Franck PetitevilleProfessor of Political Science at Sciences Po Grenoble and at the Pacte laboratory
In a recent article in the French newspaper Le Monde, geographers Patrick Poncet and Olivier Vilaça drew a disturbing picture of the management of Covid-19: the global pandemic remains a "pious hope" of the WHO (since we are witnessing instead a juxtaposition of "national" epidemics managed in dispersed order by States), global governance of the pandemic "does not exist", and the United Nations in particular is doing "nothing" for lack of resources granted by States.[1]. This provocative view of international pandemic management is not entirely wrong, but it is a little short-sighted.
Of course, the international coordination prevails. States are reasserting their "health sovereignty sovereignty" by taking national measures that are more or less compatible compatible with each other (confinement for a hundred or so countries group immunity" for a few others, closing borders but repatriating repatriation of nationals). This staging of a "neo-national" world[2] is is all the more striking given that, at the same time, the pandemic is bringing globalisation globalization far more brutally than the 2008 financial crisis. Human mobility human mobility in all its forms (tourism, economic migration, refugees) is dramatically halted. Global air traffic (more than 100,000 flights a day in normal times) collapsed. The WTO announces a world trade by more than a third, and the IMF predicts a global recession in 2020 a global recession twice as deep as the 1929 crisis.
However, it would be simplistic to see international organizations as mere spectators of the crisis. First and foremost, we must emphasize the exceptional conditions in which they continue to work: headquarters and premises deserted, staff confined, virtual meetings by videoconference. The usual conditions under which diplomats negotiate have also been disrupted. At the UN General Assembly, for example, physical meetings in plenary sessions are obviously cancelled, and the adoption of a proposed resolution is by tacit approval: if none of the representatives of the 193 States objects (numerically!) before the end of the set deadline, the resolution is automatically adopted.
More fundamentally, in these times of crisis, international organizations are are reminded of the values of solidarity, international cooperation and universalism of solidarity, international cooperation and universalism, and particularly essential in times of resurgent unilateral practices. This is how we should interpret the message from WHO Director General, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus in January 2020, calling for a "triple solidarity scientific, financial and political solidarity" on a global scale. calls from UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, on the one hand, and the Guterres, on the one hand, for unfailing cooperation in the fight against the pandemic (including protection of the world's poorest populations, migrants and migrants and refugees) and a generalized ceasefire in countries in countries in armed conflict, such as Syria, Libya, Yemen and South Sudan. Sudan. In the name of "the very raison d'être of the United Nations United Nations itself" (April 9, 2020), Antonio Guterres launched a global fund fund to support developing countries in coping with the socio-economic consequences of the pandemic and containment policies.
For its part, the UN General Assembly embodied the "international community" by adopting, by consensus among its 193 member states, a resolution on "global solidarity in the fight against coronavirus disease 2019" (April 2, 2020). In this resolution, UN member states advocated "renewed multilateral cooperation", recognized the "crucial role" of WHO, and stressed "that no form of discrimination, racism or xenophobia has any place in the action against the pandemic". In a second, more recent resolution (April 20, 2020), the General Assembly also spoke out in favor of equitable access, for all countries in the world and whatever their level of development, to medicines, vaccines and medical equipment to combat the pandemic. Finally, in early March 2020, the World Bank announced a $12 billion emergency plan to finance the response to the coronavirus in developing countries. International organizations are thus showing themselves to be in tune with the expectations of populations worldwide who, according to extensive opinion surveys carried out by the UN in 186 countries since the start of 2020, are calling for greater international cooperation to manage global challenges [3].
More disappointing - but not surprising - is the inertia of the UN Security Council Security Council for weeks now. Ruling on a global public health issue is neither an illegitimate an illegitimate or pointless posture for the Security Council. After all, the pandemic kills on a massive scale, at least as much as a violent war. It does, however, presuppose that the members of the Council agree on a broad conception of security close to the notion of "human security". Even if this normative concept is far from consensual in the Security Council, extending the of the Council's agenda to humanitarian issues has become commonplace in the post-Cold War era. However, this is not the natural inclination of Russian diplomacy to a traditional (state and military) conception of security, and one that of security, and which has amply demonstrated the extent to which it assumes the systematic blocking of the Security Council to ensure its views prevail (14 Russian vetoes against Syria-related resolutions since 2011). Sino-American rivalry does the rest: it's hard for diplomats from both of the two states to agree on common language when the when the Trump administration regularly blames China for the outbreak for the outbreak of the pandemic.
Against this backdrop, it was not until April 9 that the Security Council held its first meeting on Covid-19 (behind closed doors and by teleconference), but little came of it. French diplomacy is seeking to unite the five permanent members of the Council on a text designed to impose a humanitarian truce in all armed conflicts around the world during the pandemic, echoing Guterres' appeal. The task seems difficult, and has yet to bear fruit. For their part, the ten non-permanent members of the Security Council (South Africa, Germany, Belgium, Dominican Republic, Indonesia, Estonia, Vietnam, Tunisia, Niger, Saint-Vincent-et-les-Grenadines) have been reduced to trying to advance among themselves a draft resolution aimed at mandating the Council to supervise the impact of the pandemic on international peace and security.
Of all the international organizations, WHO is obviously the most exposed to the pandemic. [4]. It declared the Covid-19 epidemic a "public health emergency of international concern" on January 30, 2020, and then described it as a "pandemic" on March 11, 2020. Since being informed by the Chinese government of the first cases of "pneumonia of unknown origin", the WHO has produced some fifty reference documents, and called on governments to carry out mass screening. However, it has been accused of complacency towards the Beijing authorities when they committed a series of health violations (repressive denial in the face of the first whistle-blowers in Wuhan, late acceptance of an initial WHO expert mission, retrospective underestimation of the number of deaths).
So today, the WHO finds itself criticized by Trump for its "mismanagement" of the pandemic, its Director General denigrated on global social networks, and it received the coup de grâce with the US President's announcement of a freeze on US funding (April 14, 2020). In view of the share represented by the US contribution (17% of its resources) for a universal organization with a budget equivalent to that of a major American hospital, Trump's decision is a low blow which, in the midst of a pandemic, weakens the organization a little further, particularly in its action in favor of developing countries. At the "virtual G7" meeting held since then, the six other members of the G7 disassociated themselves from the United States and reaffirmed their support for the WHO, as did the global medical community as a whole.
Placed in the perspective of Trump's foreign "policy", the suspension of US funding to the WHO is yet another manifestation of disruptive unilateralism after many others: withdrawal from the Paris climate agreement, from the Vienna agreement on Iran's nuclear program, from UNESCO, from the UN Human Rights Council, the freezing of US funding to the UN agency for Palestinian refugee relief and to the UN Population Fund, ongoing criticism of the UN, the WTO, NATO, the European Union, and so on.
In the face of the pandemic, international organizations are doing what they can, with the means that States (and particularly the richest and most powerful among them) give them... or not.
[1] https://www.lemonde.fr/idees/article/2020/04/20/coronavirus-en-quelques-jours-le-monde-est-redevenu-une-somme-de-parties_6037135_3232.html
[2] Bertrand Badie, Michel Foucher, Vers un monde néo-national?, Paris, CNRS ed., 2017.
[3] Source: https: //news.un.org/fr/story/2020/04/1067052
[4] See the interview with Auriane Guilbaud by Marieke Louis in La Vie des idées: https: //laviedesidees.fr/L-OMS-dans-le-maelstrom-du-covid-19.html