International Cooperation Failures in the Face of the COVID-19 Pandemic: Learning from Past Efforts to Address Common Threats

Acknowledgments

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Authors
Jennifer M. Welsh
Project
Rethinking the Humanitarian Health Response to Violent Conflict

The American Academy’s project on Rethinking the Humanitarian Health Response to Violent Conflict brings together legal and security experts, health professionals, leaders of humanitarian organizations, policy-makers, artists, and representatives of victimized communities to confront the current crisis in humanitarian protection and the provision of health services in areas plagued by armed conflict. The project is based on the premise that new approaches are best derived from a deeper, transdisciplinary understanding of the changing political, military, legal, and health dimensions that are dramatically redefining humanitarian challenges throughout the world. The initiative’s overarching goals include helping to define new strategies for the effective provision of humanitarian health responses to populations in need. To ensure the relevance of its work in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic, the project adopted a pragmatic approach to the changing environment and evolving humanitarian needs by examining underlying issues that undermine effective humanitarian responses, such as a lack of global cooperation on pandemic preparedness and response. 

This publication, International Cooperation Failures in the Face of the COVID-19 Pandemic: Learning from Past Efforts to Address Common Threats, by project cochair Jennifer M. Welsh, reflects on the findings of the project’s work on global cooperation on pandemic preparedness and response. It builds on a set of interdisciplinary meetings with experts on responses to a range of common threats to humanity—such as weapons of mass destruction and environmental degradation—and a deeper examination of the international relations literature on intergovernmental cooperation. The paper draws from this research and provides insight on what lessons can be learned from historical or analogous cases of efforts to strengthen state cooperation in situations of intense geopolitical rivalry and existential risk, including through the design of institutions and agreements to incentivize cooperation, the cultivation of trust through confidence-building, and the engagement of major powers.

We are grateful to the members of the project’s advisory group for their advice in shaping this stream of research on pandemic preparedness and response, and to the numerous academics and practitioners at the United Nations, at humanitarian organizations, and at universities and think tanks around the world who shared their expertise and experience with our project team and whose insights have helped shape this paper. We especially wish to thank Donald M. Berwick, David Fidler, Julio Frenk, Barbara Koremenos, Steven E. Miller, Mara Pillinger, Scott D. Sagan, Amy Smithson, and David G. Victor for their participation in the expert workshops that informed this work, and particularly express our gratitude to the Permanent Mission of Canada to the World Trade Organization, the United Nations, and the Conference on Disarmament in Geneva for hosting a discussion with diplomats whose insights informed the final version of this paper. In addition, we thank the team at the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, including Kathryn Moffat, Islam Qasem, Melissa Chan, Francesca Giovannini, Jen Smith, Kathleen Torgesen, Phyllis Bendell, Scott Raymond, Heather M. Struntz, and Peter Walton.

Finally, we offer our deep appreciation to Louise Henry Bryson and John E. Bryson and to the Malcolm Weiner Foundation for supporting the Rethinking the Humanitarian Health Response to Violent Conflict project.

Jennifer M. Welsh
McGill University 
Cochair, Rethinking the Humanitarian Health Response 
to Violent Conflict project

Paul H. Wise
Stanford University
Cochair, Rethinking the Humanitarian Health Response 
to Violent Conflict project

Jaime Sepulveda
University of California, San Francisco
Cochair, Rethinking the Humanitarian Health Response 
to Violent Conflict project