Why common security is back on the agenda
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Next year marks the 40th anniversary of the ground-breaking Palme Commission Report, which introduced the concept of ‘common security’ into a world dominated by the Cold War, the doctrine of mutually assured destruction, and the existential threat of a nuclear winter.
Olof Palme was one of my early heroes – a Swedish prime minister who epitomised the vibrant generation of social democrats that included the Nobel Peace Prize-winning former German chancellor Willy Brandt, the former Australian prime minister Bob Hawke, and the former Norwegian prime minister Gro Harlem Brundtland.
Palme’s Commission began the process of reducing tensions and thawing that led to a Cold War warrior like the former US president Ronald Reagan reaching key arms control agreements with the reforming Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev.
The first reaction of nation states was to protect their own, hoard, close borders – and indulge in nationalist points-scoring. The more the US and its allies blamed China, both for the outbreak in Wuhan and for what many considered to be a cover-up, and the more China refused to provide the necessary access or information, the more distrustful and disjointed the global response became.
The final year of Donald Trump’s ‘America First’ presidency was characterised by a Covid policy of denial, denigration of science and, at that point, the world’s highest infection rate. The president launched repeated broadsides against the World Health Organization, denouncing its director general Tedros Ghebreyesus as a “puppet” of China; he announced the termination of the US’s WHO membership and $400m annual payment, putting its finances in peril just at a time when the organisation was most needed. Trump’s approach was borne partly of ideology, partly of a need to create a dist
Panel says WHO, govts failed to manage Covid-19
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The International Panel for Pandemic Preparedness and Response issued its report on Wednesday into the global handling of the Covid-19 pandemic, calling for a new transparent global system to be set up for investigating disease outbreaks.
The report, “
Covid-19: Make it the last pandemic”, is to be debated at the World Health Organisation s annual ministerial assembly opening on May 24.
Here are the main findings and recommendations of the panel of independent experts led by.
All Access Plan
KT edit: An overhaul of WHO is need of the hour Filed on May 12, 2021
It was in mid-January last year, when images of a strict lockdown in China’s Hubei province, particularly Wuhan, started flooding the Internet and news.
It’s almost unthinkable, but what if we could have turned the tide on the pandemic? Maybe, we could have saved a million or two lives from the highly infectious viral disease. Maybe, we could have saved millions more from being pushed deeper into the poverty pit. Just maybe, our children could have continued with regular school and play time in the company of their loved ones. Families would not have been separated and the departed would have been accorded dignified goodbyes.
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