In Syria, uncertainty about the safety of the ceasefire agreed between Russia and Turkey last month is inhibiting 1 million people who have been displaced since December 2019 from returning home.

The looming COVID-19 global health crisis threatens to further devastate those most vulnerable as the conditions in northwest Syria’s refugee camps make it hard to practice common social distancing guidelines. Added to this, the medical infrastructure in the region has been decimated after years of bombings which has disabled over 70 health facilities since April 2019.

This webinar highlights the potentially catastrophic risks of a coronavirus outbreak in Idlib and displacement camps in northwest Syria by speaking with medical and civil society actors working in the region. How are doctors and local humanitarian organizations scaling up their medical and prevention response to the COVID-19 outbreak?

What key supplies such as ventilators, testing kits and critical sanitary equipment are still lacking? And how can the international community step in to help mitigate the potentially devastating consequences of an outbreak in these refugee camps?

This event is run in collaboration with The Syria Campaign, a human rights organization working with Syrian civil society to raise the voices of those struggling for democracy, and support frontline activists and humanitarians.

Signs of growing anger at the restrained denunciation of Pennsylvania-based Muslim cleric Fethullah Gulen - whose followers are thought to have played a key role in the attempted coup - are being vocalised more and more, but this criticism only shows part of the true picture.

It is true that prominent liberal Turkish intellectual Soli Ozel spoke for many when he criticised EU politicians and Western media for failing to recognise the “invaluable democratic resistance shown by all political parties in a parliament bombed by war planes”, as well as demonstrating “a lack of sensitivity, empathy and solidarity that cannot be easily digested” by not sending anyone from an EU institution to offer solidarity with the Turkish parliament.

The criticism is reasonable - officials from Western governments and regional institutions such as the Council of Europe exhibited unconditional solidarity with Ukraine during its bitter feud with Russia, which leads some to believe that Muslim-majority Turkey does not apparently deserve the same treatment as its neighbours also experiencing an unlawful attempt to seize control of the state.

Moral authority at risk

It is also right that the West should have censured the coup plotters more forcefully and built upon Turkey’s fragile unity to encourage the country to pursue further democratic reform. To quote former Swedish Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Carl Bildt: “Europe risks losing its moral authority if it does not appear particularly engaged in dealing with the coup itself.”

In addition, the EU’s strong criticism of Turkey but not France, for imposing a state of emergency and for temporarily suspending the European Convention on Human Rights, undeniably, smacks of double-standards.

However, some of the criticism falls short. To begin with, the West’s tepidity can be explained (though not wholly justified) by Erdogan’s abrasive behaviour at home and towards Western and international media.

Just three days after the coup, Erdogan threatened in his characteristically defiant tone to revive the controversial construction plans that sparked the 2013 Gezi Park protests, saying: “If we want to preserve our history, we must rebuild this historic [Ottoman-era barracks] structure, [and] we will rebuild it.”

It is also fair for Turkey to be reproached for the widespread crackdown against tens of thousands of suspected Gulenists in the aftermath of the coup. Even if it is conceivable that all 1,577 university deans who were forced to resign were Gulenists, this action will also have a lasting negative impact on the reputations and career prospects of academics unconnected to Gulen.

Fervour against Gulenism

The vigilance by the West is understandable given the Turkish government’s fervour against Gulenism in the immediate post-coup period. It would make no sense for the West to attack the coup and yet, at the same time, equivocate on flagrant violations of due process and human rights. Both efforts are mutually inclusive and identifying such violations has the greatest potential to encourage policy reversals or corrective measures.

Similarly understandable is the attention on Erdogan himself. He is the most formidable and powerful figure in a hierarchical and top-down political system, able to make fateful decisions with few effective checks and balances. He single-handedly replaced Ahmet Davutoglu as prime minister with Binali Yildirim in a clear breach of the Turkish constitution.

Despite Erdogan’s tactical attempts at embracing all the opposition parties apart from the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP), his refusal to renounce his ambition to transform Turkey into a powerful executive presidency indicates that this fragile political unity will not last.

Only the West has the wherewithal to moderate his policies by continuing to express its friendship with Turkey, whilst not shying away from closely monitoring, scrutinising and commenting on the post-coup developments.

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The COVID-19 pandemic has struck the Sahel and West Africa at a time when the region is already under severe pressure from violent insecurity and the effects of climate change on its land, food and water resources.

By the end of April, there had been 9,513 confirmed coronavirus cases across the 17 countries of the region, and some 231 deaths, with the highest overall numbers recorded in Nigeria, Ghana, Guinea, Côte d’Ivoire, Senegal, Niger and Burkina Faso. Low testing rates mean than these numbers give only a partial picture.

The Food Crisis Prevention Network (RPCA) forecast in early April that almost 17 million people in the Sahel and West Africa (7.1 million in Nigeria alone) will need food and nutritional assistance during the coming lean season in June–August, more than double the number in an average year. The combined impact of violent insecurity and COVID-19 could put more than 50 million other people across the region at risk of food and nutrition crisis.

Rippling across the region

The effects of the collapse in global commodity prices, currency depreciations, rising costs of consumer goods and disruptions to supply chains are rippling across the region. And for major oil-exporting countries such as Nigeria, Ghana, Chad and Cameroon, the wipe-out of foreign currency earnings will hammer government revenues just as the cost of food and other critical imports goes up. It is likely that the number of people who suffer the direct health impact of the coronavirus will be far outstripped by the number for whom there will be harsh social and economic costs.

In recent years, valuable protocols and capacities have been put in place by governments in West and Central Africa in response to Ebola and other infectious disease outbreaks.

But inadequate healthcare funding and infrastructure across this region compound the challenge of responding to the spread of the COVID-19 infection – which is testing the resources of even the world’s best-funded public health systems.

Over many years, however, the region has steadily built up structures to tackle humanitarian and development challenges, particularly as regards food security. It has an established system for assessing the risk of food crisis annually and coordinating emergency support to vulnerable communities. Each country monitors climate and weather patterns, transhumance, market systems and agricultural statistics, and terrorist disruption of agricultural productivity, from local community to national and regional level.

The system is coordinated and quality-controlled, using common technical data standards, by the Permanent Interstate Committee for Drought Control in the Sahel (CILSS), a regional intergovernmental body established in 1973 in response to a devastating drought. Collective risk assessments allow emergency support to be mobilized through the RPCA.

For almost three months already, countries in Sahelian West Africa have been working with the World Health Organization to prepare national COVID-19 response strategies and strengthen health controls at their borders. Almost all governments have also opted for domestic curfews, and variations of lockdown and market restrictions.

Senegal has been a leader in rapidly developing Africa’s diagnostic capacity, and plans are under way to speed up production of test kits. Niger was swift to develop a national response strategy, to which donors have pledged €194.5 million. While the IMF has agreed emergency financial assistance to help countries address the urgent balance-of-payments, health and social programme needs linked to the COVID-19 pandemic, signing off $3.4 billion for Nigeria, $442 million for Senegal and $130 million for Mauritania.

Steps are also now being taken towards the formulation of a more joined-up regional approach. Notably, Nigeria’s President Muhammadu Buhari has been chosen by an extraordinary session of the Economic Community of West African States to coordinate the regional response to COVID-19. As Africa’s biggest economy and home to its largest population, Nigeria is a critical hub for transnational flows of goods and people. Its controversial August 2019 land border closure, in a bid to address smuggling, has already painfully disrupted regional agri-food trade and value chains. The active engagement of the Buhari administration will thus be crucial to the success of a multifaceted regional response.

One of the first tough questions the region’s governments must collectively address is how long to maintain the border shutdowns that were imposed as an initial measure to curb the spread of the virus. Closed borders are detrimental to food security, and disruptive to supply chains and the livelihoods of micro, small and medium-sized entrepreneurs that rely on cross-border trade. The impact of prolonged closures will be all the more profound in a region where welfare systems are largely non-existent or, at best, highly precarious.

Nigeria, in particular, with more than 95 million people already living in extreme poverty, might do well to explore measures to avoid putting food further beyond the reach of people who are seeing their purchasing power evaporate.

In taking further actions to control the spread of the coronavirus, the region’s governments will need to show faith in the system that they have painstakingly developed to monitor and respond to the annual risk of food crisis across the Sahel. This system, and the critical data it offers, will be vital to informing interventions to strengthen the four components of food security – availability, access, stability and utilization – in the context of COVID-19, and for charting a post-pandemic path of recovery.

Above all, careful steps will need to be put in place to ensure that preventing the spread of the coronavirus does not come at the cost of even greater food insecurity for the people of the Sahel and West Africa. The region’s governments must prioritize the flow of food across borders and renew their commitment to strategic coordination and alignment.

In Syria, uncertainty about the safety of the ceasefire agreed between Russia and Turkey last month is inhibiting 1 million people who have been displaced since December 2019 from returning home.

The looming COVID-19 global health crisis threatens to further devastate those most vulnerable as the conditions in northwest Syria’s refugee camps make it hard to practice common social distancing guidelines. Added to this, the medical infrastructure in the region has been decimated after years of bombings which has disabled over 70 health facilities since April 2019.

This webinar highlights the potentially catastrophic risks of a coronavirus outbreak in Idlib and displacement camps in northwest Syria by speaking with medical and civil society actors working in the region. How are doctors and local humanitarian organizations scaling up their medical and prevention response to the COVID-19 outbreak?

What key supplies such as ventilators, testing kits and critical sanitary equipment are still lacking? And how can the international community step in to help mitigate the potentially devastating consequences of an outbreak in these refugee camps?

This event is run in collaboration with The Syria Campaign, a human rights organization working with Syrian civil society to raise the voices of those struggling for democracy, and support frontline activists and humanitarians.

The COVID-19 pandemic has struck the Sahel and West Africa at a time when the region is already under severe pressure from violent insecurity and the effects of climate change on its land, food and water resources.

By the end of April, there had been 9,513 confirmed coronavirus cases across the 17 countries of the region, and some 231 deaths, with the highest overall numbers recorded in Nigeria, Ghana, Guinea, Côte d’Ivoire, Senegal, Niger and Burkina Faso. Low testing rates mean than these numbers give only a partial picture.

The Food Crisis Prevention Network (RPCA) forecast in early April that almost 17 million people in the Sahel and West Africa (7.1 million in Nigeria alone) will need food and nutritional assistance during the coming lean season in June–August, more than double the number in an average year. The combined impact of violent insecurity and COVID-19 could put more than 50 million other people across the region at risk of food and nutrition crisis.

Rippling across the region

The effects of the collapse in global commodity prices, currency depreciations, rising costs of consumer goods and disruptions to supply chains are rippling across the region. And for major oil-exporting countries such as Nigeria, Ghana, Chad and Cameroon, the wipe-out of foreign currency earnings will hammer government revenues just as the cost of food and other critical imports goes up. It is likely that the number of people who suffer the direct health impact of the coronavirus will be far outstripped by the number for whom there will be harsh social and economic costs.

In recent years, valuable protocols and capacities have been put in place by governments in West and Central Africa in response to Ebola and other infectious disease outbreaks.

But inadequate healthcare funding and infrastructure across this region compound the challenge of responding to the spread of the COVID-19 infection – which is testing the resources of even the world’s best-funded public health systems.

Over many years, however, the region has steadily built up structures to tackle humanitarian and development challenges, particularly as regards food security. It has an established system for assessing the risk of food crisis annually and coordinating emergency support to vulnerable communities. Each country monitors climate and weather patterns, transhumance, market systems and agricultural statistics, and terrorist disruption of agricultural productivity, from local community to national and regional level.

The system is coordinated and quality-controlled, using common technical data standards, by the Permanent Interstate Committee for Drought Control in the Sahel (CILSS), a regional intergovernmental body established in 1973 in response to a devastating drought. Collective risk assessments allow emergency support to be mobilized through the RPCA.

For almost three months already, countries in Sahelian West Africa have been working with the World Health Organization to prepare national COVID-19 response strategies and strengthen health controls at their borders. Almost all governments have also opted for domestic curfews, and variations of lockdown and market restrictions.

Senegal has been a leader in rapidly developing Africa’s diagnostic capacity, and plans are under way to speed up production of test kits. Niger was swift to develop a national response strategy, to which donors have pledged €194.5 million. While the IMF has agreed emergency financial assistance to help countries address the urgent balance-of-payments, health and social programme needs linked to the COVID-19 pandemic, signing off $3.4 billion for Nigeria, $442 million for Senegal and $130 million for Mauritania.

Steps are also now being taken towards the formulation of a more joined-up regional approach. Notably, Nigeria’s President Muhammadu Buhari has been chosen by an extraordinary session of the Economic Community of West African States to coordinate the regional response to COVID-19. As Africa’s biggest economy and home to its largest population, Nigeria is a critical hub for transnational flows of goods and people. Its controversial August 2019 land border closure, in a bid to address smuggling, has already painfully disrupted regional agri-food trade and value chains. The active engagement of the Buhari administration will thus be crucial to the success of a multifaceted regional response.

One of the first tough questions the region’s governments must collectively address is how long to maintain the border shutdowns that were imposed as an initial measure to curb the spread of the virus. Closed borders are detrimental to food security, and disruptive to supply chains and the livelihoods of micro, small and medium-sized entrepreneurs that rely on cross-border trade. The impact of prolonged closures will be all the more profound in a region where welfare systems are largely non-existent or, at best, highly precarious.

Nigeria, in particular, with more than 95 million people already living in extreme poverty, might do well to explore measures to avoid putting food further beyond the reach of people who are seeing their purchasing power evaporate.

In taking further actions to control the spread of the coronavirus, the region’s governments will need to show faith in the system that they have painstakingly developed to monitor and respond to the annual risk of food crisis across the Sahel. This system, and the critical data it offers, will be vital to informing interventions to strengthen the four components of food security – availability, access, stability and utilization – in the context of COVID-19, and for charting a post-pandemic path of recovery.

Above all, careful steps will need to be put in place to ensure that preventing the spread of the coronavirus does not come at the cost of even greater food insecurity for the people of the Sahel and West Africa. The region’s governments must prioritize the flow of food across borders and renew their commitment to strategic coordination and alignment.

The COVID-19 pandemic has struck the Sahel and West Africa at a time when the region is already under severe pressure from violent insecurity and the effects of climate change on its land, food and water resources.

By the end of April, there had been 9,513 confirmed coronavirus cases across the 17 countries of the region, and some 231 deaths, with the highest overall numbers recorded in Nigeria, Ghana, Guinea, Côte d’Ivoire, Senegal, Niger and Burkina Faso. Low testing rates mean than these numbers give only a partial picture.

The Food Crisis Prevention Network (RPCA) forecast in early April that almost 17 million people in the Sahel and West Africa (7.1 million in Nigeria alone) will need food and nutritional assistance during the coming lean season in June–August, more than double the number in an average year. The combined impact of violent insecurity and COVID-19 could put more than 50 million other people across the region at risk of food and nutrition crisis.

Rippling across the region

The effects of the collapse in global commodity prices, currency depreciations, rising costs of consumer goods and disruptions to supply chains are rippling across the region. And for major oil-exporting countries such as Nigeria, Ghana, Chad and Cameroon, the wipe-out of foreign currency earnings will hammer government revenues just as the cost of food and other critical imports goes up. It is likely that the number of people who suffer the direct health impact of the coronavirus will be far outstripped by the number for whom there will be harsh social and economic costs.

In recent years, valuable protocols and capacities have been put in place by governments in West and Central Africa in response to Ebola and other infectious disease outbreaks.

But inadequate healthcare funding and infrastructure across this region compound the challenge of responding to the spread of the COVID-19 infection – which is testing the resources of even the world’s best-funded public health systems.

Over many years, however, the region has steadily built up structures to tackle humanitarian and development challenges, particularly as regards food security. It has an established system for assessing the risk of food crisis annually and coordinating emergency support to vulnerable communities. Each country monitors climate and weather patterns, transhumance, market systems and agricultural statistics, and terrorist disruption of agricultural productivity, from local community to national and regional level.

The system is coordinated and quality-controlled, using common technical data standards, by the Permanent Interstate Committee for Drought Control in the Sahel (CILSS), a regional intergovernmental body established in 1973 in response to a devastating drought. Collective risk assessments allow emergency support to be mobilized through the RPCA.

For almost three months already, countries in Sahelian West Africa have been working with the World Health Organization to prepare national COVID-19 response strategies and strengthen health controls at their borders. Almost all governments have also opted for domestic curfews, and variations of lockdown and market restrictions.

Senegal has been a leader in rapidly developing Africa’s diagnostic capacity, and plans are under way to speed up production of test kits. Niger was swift to develop a national response strategy, to which donors have pledged €194.5 million. While the IMF has agreed emergency financial assistance to help countries address the urgent balance-of-payments, health and social programme needs linked to the COVID-19 pandemic, signing off $3.4 billion for Nigeria, $442 million for Senegal and $130 million for Mauritania.

Steps are also now being taken towards the formulation of a more joined-up regional approach. Notably, Nigeria’s President Muhammadu Buhari has been chosen by an extraordinary session of the Economic Community of West African States to coordinate the regional response to COVID-19. As Africa’s biggest economy and home to its largest population, Nigeria is a critical hub for transnational flows of goods and people. Its controversial August 2019 land border closure, in a bid to address smuggling, has already painfully disrupted regional agri-food trade and value chains. The active engagement of the Buhari administration will thus be crucial to the success of a multifaceted regional response.

One of the first tough questions the region’s governments must collectively address is how long to maintain the border shutdowns that were imposed as an initial measure to curb the spread of the virus. Closed borders are detrimental to food security, and disruptive to supply chains and the livelihoods of micro, small and medium-sized entrepreneurs that rely on cross-border trade. The impact of prolonged closures will be all the more profound in a region where welfare systems are largely non-existent or, at best, highly precarious.

Nigeria, in particular, with more than 95 million people already living in extreme poverty, might do well to explore measures to avoid putting food further beyond the reach of people who are seeing their purchasing power evaporate.

In taking further actions to control the spread of the coronavirus, the region’s governments will need to show faith in the system that they have painstakingly developed to monitor and respond to the annual risk of food crisis across the Sahel. This system, and the critical data it offers, will be vital to informing interventions to strengthen the four components of food security – availability, access, stability and utilization – in the context of COVID-19, and for charting a post-pandemic path of recovery.

Above all, careful steps will need to be put in place to ensure that preventing the spread of the coronavirus does not come at the cost of even greater food insecurity for the people of the Sahel and West Africa. The region’s governments must prioritize the flow of food across borders and renew their commitment to strategic coordination and alignment.

Vladimir Putin’s goal of restoring Russia’s status as a great power has led to an aggressive foreign policy and confrontation with its immediate neighbours as well as Western countries.

Sergei Medvedev, author of The Return of the Russian Leviathan, will discuss the forces shaping Russian politics and society today as well as how a nostalgia for empire – still widespread in contemporary Russia - has shaped Moscow’s foreign policy.

Attendance at this event is by invitation only.

Vladimir Putin’s goal of restoring Russia’s status as a great power has led to an aggressive foreign policy and confrontation with its immediate neighbours as well as Western countries.

Sergei Medvedev, author of The Return of the Russian Leviathan, will discuss the forces shaping Russian politics and society today as well as how a nostalgia for empire – still widespread in contemporary Russia - has shaped Moscow’s foreign policy.

Attendance at this event is by invitation only.