Opinion | Coronavirus crisis exposes the politics of division in the international community

Name: WHO members including China back investigation of UN body’s response to the Covid-19 pandemic
Uploaded: 2020-07-09T12:00:12.000Z
Duration: 2 min 37 s
Description: WHO members including China back investigation of UN body’s response to the Covid-19 pandemic

Far from encouraging unity, the crisis has exacerbated antagonism, with the UN embroiled in superpower rivalry, the EU lacking a cohesive strategy and divisions in many countries over how to handle the pandemic

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A Syrian boy sits next to humanitarian aid in a camp on February 21. A UN Security Council resolution for a global ceasefire to allow coronavirus aid to the most vulnerable is mired in disagreement. Photo: AFP

Humphrey Hawksley

Published: 8:00pm, 9 Jul 2020Updated: 8:19pm, 9 Jul 2020

Crisis often helps to lift the fog of bureaucratic process and shows institutions in their true light. At first glance, the United Nations along with its World Health Organisation takes the lead on Covid-19. Regionally, in Europe, that role falls to the European Union and, nationally, to state governments.

Far from exacerbating antagonism within and between governments, the crisis should encourage unity. But the UN has allowed itself to become embroiled in superpower rivalry. The EU has failed to come up with a cohesive regional strategy and, in many countries, questions on how to handle the pandemic have caused divisions.

First, the UN. In April, Secretary General Antonio Guterres described Covid-19 as the world’s gravest test since the UN’s founding. He warned it could lead to an increase in social unrest and violence, against which the engagement of the UN Security Council would be critical. “A signal of unity and resolve from the council would count for a lot at this anxious time,” he said.

Guterres took the step of calling for a resolution on a global ceasefire in the world’s many conflicts to create conditions to deliver aid to those most vulnerable. Over weeks of negotiation, draft resolutions have journeyed through numerous incarnations, but at the time of writing, none has gone to the vote because of US objections.

The blocking point is not a dispute over the ceasefire, but over the WHO as the lead international agency on Covid-19. The United States has accused the WHO of being manipulated by China and withholding pandemic information.

02:37

WHO members including China back investigation of UN body’s response to the Covid-19 pandemic

The two governments could not agree on how to refer to the WHO in the resolution text, and President Donald Trump announced the US is withdrawing from the UN agency altogether.

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