Global health security is underpinned by the actions taken at a national level to ensure capacities exist to sufficiently prepare for and respond to acute threats and crises. In many contexts, National Public Health Institutes (NPHIs) were first established because of, and in response to, specific public health challenges typically related to infectious diseases.

The Strengthening National Accountability and Preparedness for Global Health Security (SNAP-GHS) project evolved from a series of roundtables and discussions hosted by the Centre on Global Health Security at Chatham House, in collaboration with the Graduate Institute of Geneva.

The outcome of the project is a SNAP-GHS Toolkit to support NPHIs in better diagnosing and understanding the challenges to data use within their own institutes, as well as in relation to external stakeholders and agencies. The toolkit is intended to be used for further circulation and dissemination by the International Association of National Public Health Institutes (IANPHI).

The project is led by the Centre on Global Health Security at Chatham House in collaboration with the Ethiopian Public Health Institute, the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control, and the National Institute for Health in Pakistan.

In response to the changing geopolitical landscape in Asia, both China and the United States attempt to alter the regional order in their own favour, both in the economic and security realms. This article shows how diverging views on future arrangements are leading to strategic shifts and increasing tension between these two Great Powers. As part of its quest for Great-Power status, China has been actively pushing its regional initiatives such as the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) and the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), as well as adopting assertive security policies towards its neighbours. In contrast, in order to counter China's growing influence America's regional strategy is undergoing a subtle shift from ‘rebalancing to Asia’ to focusing on the ‘Indo-Pacific’ region. However, amid an intensifying trade war and other challenges facing the region, China has chosen to moderate its proactive foreign policy-orientation in the past few years. In particular, China has made attempts to downplay its domestic rhetoric, rebuild strategic relationship with India and Japan, and to reassure ASEAN states in the South China Sea. In response to the Indo-Pacific strategy, it would be more effective for China to articulate a more inclusive regional vision and promote an institutional framework that also accommodates a US presence in the region.

Internet shutdowns in Asia have become frequent and persistent, an ominous sign of shrinking public space for debate and discourse. The shutdowns have become an irresistible option for governments of all stripes and ideological affiliations. Democratic India, Sri Lanka, Indonesia and the Philippines are prodigious offenders. So are Asia’s more repressive regimes, notably China.

In their defence, governments have offered real and imagined threats to national security as reasons for shutting down the pipes. It is useful to examine these claims as well as to objectively frame the issue. Are internet shutdowns in Asia legitimate and can be defended and explained as threats to national security? Or should we take a broader approach where international law, norms, values, rights and indeed economic stability could be invoked to curb this invidious practice?

Let’s start with the shutdown in Kashmir, where Indian authorities clamped down on internet access for a straight 165 days, described by rights group Access Now as the ‘longest shutdown ever in a democracy’. The Kashmir Chamber of Commerce and Industry estimates that the shutdown had huge economic costs, estimated at over £1.9 billion.

The economic cost of the continuing surveillance and shutdown in China’s Xinjiang province is likely to be higher. But India is a democracy and could be a role model, which is why the recent assertion of Communications and Information Technology Minister Ravishankar Prasad is worrying. He asserted in Parliament that the Indian citizen’s right to the internet was not a fundamental right. ‘While right of internet is important, security of the country is equally important…Can we deny (that) the internet is abused by terrorists…?’.

The minister’s primary defence of the shutdown – that the internet was being abused by terrorists and others to foment unrest – has some merit. Our starting point therefore is that big tech platforms should be doing a significantly better job in monitoring content and in removing material designed to provoke violence and hatred. This is the original sin and Asian governments are right to worry about messaging platforms, for example, becoming preferred channels for venom and hate speech.

To date, the big tech firms have made the right noises about monitoring and moderating content, but they have not gone far enough, providing governments with the excuse to routinely shut down access. To be blunt, self-regulation of the platforms is not working and tougher global regulation, enforcement and sanctions, possibly via the G20, would help.

At the same time, better policing of the platforms will not resolve the issue entirely because governments regard internet shutdowns as a useful way to restrict human rights and to consolidate political control and surveillance over citizens. The international community – including nation-states, NGOs and the private sector – needs to come together and embrace two overarching principles:

First, digital access is a fundamental human right and integrated into global declarations and norms.

Second, to protect fragmentation and Balkanization of the internet, the digital pipes which carry data across national boundaries should be embedded into international law as being part of the global commons (just like oceans are under maritime law). This would raise the bar on countries which frequently restrict digital access to their citizens.

Sensible though these recommendations might seem, it is obvious that many Asian governments would be loath to sign up to global declarations which would limit their policy options at home. There is an economic dimension to internet shutdowns, as the Kashmir case makes clear, which could be addressed by naming and shaming, just as the OECD’s Financial Action Task Force does for countries falling foul of money laundering regulations. Recommendations include:

• Digital access should be included in the UN’s Human Development Index.
• The World Bank’s closely followed Doing Business Index (DBI) should score countries favourably based on their commitment to offering unimpeded access to the internet. China and India watch the DBI rankings very closely and will be forced to pursue a more liberal approach if their rankings fall precipitously.
• Since internet shutdowns have a clear economic cost, particularly in payments and financial services, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) should make an annual determination of member countries (as part of its surveillance mandate) of the impact of shutdowns on economic activity and financial stability.

Finally, all Asian governments have declared a public commitment to drive financial inclusion by providing digital access and identity to the poor and vulnerable. This mandate is at odds with frequent internet disruptions. A small vendor in Kashmir, Xinjiang or elsewhere in the region has limited or no recourse when the pipes are shut down. Central banks in the region need to step in by offering some level of protection, just like deposit insurance coverage.

It is clear that many of these recommendations would be rejected outright by many Asian governments. They regard internet shutdowns as part of their policy toolkit to deal with external and internal threats to national security. In pursuing such a rigid approach, governments are wilfully curbing their citizens’ space for debate and ignoring a much broader issue of rights to digital access.

Armed with a hammer, it is tempting for governments to regard the internet as a nail. The international community and citizens’ groups have an obligation to make such hammering very expensive.

International criminal justice provides a stark reminder that state sovereignty is not an absolute, and that the world’s most heinous crimes should be prosecuted at an international level, particularly where domestic systems lack the capacity or will to hold perpetrators to account. 

The post-Cold War period witnessed a dramatic rise in the number of international tribunals with jurisdiction over war crimes and serious human rights abuses in countries including Cambodia, East Timor, Rwanda, Liberia, Sierra Leone and Yugoslavia. With these processes approaching, or having reached the end of their dockets, many have called for the creation of new tribunals to address more recent conflicts, including the army crackdown in Myanmar in 2017 that resulted in evidence of crimes against humanity against the Rohingya. 

In January this year, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) imposed emergency provisional measures on Myanmar, instructing it to prevent genocidal violence against its Rohingya minority. But a final judgement is expected to take years and the ICJ has no way of enforcing these interim measures. Myanmar has already responded defiantly to international criticism. 

Model for justice

Myanmar is not the first country to face scrutiny for such crimes in Southeast Asia. The Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC), more commonly known as the Khmer Rouge Tribunal was established in 1997 to prosecute Khmer Rouge leaders for alleged violations of international law and serious crimes perpetrated during the Cambodian genocide. This provides an opportunity to consider whether the Tribunal can act as a ‘hybrid’ model for justice in the region. 

The first lesson that can be taken from the Cambodian context is that the state must have the political will and commitment to pursue accountability. It was indeed the Cambodian government itself, who requested international assistance from the United Nations (UN), to organize a process for holding trials. The initial recommendation of the UN-commissioned Group of Experts was for the trial to be held under UN control, in light of misgivings about Cambodia’s judicial system. Prime Minister Hun Sen rejected this assessment and in prolonged negotiations, continued to spearhead the need for domestic involvement (arguably, in order to circumscribe the search for justice). This eventually resulted in the creation of a hybrid body consisting of parallel international and Cambodian judges and prosecutors with supermajority decision-making rules.   

It is worth noting that the Hun Sen government initially chose to do business with former Khmer Rouge leaders, until it became more advantageous to embrace a policy of putting them on trial. It is possible to infer from this that there will be no impetus for action in Myanmar until it is domestically advantageous to do so. At present, this appetite is clearly lacking, demonstrated by de-facto leader Aung San Suu Kyi shying away from accountability and instead defending the government’s actions before the ICJ.

One unique aspect of the Khmer Rouge Tribunal has been the vast participation by the Cambodian people in witnessing the trials as well as widespread support for the tribunal. This speaks to the pent-up demand in Cambodia for accountability and the importance of local participation. While international moral pressure is clear, external actors cannot simply impose justice for the Rohingya when there is no domestic incentive or support to pursue this. The reality is that the anti-Rohingya campaign has galvanized popular support from the country’s Buddhist majority. What is more, the Rohingya are not even seen as part of Myanmar so there is an additional level of disenfranchisement.

Secondly, the Cambodian Tribunal illustrates the need for safeguards against local political interference. The ECCC was designed as national court with international participation. There was an agreement to act in accordance with international standards of independence and impartiality, but no safeguards in place against serious deficiencies in the Cambodian judicial system. Close alliances between judges and the ruling Cambodian People’s Party, as well as high levels of corruption meant the tribunal effectively gave Hun Sen’s government veto power over the court at key junctures. Despite the guise of a hybrid structure, the Cambodian government ultimately retained the ability to block further prosecutions and prevent witnesses from being called. 

In Myanmar, political interference could be a concern, but given there is no popular support for justice and accountability for crimes committed against the Rohingya, the prospects of a domestic or hybrid process remain unlikely. However, there are still international options. The investigation by the International Criminal Court (ICC) into crimes that may have taken place on the Myanmar–Bangladesh border represents a potential route for justice and accountability. The UN Human Rights Council has also recently established the Independent Investigative Mechanism for Myanmar (IIMM), mandated to collect and preserve evidence, as well as to prepare files for future cases before criminal courts.

Finally, the Cambodian case illustrates the culture of impunity in the region. The ECCC was conceived partly as a showcase for international standards of justice, which would have a ‘contagion effect’ upon the wider Cambodian and regional justice systems. 

Cambodia was notorious for incidents in which well-connected and powerful people flouted the law. This culture of impunity was rooted in the failure of the government to arrest, try and punish the Khmer Rouge leadership. The Tribunal, in holding perpetrators of the worst crimes to account, sought to send a clear signal that lesser violations would not be tolerated in the same way. Arguably, it did not achieve this in practice as Cambodia still has a highly politicized judicial system with high levels of corruption and clear limits to judicial independence. 

What this illustrates is that the first step towards accountability is strengthening domestic institutions. The United Nation’s Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Myanmar has urged domestic authorities to embrace democracy and human rights, highlighting the need to reform the judicial system in order to ensure judicial independence, remove systemic barriers to accountability and build judicial and investigatory capacity in accordance with international standards. Based on this assessment, it is clear that domestic institutions are currently insufficiently independent to pursue accountability.

The ECCC, despite its shortcomings, does stand as proof that crimes against humanity will not go completely unpunished. However, a process does not necessarily equal justice. The region is littered with justice processes that never went anywhere: Indonesia, Nepal, and Sri Lanka. International recourse is also challenging in a region with low ratification of the ICC, and the absence of regional mechanisms like the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, the European Court of Human Rights, and the African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights (although their remit is not mass atrocity prosecutions). 

The Cambodian case study illustrates the challenges of ensuring justice and accountability within the region. The end of impunity is critical to ensure peaceful societies, but a purely legalistic approach will fail unless it is supported by wider measures and safeguards. It is these challenges, that undermine the prospects for ensuring justice for the Rohingya within Myanmar.