Vaccine Diplomacy at a Time of Extreme Rivalries

Transcript Vaccine Diplomacy at a Time of Extreme Rivalries Dr Renata Dwan Deputy Director and Senior Executive Officer, Chatham House Professor Michel Kazatchkine Senior Fellow, Global Health Center, The Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies Dr Champa Patel Director, Asia-Pacific Programme, Chatham House Robert Yates Director, Global Health Programme, Executive Director, Centre for Universal Health, Chatham House The views expressed in this document are the sole responsibility of the speaker(s) and participants, and do not necessarily reflect the view of Chatham House, its staff, associates or Council. Chatham House is independent and owes no allegiance to any government or to any political body. It does not take institutional positions on policy issues. This document is issued on the understanding that if any extract is used, the author(s)/speaker(s) and Chatham House should be credited, preferably with the date of the publication or details of the event. Where this document refers to or reports statements made by speakers at an event, every effort has been made to provide a fair representation of their views and opinions. The published text of speeches and presentations may differ from delivery. © The Royal Institute of International Affairs, 2021. 10 St James’s Square, London SW1Y 4LE T +44 (0)20 7957 5700 F +44 (0)20 7957 5710 www.chathamhouse.org Patron: Her Majesty The Queen Chair: Jim O’Neill Director: Dr Robin Niblett Charity Registration Number: 208223 2 Vaccine Diplomacy at a Time of Extreme Rivalries Chair: John Kampfner Founder and Former CEO of the Creative Industries Foundation Event date: 30 June 2021 3 Vaccine Diplomacy at a Time of Extreme Rivalries John Kampfner Good afternoon, everybody, and welcome to this Chatham House event, Vaccine Diplomacy at a Time of Extreme Rivalries. I’m John Kampfner, Author and Broadcaster and Consultant Fellow here at Chatham House. In a moment, I’ll be introducing our excellent panel and setting out some of the areas for our discussion. First of all, though, just a few housekeeping points. This event is recorded and it is on the record. We’ll be discussing the issues among the panel for about 40 minutes or so, then there will be 20 minutes opportunity for questions, please use the ‘Q&A’ button. If you would rather not pose the question yourself in audio and rather have me pose it for you, then please say so’ when you press the button. Before we – one other thing, on Twitter, please do tweet your comments, your thoughts on this at Chatham House and the hashtag is CHEvents. Before we get going, I’m delighted to invite Dr Renata Dwan, Deputy Director and Senior Executive Officer at Chatham House to say a few introductory remarks. Renata. Dr Renata Dwan Thanks, John, and great to be with you all today. Hello, everyone, and thanks for joining us for our meeting today. I’m really just here to introduce the topic and the approach of this event today, which is that our desire in Chatham House to unpack and perhaps explore some of the complexity around this moment we’re in, in the world today where the need to come together, to work together to solve global challenges has never been as great, and yet the environment for coming together, for states working together, has arguably never been so fraught in as many decades. And we’re seeing this huge challenge facing us at the global pandemic level and all of the questions around collaboration in an era of rivalry are being brought to bear in the question of how we respond, how we engage and how we manage. So, it’s a fascinating discussion today and that’s my bell going, so let me say look forward to this, this is the first of a series and we look forward to you joining us. Thank you very much indeed. John Kampfner Thank you very much indeed, Renata. So, to our panel, Professor Michel Kazatchkine is a Senior Fellow at the Global Health Center of the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies, joining us from Geneva, and Michel is an expert on HIV/AIDS and on other past health crises. Alongside him, we have two of the contributors to this report and senior Chatham House figures, Dr Champa Patel, who is Director of the Asia-Pacific Programme, and Rob Yates, who is Director of the Global Health Programme. So, in this paper, which was published early this morning, which I’ve written – which I hope encompasses the scope of Chatham House expertise, which is wide-ranging in so many different areas. And, as Renata was pointing out, the aim of this is to be cross-cutting, to try to draw together some of the strands, whereas on the more specific areas, individual Chatham House programmes dig deeper into the detail. As Renata said, this is the first in a series of three, this one focusing on COVID and the wider health ramifications. A second one will be published around the end of September, also focusing on cross- cutting Chatham House expertise, and that will be looking at the threat of the climate emergency with regard – within this era of big power rivalries, and a third one will be published, the final one in this series, at the end of the year, the start of January. And so to the substance, so the apparent vaccine’s success in the richer nations has led to competitiveness within these countries. It has led to stockpiling and to almost an obsessive sense of who’s at 60%, who’s at 55%, who’s at 75%, whereas, as we all know, developing countries are in absolute low single figures. 4 Vaccine Diplomacy at a Time of Extreme Rivalries The suffering is acute, it’s immediate, and it is immense, and in so many ways, I contend, the West, as it used to be known, or the richer nations, have fallen short. They have fallen short, in terms of the multilateral commitment and they are falling short in the – in bilateral commitments and solidarity as well. Into that breach have come China and Russia and other participants, and what are the causes of that, what are the ramifications of that, in geostrategic terms? We’ll also be looking at that as well. And then, we come to the conclusion of the report, which could be seen by some as controversial, which is actually an exhortation to developing economies to say it isn’t perfect, the world certainly isn’t perfect, and the collaboration has been disappointing, so far, to say the least. So, if we are living in a world of extreme rivalry and competitiveness, then maybe those countries, particularly if and when the supply of vaccines and other medical assistance increases, could play on that competitiveness and turn it to their advantage. More on that anon, but I want to first ask the three panellists for some introductory thoughts, and first to you, Rob, and in the report you – I quoted you as saying the following very standout sentence and you said this, “This has been a story of extraordinary scientific success and extraordinary political failure.” Could you work from that and explain to us your view of the situation, as we find it? Robert Yates Yes, absolutely, John, and thank you very much for inviting me on today’s programme, and, if I’m being strictly honest, I was paraphrasing the UN Secretary-General there, when he said that the Scientists have succeeded and the Politicians are failing. And I think that’s the situation we find ourselves in 2021, that in 2020 the Scientists delivered technologies that would get us out of this crisis, and we have a whole slew of vaccines that have proved to work now, and then the baton was really passed on to our governments and the pharmaceutical industry to deliver these to the world, in an efficient and equitable way, you know, and it is absolutely clear as day that our strategy for coming out of this crisis is primarily around everyone getting vaccinated. Now, it’s not exclusively, we will still need some other public health measures, but we can see in our own countries that, you know, here in the UK one almost has the impression everything is fine now. You know, all the papers are full about stories about football and going on holidays, and there’s a real, sort of, sense of optimism in the air that, you know, everything is done and dusted now. But if you do delve into the deeper pages of the newspapers, one can see that in countries like Uganda and Indonesia and Bangladesh, it’s a desperate situation at the moment, with 1,000s of people dying, economies shutting down, and a real, sort of, panic amongst populations about what’s happening next. So, there have been frequent calls, you know, this year for the multilateral system and in particular, the West to step up and be serious about vaccinating the world equitably. And I think, in particular, there were huge expectations put on the G7 Summit that was held here in the UK in September, about, you know, the need to vaccinate the world and some very, very clear asks from the United Nations, the World Bank, IMF, WHO, there were three basic asks: to share vaccines now equitably, you know, to really start this transfer of vaccines to countries that need them most. To put a lot of public financing in to make sure that there are more resources to buy more vaccines and diagnostic tests and strengthen the health systems, and that’s about $50 billion was expected, and also, to speed up tech transfer to countries, so they would have greater ability to do these things.

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