Event Summary
MSC hosts virtual Roundtable on Health Security
The Munich Security Conference brought together key decision-makers and experts for a virtual discussion on COVID-19 and multilateralism.
On November 3, 2020, the Munich Security Conference (MSC) hosted a virtual roundtable titled “Making (Vaccine) Multilateralism Work – An Update on the Joint Fight against COVID-19”. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Director General of the World Health Organization (WHO) spoke at the event. He and other senior decision-makers and experts from government, business, international organizations, NGOs, and the think tank community, explored how a fair and equitable access to COVID-19 vaccines can be ensured through multilateral means.
Equitable access is in the national interest of every country. Vaccine nationalism will prolong the pandemic, not shorten it. That's why we should make multilateralism work for vaccines. There is no vaccine for poverty, hunger, inequality, or misguided nationalism. […] This pandemic is a severe public health crisis, but it's more than that. It's a test of character. The pandemic is asking us profound questions about the kind of world we want.Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus•Director General of the World Health Organization (WHO)
As soon as a COVID-19 vaccine becomes available, questions of distribution and equitable access move to the fore. The global nature of the pandemic necessitates a multilateral approach to the issue leveraging the power of international institutions to ensure that no country and no group of people is left behind. To this end, highly innovative initiatives such as the COVAX facility have been launched. The pandemic, however, has struck a world that was already in turmoil and moving towards less rather than more cooperation. Rising geopolitical tensions and growing nationalism thus threaten to derail collective solutions. Making (vaccine) multilateralism work despite these challenges hence has become vital to the global COVID-19 response.
About Health Security
The MSC has acknowledged early on that local health issues have the potential to evolve into full-fledged international security crises. Aware of the need for international action, the MSC partnered with the World Health Organization, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the Wellcome Trust, Johnson and Johnson, Merck and others, to promote the discussion and collaboration between health officials, NGO leaders, security strategists, the private sector, and decision-makers. Within its Human Security Series, the MSC has been organizing events and conferences on health-related challenges since 2016. Moreover, health security has become an integral part of the MSC's annual conference in Munich as well as its Core Group Meetings. Additionally, a chapter in the annual Munich Security Report regularly focuses on health security issues. In November, the MSC will publish a special edition of the Munich Security Report on the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on development and security.
