From Resilience to Response

A message from ARK CEO.

Over the past few weeks, London Business School (LBS) has run a series of webinars on the Coronavirus pandemic.  In one of these, Professor Julian Burkinshaw outlined succinctly three aspects of resilience in the face of Covid-19. The first was individual resilience, ensuring each individual is able to cope with the challenges associated with isolation and everything from working from home to deep job and financial insecurity.  The second was operational resilience, which in a business sense means adapting to the new circumstances companies and organisations find themselves in, from the practicalities of remote work (where possible) and operating in the Cloud, to managing disrupted supply chains, cash flow fears and the reality of indeterminate closures, furloughed staff and the seeming absence of new opportunities.  The third aspect is strategic resilience, which means ensuring whatever it is one did before the Covid-19 outbreak is still wanted by customers. In short, being adaptive and responsive enough to stay relevant.

Understandably the discourse around the pandemic has focused heavily on challenges, from the relative merits of suppression and mitigation strategies to concerns over the supply of Personal Protective Equipment (PPE), the longer term economic impact and the very real prospect that we will not and can not return to the status quo ante. At the same time, Covid-19 also presents opportunities that we should not lose sight of. By this I do not mean for those unscrupulously peddling home testing kits or the startling rise in cyber crime that preys on the vulnerable and the fearful. I also do not want to focus on the important discussion about what we can learn from this disruption in relation to climate change, the desirability of traditional ways of working or how we resource (and respect) our frontline emergency workers.

In countries ravaged by war, such as Yemen, Syria or Somalia, the impact of Covid-19 is likely to be devastating, given the paucity of health infrastructure, medical personnel and financial resources. Even if our shared humanity is insufficient to spur us into collective action, naked self-interest should.  As the UN Secretary General said earlier this month ‘In an interconnected world, none of us is safe until all of us are safe.  COVID-19 respects no borders.  COVID-19 anywhere is a threat to people everywhere’. There has been a temptation in recent years to think that we can somehow ignore international threats to peace and stability. One would think that the refugee crisis following the Syrian conflict or the irregular migration explosion in recent years would have put paid to that thinking, but sadly not. These are not abstract concepts, or conflicts far away. Undoubtedly fears of the  uncontrolled movement of people and being ‘swamped’ by refugees fed directly into the narrative that promoted Brexit in the UK, whatever your politics.  Our inaction has consequences, now as then. Whilst it is understandable that each nation focuses on its own health and security as its first priority, the unprecedented (a word used a lot these days) cooperation in the scientific, research and medical community in the search for a vaccine must be replicated in our practical response to helping other countries in this shared undertaking.

Moving beyond the immediate emergency and humanitarian response, perhaps it is even possible to imagine the global response to Covid-19 could positively impact our collective desire to end conflict.  Even in the most intractable conflicts, such as in Israel/Palestine, there are glimmers of hope. As the Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process stated last week ‘“The recognition of this interdependence could – if there is political will – translate into tangible progress towards resolving the conflict”.  As the UN Secretary General calls for a global ceasefire to enable us to battle this common threat together, this creates peacebuilding entry points.  In Yemen, which has recorded its first Covid-19 case this month, opportunities now exist to work across the conflict lines and focus on what unites Yemenis, not divides them. As localised ceasefires take hold and fighters lay down their guns, why should we not rethink our approaches to Demobilisation, Disarmament and Reintegration (DDR) and repurpose these individuals and units as rapid response sanitation and public health units, much as hundreds of thousands in the UK heeded the call to assist the National Health Service?  As someone who works in a sector that implements programmes of support in fragile and conflict-affected states, my plea to bilateral and multilateral partners is that we must now create and seize opportunities to support the most vulnerable, not only within our own national boundaries.  Whether out of pure self-interest or a more enlightened sense of our shared humanity, the imperative is clear.  Much as there are fears that the governmental response to Covid-19 may retrench authoritarianism, promote securitised responses and negatively impact fundamental freedoms, it is possible to imagine an alternate future where Covid-19 spurs collective action, fosters enhanced accountability and transparency, reinforces the social contract and reminds us of our shared humanity and interdependence.