Ebola and security opportunities lost

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http://atimes.com/atimes/World/WOR-01-211014.html



Ebola and security opportunities lost
By Paula Gutlove and Gordon Thompson
Oct 21, '14

In an October 13 speech about the present Ebola epidemic, Dr Margaret Chan, director-general of the World Health Organization (WHO), said: "When a deadly and dreaded virus hits the destitute and spirals out of control, the whole world is put at risk. Our 21st century societies are interconnected, interdependent, and electronically wired together as never before."

Ebola demonstrates, as Dr Chan acknowledged, an often-ignored feature of the modern world. We are both interdependent and mutually vulnerable. None of us can enjoy our full potential for security unless all of us have at least a basic level of security. Those of us who are prosperous enjoy advantages, such as air travel, that create a shared vulnerability with those who are trapped by poverty or conflict. Liberia and Sierra Leone, front-line countries in the Ebola epidemic, suffer from both poverty and the lasting effects of violent conflict, having emerged from devastating civil wars only a decade ago. Unfortunately, their role as a breeding ground for infectious disease is not unique. In Syria, for example, violence is promoting infectious disease. Polio was eliminated in Syria in 1995 but returned in 2013 and has spread across opposition-controlled areas in the north and into Iraq. Syria is also experiencing outbreaks of other infectious diseases including measles, pertussis, rubella, and tuberculosis.

Governments and other major actors have finally acknowledged the Ebola epidemic as a global emergency. For example, the World Bank, spurred by its president, Dr Jim Yong Kim, has committed US$400 million to fighting Ebola. The success of such emergency efforts remains to be seen. To complement these efforts, it would be wise to draw some larger lessons and take appropriate, longer-term preventive actions. The key lesson is that, in an era of global interdependence and mutual vulnerability, people everywhere must have at least a basic level of security.

The concept of "human security" meets that need. The UN Development Program (UNDP) first set forth this concept in 1994, and the idea received considerable attention for a decade thereafter. In recent years, that attention has waned. Now that Ebola has given us a wake-up call, it would be prudent to revisit the concept of human security.