Nexus between national and human security dimension of COVID-19 pandemic.
From a broad historical perspective, Gerald Rockenschaub, Jukka Pukkila, and Maria Cristina Profil (2007) said “health security is a key priority for WHO’s Member States.
The crises in south-eastern Europe in 1991-2002 were a traumatic experience that reshaped the perception of security both in Europe and globally. Violent conflicts in the heart of Europe demolished security arrangements and the sense of safety in European societies.
The lessons learned from the response to the health challenges posed by the conflicts in south-eastern Europe have significantly influenced the international approach to health assistance in later conflicts and post-conflict situations around the world.
In the European Region, more than 300 000 people have perished in violent conflicts and almost 100 000 from natural and human-made (technological) disasters during the past 15 years, and the number of natural disasters seems to be increasing.
Much of this increase has now been credibly attributed to global climate change, and the increase is predicted to continue. The task of estimating and predicting the health effects of global climate change is very complicated and is only just beginning.
At the same time, the health effects of some earlier disasters, most notably those of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster 21 years ago, are still being studied.
Humanitarian emergencies, including natural and human-made disasters, conflicts, and complex emergencies, constitute what has traditionally been considered the main threat to health security worldwide.
Within the traditional categories of health threats, such as epidemic-prone diseases and natural and technological health hazards, there are scenarios of new or re-emerging threats, such as an influenza pandemic or the accidental release or deliberate use of biological and chemical agents or radio nuclear material, creating a sense of insecurity and a climate of fear and exposing new challenges to national health systems and governments.
Some communicable diseases, such as Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) and influenza, have the potential to cause sudden, large-scale harm to the health and welfare of entire populations, including those in high-income countries such as western Europe.
Olubukola Adesina (2014) drew attention to HIV/AIDS as a national security threat. In January 2000 the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) held its first-ever session to examine HIV/AIDS as a security concern, the first occasion in which the UNSC had specifically discussed a disease.
Before then, HIV/AIDS had primarily been considered a public health issue at the international level. UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan told the Security Council: “The impact of AIDS in Africa was no less destructive than that of warfare itself”.
By overwhelming the continent’s health and social services, by creating millions of orphans, and by decimating health workers and teachers, AIDS is causing social and economic crises which in turn threaten political stability.
In already unstable societies, this cocktail of disasters is a sure recipe for more conflict. And conflict, in turn, provides fertile ground for further infections’ (UN press release, 2000).
At the same security council meeting, the president of the World Bank, James Wolfensohn pointed out that AIDS was not just a health or development issue, but one affecting the peace and security of people in Africa.
While life expectancy in Africa had increased by 24 years in the last four decades of the twentieth century, the continent’s development gains were threatened by the AIDS epidemic and life expectancy gains were being wiped out.
Ahyousha Khan (2020) says that “time and developments at international level proved that security is not static; it evolves with the changing nature of threats, and in the face of latent or imminent risks”.
Environmental insecurity, human insecurity, terrorism, and cyber insecurity are a few prominent non-traditional security threats faced by modern states in the 21st century.
Although, these threats garner significant attention the focus of the world major powers remained towards enhancing military and political strength of their states. According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), military expenditure of states was $1917 billion in the year 2019, which is 7.2% higher than it was in 2010.
Khan is of the view that the term ‘security’ “is a comprehensive concept that encompasses the internal and external security threats faced by nation-states within the prevalent international system.
“Thus, each state has a peculiar national security policy, dynamic enough in the face of evolving threats and inherent vulnerabilities. Therefore, a national security policy cannot be unidirectional aiming to address either traditional or non-traditional threats.”
So, when pandemic such as COVID-19 struck the world, no state was prepared enough to handle this essentially non-traditional threat. States which possess the most destructive technologies such as nuclear weapons, where there is always a chance of nuclear catastrophe, which could lead to millions of deaths, were short of ventilators and intensive care units.
Even though scientists warned for years that climate change will increase the chances of pandemics by amplifying disease vectors, the focus of state’s national security never entailed such issues of human security; due to the belief that worst pandemics have already passed.
Consequently, the price of this ignorance in terms of human security is now paid with a 20% decrease in the global economy, worldwide lockdowns, quarantines, and more than 220,000 deaths across the globe (the number is still on the rise, with no vaccine having been developed yet).
These statistics reveal that though non-traditional security threats may not directly damage national security, they can be catalytic in affecting the other essential elements of national security.
The globalized world that we live in today is more vulnerable to infectious diseases such as COVID-19 due to increasing trade, population density, migration, human displacement, climate change, and deforestation.
Therefore, it is essential for states to counter non-traditional security threats because they can potentially reduce the national resilience of states to prosper. The consequences of these threats would be more damaging for the developing world, where there is population density, lack of medical facilities, and most importantly economic vulnerability of the state to handle such threats for a prolonged period of time.
Indeed, coronavirus cannot be meaningfully discussed within the context of global or national security dimension without reference to its human security implications, vice versa. There is a nexus between the national and human security aspects of the coronavirus pandemic.
Akiko Fukushima (2020) of Tokyo Foundation for Policy Research was emphatic: “The COVID-19 pandemic is not only a health crisis, but it is also a human security crisis — depriving our freedom of fear, freedom from want and freedom to live with dignity. The pandemic demands a human security approach of comprehensive, across-the-board human protection and empowerment.”
When the concept of human security was introduced in policy discussions in the 1990s, the approach was criticized for broadening security threats beyond war.
In 2020, we are learning that an epidemic, which has killed close to 120,000 around the world as of 14 April, undermines our security and safety.
Professor Dennis Altman (2020) of La Trobe University, Australia, argued that the outbreak of the coronavirus necessitated rethinking the relevance of human security.
“The recent bushfires and the coronavirus pandemic reveal imminent threats from climate change and global diseases that threaten the very survival of what we take for granted. Yet governments have been far less willing to commit to responding to these issues than to increasing military budgets.”
When the concept of human security emerged it was designed to address seven themes: “economic, food, health, environmental, personal, community and political security”.
While these terms may seem too broad to be useful, all of them are directly related to the crises now facing the world.
He says the concept of human security was “broad enough to advance both freedoms from fear and freedom from want” and that “the cataclysmic events of this year should remind us national security is no longer to be thought of in terms of conventional warfare and military expenditure”.
“Put simply, human security encompasses all those threats to survival that are not military or state-sponsored, and therefore tend to fall beneath the radar of those who imagine security is conventionally “hard” terms.”
After unparalleled bushfires and coronavirus, the concept of human security gives us the language to reassess the most immediate threats to our survival and the need for global cooperation to respond to them.
In Africa and Nigeria in particular, the spread of the pandemic took a different dimension from those in advanced western countries in Europe and North America.
In the latter countries, the spread of the pandemic was widespread across all cities including their countrysides. But in the former, it is only a few major cities that experienced the pandemic, sparing the countrysides.
In Nigeria, for instance, Lagos, Ogun State, Abuja FCT, and Kano had the highest rate of the pandemic in comparison with other states in the country.
But most intriguing and interesting at the same time is the evident low rate of the pandemic in the most conflict-ridden region of the country: Northeastern region of the country which includes Borno, Yobe, Gombe, Bauchi, Adamawa, and Taraba.
Michael Morell (2020) is a CBS News senior national security contributor and former acting director of the [US] Central Intelligence Agency. Morell brought out seven potential national security consequences of COVID in which crisis in conflict zones was ranked third in the taxonomy of the consequences.
“Many people in these countries are living in refugee camps, living in very close proximity to each other, living in unsanitary conditions, where water, food, and medical care in short supply.”
The governments or pseudo governments in these areas are simply not able to deal with a health crisis that is at their doorstep. The result will be taking an already existing humanitarian crisis and making it much worse. Many will die, and some will go on the move and will try to cross borders to get to where they believe to be a better place.
In a worst-case scenario, one can imagine people being shot as they try to cross borders or getting through borders and increasing the health risk to their new homes.
Morell says “Conflict zones are areas where war is raging or areas just in the aftermath of war. These areas, from a COVID-19 perspective, are at significant risk.”
Daniel Egel, Charles Ries, and Howard Shatz of RAND Corporation (2020) look at the outbreak of COVID-19 from a global economic perspective noting its impacts on the health stability of the world economy, in addition to U.S. national security interests within the context of falling oil prices.
The authors particularly noted the risk of the virus to internally displaced people and refugees.
“The coming recession is likely to have a major destabilizing impact on IDP and refugee communities throughout the Middle East, which are already economically very precarious. Added to this economic challenge is the reality that these communities are likely to be particularly badly affected by COVID-19 given their density and the lack of means to control the spread of the outbreak or treat the people”.
This new source of instability in these communities could create opportunities for radicalization, and there are indications that some groups are already trying to “weaponize” COVID-19 to this purpose. But it could also set off—or aggravate—a new geopolitical conflict as refugees increasingly try to flee across the Turkish border.”
The scenario painted above was quite different from the conflict zone of Northeast region of Nigeria where Boko Haram insurgency and terrorism have been raging for almost eleven years now; and where significantly more than 2 million people have been displaced from their homelands, and currently sheltered in Internally Displaced Persons Camps (IDP Camps) as at June 11, 2020, only 382 deaths have been recorded in Nigeria, with 4,351 discharged but with total confirmed cases standing at 13, 873.
But for Borno State that is the epicentre of the insurgency, only 381 cases were confirmed, Bauchi 374 cases, Yobe 52 cases, Adamawa 42 cases, and Gombe 246 cases.
These statistics go to reinforce the argument that there may be, after all, two levels of coronavirus spread: the high-level and low-level intensity. High-level intensity embraces countries that have suffered the most from the virus, Europe, North America, Russia, and other countries in the temperate zone; while the low-level intensity embraces countries mostly in the tropical region such as African countries, etc.
However, this does not explain the totality of what has happened or is happening in the northeastern region of the country. It is not necessarily as a result of proactive measures put in place by the concerned State Governments here, however crucial this may have been.
The additional fact to be noted here is that the flow of human carriers from the southern part of the country, especially from the Lagos-Ogun axis and even from Abuja to the northeastern states is extremely thin. The contrary is the case.
There has been a mass movement of people, not authorized by the government, from the north to the south, people who are reported in the media to be almajiri, among others.
But the next epicentre, apart from the Lagos-Ogun axis, in the country is Kano State. It is most probable that the carriers who spread the virus in the northeast states are from Kano State and possibly Abuja.
Thus the fears of writers like Morell, Egel, Ries, and Shatz are not justified when applied to the scenario in Nigeria.
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