Dr. Binneh S Minteh
When COVIC-19 began spreading its wings across the global health landscape, governments were faced with a stark reality of an attack by a pervasive deadly unseen virus across transnational boundaries. From China to Europe to the America’s, the African continent, Middle East and South East Asia, governments were left with the choice of adopting a public health policy of enforced inactivity that either shutdown or placed restrictions on all non-essential services and forced citizens to stay home for long periods to avoid the spread of the virus beyond epic proportions. The global response to COVID–19 has proven that the threats of pandemics poses the greatest challenges to National and International Security.
The magnitude of the enforced inactivity has shut down global transportation and communication networks, forced business both in the private and public sectors to either scale down, operate virtually or shut down, forcing millions of citizens globally out of work, which triggered the worst economic crisis since the great depression of the 1930s.
As thousands are hospitalized and thousands more either dead or infested by the unseen virus, the healthcare capacities of governments globally were tested in many ways. Evidently, even the world’s most powerful economies including the USA, China, Britain, Germany, France (Just to name a few) responded with various degrees of under-preparedness. Arguably it was the deployment of specialized Military units that helped mitigation and containment efforts in many respects to calm the devastating storm for both developed and developing economies of our times. Similarly, in the developing world, urgent calls by international partners, forced many governments to impose enforced inactivity under Public Health State of Emergencies.
In response to the devastating economic impact of the enforced inactivity on the livelihood of citizens, governments in developed economies introduced grandiose economic stimulus packages to support businesses (Small and Large), Families and Essential workers for purposes of economic continuity. In developing and underdeveloped nations, governments have similarly introduced economic packages that provided degree of support for families.
With continuous mitigation efforts to contain the pandemic, it became evident that long periods of enforced inactivity would only address the health security aspect to prevent the spread of the virus as economic activity stalls; growing unemployment, acute food shortages and failing supply chains. In line with contemporary national security arguments, the consensus among policy makers suggested that health security and economic security are intertwined, and only by developing strategies that could ensure health security while guaranteeing economic security in phased or strategic ways can the nation be protected from devastating economic meltdowns. In that context, a growing number of countries began the phased opening of respective sectors of the economy using a health security centered approach.
While a health security centered approach to the phased lifting of enforced inactivity in the economy has proven to be effective in many respects, it raised or triggered several challenges. Evidently, some governments of developed and developing economies experienced a rift between executive and legislative bodies about easing public policy restrictions to ensure economic interaction. In the same vein, the lack of capacity and proper oversight in some developing nations led to mismanagement and embezzling of economic relief provided by donors and national governments. For example in The Gambia, the Minister of Health in a parliamentary briefing warned lawmakers that the lack of capacity and corruption in a scheme of allowance allocation from relief funds to hundreds of ghost healthcare workers threatened institutional efforts to combat COVID-19 without his intervention.
Amid the growing fray, both executive and legislative bodies in most developed countries understand the importance of forging a common ground to protect the greater goodness of the state. Adopting such common approaches has led to the emergence of nation-wide strategic lifting of restrictions in line with public health policies.
Conversely, while most governments in the developing world worked diligently to ensure continuity and common public health policy approaches, other governments got caught up in a tug of war between executive and legislative power on the question of easing enforced activity to stir economic growth. In some cases, corruption and the lack of institutional capacity gripped health ministries of some developing countries. In sum, there are three core lessons that governments in both the developing and develop economies could draw from pandemics and contemporary security:
1) Governments should establish Biodefense agency or Pandemic Response Team comprised of experts responsible for designing a response framework to pandemics, coordinating and implementing a national plan of action.
2) The threats of pandemics should be treated as a national security challenge, since health security is integral to the attainment of economic security. The failure of governments to increase containment capacity of healthcare systems can disrupt the foundations of economic and financial systems globally. Military and security units in the developing world must be prepared to support national healthcare infrastructure in the outbreak of future pandemics.
3) Executive and Legislative organs of government must put politics aside and operationalize constitutional authority in the name of protecting the common good and not party or individual interest. For example, amid the increasing criticism of the handling of the pandemic in the USA, both the Executive and Legislative branches have worked to forge a common approach to stimulating the economy and the lifting of enforced inactivity in line with public policy health directive sand guidelines issued by the Center for Disease Control(CDC).
Perhaps the Gambian Executive and Legislative Bodies should understand that operationalization of constitutional authority should be informed by protecting the common good of the nation and not individual or party interest. Both the executive and legislative have a responsibility to promote the health and economic security of the nation. COVID-19 is a national security threat that must be handled with caution and diligence. Ending the State of Emergence abruptly is dangerous and a continuation of enforced inactivity under the State of Emergency will have lasting impact on the economy and livelihood of citizens. Perhaps the easing of restrictions on some non-essential services important to supporting livelihoods using a phased approach under the State of Emergency is the way forward.
Dr. Minteh is a Professor of Criminal Justice and Public Policy at Rutgers University, Newark Campus. He is also a Former Gambian Army First Lieutenant.