vizcarra in Peru and outsider president Nayib Bukele in El Salvador. 

El Salvador’s strict quarantine measures have led to rising concerns that Bukele is using the crisis to consolidate personal power, using the national police and the armed forces to enforce the quarantine and ignoring three rulings by the Supreme Court urging the president to end the abuses. In Argentina, Peronist Fernández has shown a surprising commitment to containment even as it hurts his party’s working-class base, not something typically expected of the populist Peronist Party.   

In all of these cases, the quick, strong responses by the presidents shored up their popularity. Peru’s Vizcarra saw his popularity shoot up 35 points in a week to 82 per cent according to surveys taken in March. In late March 2020, Fernández in Argentina saw his approval ratings swell to 79.2 per cent with 94.7 percent of citizens approving of the government’s strict shelter-at-home policies.   Even presidents Piñera and Duque who had struggled with low approval ratings throughout 2019 and saw those numbers sink even lower after the social protests that ended the year have seen their numbers rise.  

According to an 20th April poll, Piñera’s popular approval rating swelled from 13 percent in March 18th at the start of the crisis to 25 per cent by 20th April; while hardly a sweeping popular mandate, even that level was unthinkable only a few months ago when administration was battered by social protests. 

In Colombia, after a series of political missteps and the popular protests, Duque’s popular approval rating had slumped to 26 per cent; by April 2nd, 62 percent of Colombians supported the once-beleaguered president.   (No recent surveys were available for Bukele in El Salvador.)

In contrast, Bolsonaro’s in Brazil has only nudged up.  Before the crisis hit, the president’s popularity had been in steady decline from a high of 49 per cent in January 2019 to 30 per cent by early December 2019. But by the first week in April, in the midst of a crisis in which other presidents saw their approval ratings increase by double digits, after his public disagreements with the health minister, Bolsonaro’s had sunk to 33 per cent while the soon-to-be-fired Mandetta’s stood at 76 per cent.  

AMLO in Mexico has fared no better. The populist leftist scored a high 86 per cent approval rating in February 1, 2019. By March 28, 2020 with concerns over his weak and flippant COVID-19 response and a severe contraction in economic growth, AMLO’s approval rating had sunk 26 points to 60 per cent and his disapproval stood at 37 per cent.    

In the midst of disharmony, coordination

Despite these differences, many countries in the region have shown the solidarity they often speak of but rarely follow in policy or practice. Peru, Chile and other countries have collaborated in repatriating citizens back to their home countries in the midst of the crisis.  

Even the countries of the Southern Cone common market, MERCOSUR, have pulled together on a number of fronts.  The trade bloc had effectively been ruled a dead-man-walking after its failed efforts to integrate Venezuela into the bloc, lowering its standards to let in the petroleum dependent semi-authoritarian government of then President Hugo Chávez. 

Even on the basics of internal cooperation, the block was struggling, unable to coordinate monetary policies and non-tariff trade barriers between the original founding member states, Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay.

The 35-year-old customs union seemed to get a breath a new life with the announcement that it had concluded 20-year-long negotiations with the EU for a free trade deal. Ratification of that deal, however, ran aground on the political differences between the recently elected governments of Bolsonaro in Brazil and the Peronist Fernández in Argentina. 

Bolsonaro refused to attend the Fernández December 2019 inauguration, in protest of the newly elected president’s leftist leanings.  And this was well before their sharply divergent reactions to the COVID-19 virus. 

How surprising then that Mercosur has served as an effective coordination mechanism for these different and once opposed governments. The trade body is collaborating among member states to ensure the repatriation of citizens and has agreed to coordinate to ensure that trade flows, especially of medical supplies, are not interrupted by shutdown measures. 

Mercosur has even gone one step further than several other bodies have failed to take.  In early April the bloc’s governing body, based in Montevideo, Uruguay created a $16 million (12 million pound) fund to augment country research and assist in the purchase of supplies needed to combat the virus.  

Now if Brazil, Argentina and the others could only coordinate their domestic coronavirus responses and economic policy. In late March Fernández announced he was pulling Argentina out of a possible Mercosur-EU trade deal.

Summary

• Following the territorial defeat of Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) in northeastern Syria, the Kurdish-led autonomous administration in the region is now grappling with the task of quickly dealing with thousands of the group’s detained members while bringing justice to their victims. To that end, local authorities are focusing on the use of counterterrorism laws and courts to charge captured ISIS members and determine their guilt accordingly.
• The piecemeal approach to justice is deeply flawed, and raises particular concerns about due process. No precise instruments exist to determine the personal responsibility of ISIS individuals for specific crimes, or for their role in war crimes committed by the group. In any event, the scale of the crimes and the number of victims – as well as severe shortages of resources and workers – make dispensation of justice extremely difficult through the traditional legal system.
• Not all detained ISIS members receive prison sentences. Individuals who did not hold senior roles in the group’s apparatus and are not accused of ‘major’ crimes (in practice, largely defined as fighting for ISIS and murder) are being released under limited reconciliation deals with tribal leaders. But the involvement of local community leaders in those efforts is not enough to ensure positive results. Many victims are upset at seeing ISIS members walk free without even admitting their guilt publicly or apologizing for the pain they caused.
• To overcome the limitations of the current, counterterrorism-focused framework, a ‘transitional justice’ approach could provide judicial and non-judicial instruments to establish accountability for ISIS crimes and reduce community resistance to the reintegration of group members. A combination of non-judicial mechanisms such as truth commissions, missing persons’ committees, and reparations and victim-healing programmes could play a vital role in providing ISIS victims with a sense of justice while contributing to peacebuilding and stability.
• Ignoring the urgency of developing a long-term plan to serve justice and contribute to community healing will almost certainly allow ISIS to continue to prevent the recovery and development of northeastern Syria. This, in turn, risks undermining the stability of the country and the region at large.

Ukrainians are accustomed to crisis. As COVID-19 spread, forest fires were raging in the Chernobyl exclusion zone, turning Kyiv into the most polluted city in the world. The fighting in Donbas continued, claiming the lives of more Ukrainian soldiers, bringing the total to more than 4,000 — and, on top of that, President Zelenskyy overhauled his government. So Ukraine is fighting three battles at the same time — war with Russia, the struggle against its own ineffective system, and now COVID-19.

Every crisis is a reality check — the coronavirus provoked and exposed the strategic vulnerabilities and deep-rooted features of Ukraine’s system of governance. Three trends have come to the fore. First, the inefficiency and paralysis of many state agencies, particularly the lack of coordination between them and the prevalence of vested interests. Second, the reliance of the country’s leaders on large financial-industrial groups (FIGs) to compensate for weak institutional capacity. Third, a strong societal and private sector mobilization to fill the gaps in the dilapidated public health system.

State agencies are rigid and ineffective. Despite the modern Prozorro digital public procurement system, and the government’s allocation of $2.5 million from the early days of the epidemic, the Ministry of Health blocked COVID-related purchases for over a month. This was a tactic by — now ex-minister — Yemets to pressure the state medical procurement agency into appointing a protégé of his as one of its deputy heads.

Lowest testing rate in Europe

Similarly, in some regions, notably Odesa, procurement stalled and orders went to politically connected businesses at higher-than-market prices. Lack of tests and laboratory equipment means Ukraine has administered only 72,000 tests within a population of 42 million to date — the lowest rate in Europe.

Doctors were given orders to ensure they only test patients in hospitals with COVID-19 symptoms and only those arriving from Asia, while ignoring the fact that millions of Ukrainian labour migrants were in Europe. Indeed, the first confirmed case was imported from Italy.

Ukrainian government and public health officials lack information to take informed decisions. There is no accurate electronic database of registered deaths and reporting is lagging behind events. Information on testing availability in the regions is missing.

Thirteen days after the first case of the virus was recorded, Zelenskyy exhorted business tycoons to come to the rescue. Taking a populist tone, Zelenskyy said ‘Ukraine has been feeding you for a long time and it is time that you helped the country’. The tycoons divided the regions among themselves to deliver relief efforts according to the location of their enterprises.

It is believed FIGs have donated around $25 million to procure testing kits, ventilators, personal protective equipment (PPE) and disinfectants. This may sound impressive, but many of those same tycoons actually owe millions to the state, some even billions, and cause serious problems by perpetuating the current rent-seeking system, where public resources benefit those groups resulting in serious social losses.

Reliance on these groups makes Zelenskyy a hostage to their favour in any potential reform efforts. It is a dangerous solution, as these tycoons often obstruct Ukraine’s economic development.

An alternative — and more transformative — trend of public-private partnerships is emerging in some regions. Across Ukraine, hundreds of small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) have led efforts to deliver PPE, support the vulnerable with food supplies, and to procure ventilators for key hospitals.

They have mobilised hundreds of volunteers to deliver assistance and partnered with local non-profits. Fundraising initiatives have begun in Lviv, Odesa, Kyiv and Poltava with donations and expenditure has been posted online for transparency. Companies have repurposed to produce PPE kits and medical equipment. The efforts unfolded quickly and, in some cases, in smooth collaboration with municipal and regional authorities.

Ukraine cannot afford to ‘waste’ this crisis, which could help accelerate healthcare reform, decentralization, modernize governance, and boost citizen empowerment. But for this to happen, the country has to deploy a ‘smart response’.

Such ‘smart response’ means applying a resilience framework that nurtures the agility of the system of governance, ensures a diversity of actors in decision-making, supporting both self-regulation and better coordination. Rather than reaching out to tycoons, Zelenskyy should enter a coalition with true agents of change — SME leaders, volunteers, and mayors who have mobilized effective grassroots action. These actors demand a level playing field with accountable governance and effective state institutions.

Civic COVID-19 response hubs and local authorities should be joined in a network that spans the regions, and connected with the national agencies designing pandemic responses. For a national strategy to be effective, central headquarters should draw information from local communities and manage a ‘team of teams’ in a decentralised fashion.

Ensuring effective public service delivery without compromising integrity and keeping the risk of corruption low should also be a priority of political reform, with volunteers and the private sector ensuring civic oversight of both regional and national funding.

Civic engagement such as this can be transformative as it defies the Soviet legacy of paternalism and expands the belief among citizens that society can work for them. By assisting the relief effort, citizens are gaining valuable insights into quality of public services and participate in holding them to account.

Citizens are also developing a better understanding of the purpose of having effective armed forces, police, border guards and modern hospitals. They are coming to understand the value of taxpayer money and witnessing how corruption erodes institutions.

This survival mobilization — if properly harnessed by the state — could drive transformative change and make Ukraine more resilient, not just against present crises, but future ones too.

COVID-19 has offered regimes in the region the opportunity to end popular protest. The squares of Algiers, Baghdad, and Beirut – all packed with protesters over the past few months – are now empty due to the pandemic, and political gatherings have also been suspended. In Algeria, Iraq and Lebanon, COVID-19 has achieved what snipers, pro-regime propaganda, and even the economic crisis, could not.

Moreover, political regimes have taken advantage of the crisis to expand their control over the political sphere by arresting their opponents, such as in Algeria where the authorities have cracked down on a number of active voices of the Hirak movement. Similarly, in Lebanon, security forces have used the pandemic as an excuse to crush sit-ins held in Martyr’s Square in Beirut and Nour Square in Tripoli.

However, despite the challenges that the pandemic has brought, it also offers opportunities for protest movements in the region. While the crisis has put an end to popular mobilization in the streets, it has  created new forms of activism in the shape of solidarity initiatives to help those affected by its consequences.

In Iraq, for example, protest groups have directed their work towards awareness-raising and sharing essential food to help mitigate the problem of food shortages and rising prices across the country. In Algeria, Hirak activists have run online campaigns to raise awareness about the virus and have encouraged people to stay at home. Others have been cleaning and disinfecting public spaces. These initiatives increase the legitimacy of the protest movement, and if coupled with political messages, could offer these movements an important chance to expand their base of popular support.

Exposes economic vulnerability

Economic grievances, corruption and poor provision of public services have been among the main concerns of this recent wave of protests. This pandemic only further exposes the levels of economic vulnerability in the region. COVID-19 is laying bare the socio-economic inequalities in MENA countries; this is particularly evident in the numbers of people engaged in the informal economy with no access to social security, including health insurance and pensions.

Informal employment, approximately calculated by the share of the labour force not contributing to social security, is estimated to amount to 65.5% of total employment in Lebanon, 64.4% in Iraq, and 63.3% in Algeria. The crisis has underscored the vulnerability of this large percentage of the labour force who have been unable to afford the economic repercussions of following state orders to stay at home.

The situation has also called attention to the vital need for efficient public services and healthcare systems. According to the fifth wave of the Arab Barometer, 74.4% of people in Lebanon are dissatisfied with their country’s healthcare services, as are 67.8% of people in Algeria and 66.5% in Iraq.

Meanwhile, 66.2% of people in Lebanon believe it is necessary to pay a bribe in order to receive better healthcare, as do 56.2% of people in Iraq and 55.9% in Algeria. The COVID-19 crisis has highlighted the need for more government investment in public healthcare systems to render them more efficient and less corrupt, strengthening the protesters’ case for the need for radical socio-economic reforms.

On the geopolitical level, the crisis puts into question the stability-focused approach of Western powers towards the region. For years, Western powers have directed their aid towards security forces in the interests of combating terrorism but COVID-19 has proved itself to be a much more lethal challenge to both the region and the West.

Facing this new challenge requires international actors to reconsider their approach to include supporting health and education initiatives, as well as freedom of expression and transparency. As argued by Western policymakers themselves, it was China’s lack of transparency and slow response that enabled the proliferation of the virus, when it could have been contained in Wuhan back in December 2019.

This crisis therefore offers regional protest movements the opportunity to capitalize on this moment and push back against the policies of Western powers that have invested in regional stability only to the extent of combating Islamic jihad. 

But crises do not change the world, people do. The COVID-19 pandemic will not in itself result in political change in the MENA region. Rather, it brings opportunities and risks that, when exploited, will allow political actors to advance their own agendas. While the crisis has put an end to popular mobilization and allowed regimes to tighten their grip over the political sphere, behind these challenges lie real opportunities for protest movements.

The current situation represents a possibility for them to expand their popular base through solidarity initiatives and has exposed more widely the importance of addressing socio-economic inequalities. Finally, it offers the chance to challenge the stability-focused approach of Western powers towards the region which until now has predominantly focused on combating terrorism.

The coronavirus pandemic continues to claim lives around the world. As countries grapple with how best to tackle the virus and the reverberations the pandemic is sending through their societies and economies, scientific understanding of how the coronavirus is behaving, and what measures might best combat it, continues to advance.

Join us for the seventh in a weekly series of interactive webinars on the coronavirus with Professor David Heymann and special guest Professor Ilona Kickbusch helping us to understand the facts and make sense of the latest developments in the global crisis.

What will the geopolitics of the pandemic mean for multilateralism? As the US retreats, what dynamics are emerging around other actors and what are the implications for the World Health Organization? Is the EU stepping up to play a bigger role in global health? Will the pandemic galvanize the global cooperation long called for?

Professor Heymann is a world-leading authority on infectious disease outbreaks. He led the World Health Organization’s response to SARS and has been advising the organization on its response to the coronavirus. 

Professor Kickbusch is one of the world’s leading experts in global health diplomacy and governance. She advises international organizations, national governments, NGOs and the private sector on new directions and innovations in global health, governance for health and health promotion.

Differing approaches across the hemisphere have had different impacts on presidential popularity and, at least in one case, on democratic institutions and human rights. Yet, even within that diversity, South America’s Southern Cone countries (Argentina, Chile, Paraguay and Uruguay) have shown a sign of solidarity: protecting and facilitating trade flows, sponsoring cross-border research and ensuring citizens’ return to their home countries.    

The response from populist leaders

On the extreme have been the responses of presidents of Brazil, Nicaragua and Mexico, all of whom have ignored the science of the virus and of experts and refused to implement isolation policies.  President Jair Bolsonaro of Brazil fired his health minister, Luis Henrique Mandetta on 16 April for contradicting him and earlier had claimed that the pandemic was a hoax or little more than a ‘measly cold.' 

Meanwhile, Nicaraguan president Daniel Ortega has resisted closing businesses and schools.  After a mysterious 34-day absence, Ortega appeared on television on 15 April reinforcing his refusal to close businesses saying that Nicaraguans must work or they will die and claiming that the virus was ‘imported.’ 

Mexico’s Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador (AMLO) has also resisted the call for strict stay-at-home policies, though with his Deputy Health Minister, Hugo López-Gatell, has closed schools – recently extending the closure to the 1st of June and urging non-essential businesses to close – but focusing primarily on social distancing. 

In contrast to his deputy health minister and Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard – who had declared the situation a health emergency on 30th March, later than many neighbouring countries – AMLO has largely attempted to avoid discussion of the pandemic, claiming that in his case he has lucky charms that prevent him from contracting the virus. 

And both Bolsonaro and AMLO have participated in large public rallies, doing all the things that politicians love, shaking hands and hugging babies, and in the case of the former even wiping his nose before embracing an elderly woman.

The Nicaraguan, Brazilian and Mexican presidents make an odd grouping since one (Bosonaro) is considered of the extreme populist right and the others (Ortega and AMLO) of the populist left. What unites them is good old-fashioned populism, a belief in a leader who represents the amorphous popular will and should be unfettered by checks and balances on his power, including something like… science.  

An eclectic group

At the other extreme have been the quick responses by governments in Peru, Argentina, Chile, El Salvador and Colombia which put quarantine measures in place in mid-March. In these cases, governments have even banned outdoor activities and in the case of Peru and Colombia (in the large cities) have imposed alternating days for when women and men can leave the house so as to better control outside movement.  

This too, though, is an eclectic group. It includes a Peronist president Alberto Fernández in Argentina, conservative presidents Sebastian Piñera in Chile and Ivan Duque in Colombia, interim president and relative political neophyte Martin Vizcarra in Peru and outsider president Nayib Bukele in El Salvador. 

El Salvador’s strict quarantine measures have led to rising concerns that Bukele is using the crisis to consolidate personal power, using the national police and the armed forces to enforce the quarantine and ignoring three rulings by the Supreme Court urging the president to end the abuses. In Argentina, Peronist Fernández has shown a surprising commitment to containment even as it hurts his party’s working-class base, not something typically expected of the populist Peronist Party.   

In all of these cases, the quick, strong responses by the presidents shored up their popularity. Peru’s Vizcarra saw his popularity shoot up 35 points in a week to 82 per cent according to surveys taken in March. In late March 2020, Fernández in Argentina saw his approval ratings swell to 79.2 per cent with 94.7 percent of citizens approving of the government’s strict shelter-at-home policies.   Even presidents Piñera and Duque who had struggled with low approval ratings throughout 2019 and saw those numbers sink even lower after the social protests that ended the year have seen their numbers rise.  

According to an 20th April poll, Piñera’s popular approval rating swelled from 13 percent in March 18th at the start of the crisis to 25 per cent by 20th April; while hardly a sweeping popular mandate, even that level was unthinkable only a few months ago when administration was battered by social protests. 

In Colombia, after a series of political missteps and the popular protests, Duque’s popular approval rating had slumped to 26 per cent; by April 2nd, 62 percent of Colombians supported the once-beleaguered president.   (No recent surveys were available for Bukele in El Salvador.)

In contrast, Bolsonaro’s in Brazil has only nudged up.  Before the crisis hit, the president’s popularity had been in steady decline from a high of 49 per cent in January 2019 to 30 per cent by early December 2019. But by the first week in April, in the midst of a crisis in which other presidents saw their approval ratings increase by double digits, after his public disagreements with the health minister, Bolsonaro’s had sunk to 33 per cent while the soon-to-be-fired Mandetta’s stood at 76 per cent.  

AMLO in Mexico has fared no better. The populist leftist scored a high 86 per cent approval rating in February 1, 2019. By March 28, 2020 with concerns over his weak and flippant COVID-19 response and a severe contraction in economic growth, AMLO’s approval rating had sunk 26 points to 60 per cent and his disapproval stood at 37 per cent.    

In the midst of disharmony, coordination

Despite these differences, many countries in the region have shown the solidarity they often speak of but rarely follow in policy or practice. Peru, Chile and other countries have collaborated in repatriating citizens back to their home countries in the midst of the crisis.  

Even the countries of the Southern Cone common market, MERCOSUR, have pulled together on a number of fronts.  The trade bloc had effectively been ruled a dead-man-walking after its failed efforts to integrate Venezuela into the bloc, lowering its standards to let in the petroleum dependent semi-authoritarian government of then President Hugo Chávez. 

Even on the basics of internal cooperation, the block was struggling, unable to coordinate monetary policies and non-tariff trade barriers between the original founding member states, Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay.

The 35-year-old customs union seemed to get a breath a new life with the announcement that it had concluded 20-year-long negotiations with the EU for a free trade deal. Ratification of that deal, however, ran aground on the political differences between the recently elected governments of Bolsonaro in Brazil and the Peronist Fernández in Argentina. 

Bolsonaro refused to attend the Fernández December 2019 inauguration, in protest of the newly elected president’s leftist leanings.  And this was well before their sharply divergent reactions to the COVID-19 virus. 

How surprising then that Mercosur has served as an effective coordination mechanism for these different and once opposed governments. The trade body is collaborating among member states to ensure the repatriation of citizens and has agreed to coordinate to ensure that trade flows, especially of medical supplies, are not interrupted by shutdown measures. 

Mercosur has even gone one step further than several other bodies have failed to take.  In early April the bloc’s governing body, based in Montevideo, Uruguay created a $16 million (12 million pound) fund to augment country research and assist in the purchase of supplies needed to combat the virus.  

Now if Brazil, Argentina and the others could only coordinate their domestic coronavirus responses and economic policy. In late March Fernández announced he was pulling Argentina out of a possible Mercosur-EU trade deal.

The World Health Organization (WHO) declared the spread of COVID-19 to be a Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC) on January 30 this year and then characterized it as a pandemic on March 11.

Declaring a PHEIC is the highest level of alert that WHO is obliged to declare, and is meant to send a powerful signal to countries of the need for urgent action to combat the spread of the disease, mobilize resources to help low- and middle-income countries in this effort and fund research and development on needed treatments, vaccines and diagnostics. It also obligates countries to share information with WHO.

Once the PHEIC was declared, the virus continued to spread globally, and WHO began to be asked why it had not yet declared the disease a pandemic. But there is no widely accepted definition of a pandemic, generally it is just considered an epidemic which affects many countries globally.

Potentially more deadly

The term has hitherto been applied almost exclusively to new forms of flu, such as H1N1 in 2009 or Spanish flu in 1918, where the lack of population immunity and absence of a vaccine or effective treatments makes the outbreak potentially much more deadly than seasonal flu (which, although global, is not considered a pandemic).

For COVID-19, WHO seemed reluctant to declare a pandemic despite the evidence of global spread. Partly this was because of its influenza origins — WHO’s emergency programme executive director said on March 9 that ‘if this was influenza, we would have called a pandemic ages ago’.

He also expressed concern that the word traditionally meant moving — once there was widespread transmission — from trying to contain the disease by testing, isolating the sick and tracing and quarantining their contacts, to a mitigation approach, implying ‘the disease will spread uncontrolled’.

WHO’s worry was that the world’s reaction to the word pandemic might be there was now nothing to be done to stop its spread, and so countries would effectively give up trying. WHO wanted to send the message that, unlike flu, it could still be pushed back and the spread slowed down.

In announcing the pandemic two days later, WHO’s director-general Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus reemphasised this point: ‘We cannot say this loudly enough, or clearly enough, or often enough: all countries can still change the course of this pandemic’ and that WHO was deeply concerned ‘by the alarming levels of inaction’.

The evidence suggests that the correct message did in fact get through. On March 13, US president Donald Trump declared a national emergency, referring in passing to WHO’s announcement. On March 12, the UK launched its own strategy to combat the disease. And in the week following WHO’s announcements, at least 16 other countries announced lockdowns of varying rigour including Austria, Belgium, Canada, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Hungary, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Serbia, Spain and Switzerland. Italy and Greece had both already instituted lockdowns prior to the WHO pandemic announcement.

It is not possible to say for sure that WHO’s announcement precipitated these measures because, by then, the evidence of the rapid spread was all around for governments to see. It may be that Italy’s dramatic nationwide lockdown on March 9 reverberated around European capitals and elsewhere.

But it is difficult to believe the announcement did not have an effect in stimulating government actions, as was intended by Dr Tedros. Considering the speed with which the virus was spreading from late February, might an earlier pandemic announcement by WHO have stimulated earlier aggressive actions by governments?

Declaring a global health emergency — when appropriate — is a key part of WHO’s role in administering the International Health Regulations (IHR). Significantly, negotiations on revisions to the IHR, which had been ongoing in a desultory fashion in WHO since 1995, were accelerated by the experience of the first serious coronavirus outbreak — SARS — in 2002-2003, leading to their final agreement in 2005.

Under the IHR, WHO’s director-general decides whether to declare an emergency based on a set of criteria and on the advice of an emergency committee. IHR defines an emergency as an ‘extraordinary event that constitutes a public health risk through the international spread of disease and potentially requires a coordinated international response’.

In the case of COVID-19, the committee first met on January 22-23 but were unable to reach consensus on a declaration. Following the director-general’s trip to meet President Xi Jinping in Beijing, the committee reconvened on January 30 and this time advised declaring a PHEIC.

But admittedly, public recognition of what a PHEIC means is extremely low. Only six have ever been declared, with the first being the H1N1 flu outbreak which fizzled out quickly, despite possibly causing 280,000 deaths globally. During the H1N1 outbreak, WHO declared a PHEIC in April 2009 and then a pandemic in June, only to rescind both in August as the outbreak was judged to have transitioned to behave like a seasonal flu.

WHO was criticized afterwards for prematurely declaring a PHEIC and overreacting. This then may have impacted the delay in declaring the Ebola outbreak in West Africa as a PHEIC in 2014, long after it became a major crisis. WHO’s former legal counsel has suggested the PHEIC — and other aspects of the IHR framework — may not be effective in stimulating appropriate actions by governments and needs to be reconsidered.

When the time is right to evaluate lessons about the response, it might be appropriate to consider the relative effectiveness of the PHEIC and pandemic announcements and their optimal timing in stimulating appropriate action by governments. The effectiveness of lockdowns in reducing the overall death toll also needs investigation.

When the H1N1 influenza pandemic struck in 2009, some industrialized countries were well prepared. Many countries’ preparedness plans had focused on preparing for an influenza pandemic and based on earlier alerts over the H5N1 ‘bird flu’ virus, countries had made advanced purchase or ‘sleeping’ contracts for vaccine supplies that could be activated as soon as a pandemic was declared. Countries without contracts scrambled to get supplies after those that already had contracts received their vaccine.

Following the 2009 pandemic, the European Union (EU) developed plans for joint-purchase vaccine contracts that any member state could join, guaranteeing the same price per dose for everyone. In 2009, low-income countries were unable to get the vaccine until manufacturers agreed to let 10 per cent of their production go to the World Health Organization (WHO).

The situation for COVID-19 could be even worse. No country had a sleeping contract in place for a COVID-19 vaccine since nobody had anticipated that the next pandemic would be a coronavirus, not an influenza virus. With around 80 candidate vaccines reported to be in development, choosing the right one will be like playing roulette.

These candidates will be whittled down as some will fail at an early stage of development and others will not get to scale-up for manufacturing. All of the world’s major vaccine pharmaceutical companies have said that they will divert resources to manufacture COVID-19 vaccines and, as long as they choose the right candidate for production, they have the expertise and the capacity to produce in huge quantities.

From roulette to a horse race

Our game now changes from roulette to a horse race, as the probability of winning is a matter of odds not a random chance. Countries are now able to try to make contracts alone or in purchasing consortia with other states, and with one of the major companies or with multiple companies. This would be like betting on one of the favourites.

For example, it has been reported that Oxford University has made an agreement with pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca, with a possibility of 100 million doses being available by the end of 2020. If the vaccine works and those doses materialize, and are all available for the UK, then the UK population requirements will be met in full, and the challenge becomes vaccinating everyone as quickly as possible.

Even if half of the doses were reserved for the UK, all those in high-risk or occupational groups could be vaccinated rapidly. However, as each major manufacturer accepts more contracts, the quantity that each country will get diminishes and the time to vaccinate the at-risk population gets longer.

At this point, it is not known how manufacturers will respond to requests for vaccine and how they will apportion supplies between different markets. You could bet on an outsider. You study the field and select a biotech that has potential with a good production development programme and a tie-in with a smaller-scale production facility.

If other countries do not try to get contracts, you will get your vaccine as fast as manufacturing can be scaled up; but because it is a small manufacturer, your supplies may take a long time. And outsiders do not often win races. You can of course, depending on your resources, cover several runners and try to make multiple contracts. However, you take on the risk that some will fail, and you may have compromised your eventual supply.

On April 24, the WHO co-hosted a meeting with the president of France, the president of the European Commission and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. It brought together heads of state and industry leaders who committed to ‘work towards equitable global access based on an unprecedented level of partnership’. They agreed ‘to create a strong unified voice, to build on past experience and to be accountable to the world, to communities and to one another’ for vaccines, testing materials and treatments.

They did not, however, say how this will be achieved and the absence of the United States was notable. The EU and its partners are hosting an international pledging conference on May 4 that aims to raise €7.5 billion in initial funding to kick-start global cooperation on vaccines. Co-hosts will be France, Germany, Italy, the United Kingdom, Norway and Saudi Arabia and the priorities will be ‘Test, Treat and Prevent’, with the latter dedicated to vaccines.

Despite these expressions of altruism, every government will face the tension between wanting to protect their own populations as quickly as possible and knowing that this will disadvantage poorer countries, where health services are even less able to cope. It will not be a vote winner to offer a share in available vaccine to less-privileged countries.

The factories for the biggest vaccine manufacturers are in Europe, the US and India. Will European manufacturers be obliged by the EU to restrict sales first to European countries? Will the US invoke its Defense Production Act and block vaccine exports until there are stocks enough for every American? And will vaccine only be available in India for those who can afford it?

The lessons on vaccine availability from the 2009 influenza pandemic are clear: vaccine was not shared on anything like an equitable basis. It remains to be seen if we will do any better in 2020.

The COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated the implications of pre-existing global trends such as rising protectionism and mounting trade tensions for the future of economic globalization. The global health crisis has since led to widespread lockdowns, paralysed supply chains and interrupted shipments of medical equipment between trade partners thereby further exposing the vulnerabilities of an integrated global economy

Against this backdrop, the panellists will assess the impact of the coronavirus on economic globalization and global supply chains. To what extent might the health emergency encourage a re-evaluation of economic integration? How should governments and industries prepare for a resumption of activities under the auspices of a ‘new normal’ where ‘just-in-time’ methods of production may not be resilient enough to systemic shocks and challenges? Can a globalized supply and demand system become more resilient to shocks? And with China beginning to recover from the crisis, what might be the role of Chinese industry in rebooting global supply chains?

This event is part of a fortnightly series of 'Business in Focus' webinars reflecting on the impact of COVID-19 on areas of particular professional interest for our corporate members and giving circles.

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