Polypandemic

By mutually reinforcing each other, these pandemics might well reverse decades of development progress, further exacerbate state fragility, and even become a catalyst for violent conflict. The new special edition of the Munich Security Report "Polypandemic" seeks to fuel the debate on how to better protect the world’s most vulnerable people while also helping them invest in long-term crisis resilience.

No region of the world has been spared its dire toll on lives and well-being. And no part of the globe has remained unaffected by the socio-economic shock produced by the coronavirus and its grim effects on human livelihoods. Yet, some nations, societies, and people are struggling more than others. In places that already suffered from low development, state fragility, and violent conflict before Covid-19, the pandemic’s direct and indirect fallout promises to be much more severe.

Already, the pandemic threatens to undo years of progress in global development, potentially pushing millions more into poverty and causing food insecurity in various parts of the world. Democracy faces fierce headwinds as a result of Covid-19 and violent non-state actors have already begun to exploit the pandemic to extend their own reach. And with the world distracted by Covid-19, some actors have even intensified their involvement in conflict – including in Europe’s immediate neighborhood. By destabilizing nations and aggravating deprivation, the shocks produced by the coronavirus could even become catalysts for violent conflict itself.

At the moment, however, there is a huge imbalance between, on the one hand, the human suffering and the threats to peace and security that the pandemic might provoke in various contexts and, on the other hand, the attention and assistance that Germany, Europe, and the international community have dedicated to them. In this regard, wealthier states’ pandemic responses are a continuation of a pre-pandemic behavior: one of underinvestment in the safety and well-being of the world’s most vulnerable places. By highlighting the consequences, Covid-19 has served as a magnifying glass for the mistakes of the past.

But moments of crisis always represent a chance. By relentlessly exposing the extent to which our well-being depends on the well-being of others, the pandemic could well serve as a wake-up call. For Germany, Europe, and the international community it offers a tremendous opportunity to support affected countries in their efforts to “build back better” and thereby decrease the global disparities that undermine international peace, stability, and resilience.

In this regard, the report chimes well with a long tradition of activities on human and health security by the Munich Security Conference (MSC). It seeks to fuel the debate on how to better protect the world’s most vulnerable people while also helping them invest in long-term crisis resilience. If the international community does not embrace a policy that understands solidarity as self-interest and the protection of the world’s most vulnerable populations as a strategic investment in the future, the post-Covid-19 world will be much more brittle than the world that entered the polypandemic.

States also have to “build back better” at the international level. After years of policies that successively eroded multilateral institutions, countries need to strengthen the collaborative institutions and instruments that are crucial for effective global solidarity.

And the pandemic has revealed something else: The relationship between more and less developed parts of the world does not need to be a one-way street. When it comes to fighting infectious diseases, the past months have evinced, the developed West has a lot to learn from many developing states.

The Munich Security Conference would like to thank the Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development for generously funding part of this project.

The report offers a range of exclusive and previously unpublished data. For this special edition, the MSC once more cooperated with a number of institutions, including the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project (ACLED), the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF), Gallup, the International Organization for Migration (IOM), the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), Pew Research Center, Save the Children, the Wellcome  Trust, the World Bank Group and the World Health Organization (WHO).

The Munich Security Report Special Editions complement the Munich Security Report, which is annually published in February ahead of the Munich Security Conference. Each MSR Special Edition is dedicated to an essential and current topic of international foreign and security policy.

This special edition "Polypandemic" on development, fragility, and conflict in the era of Covid-19 and available in English and German is the second such publication – after the special edition “Zeitenwende | Wendezeiten” on German foreign and security policy – and will be followed by further issues in this series in the future.