Global herd immunity remains out of reach because of inequitable vaccine distribution – 99% of people in poor countries are unvaccinated

A COVID-19 field hospital in Santo Andre, Brazil. The pandemic has killed over 503,000 people in Brazil; just 11% of the population is fully vaccinated.
Mario Tama/Getty Images

Maria De Jesus, American University School of International ServiceIn the race between infection and injection, injection has lost.

Public health experts estimate that approximately 70% of the world’s 7.9 billion people must be fully vaccinated to end the COVID-19 pandemic. As of June 21, 2021, 10.04% of the global population had been fully vaccinated, nearly all of them in rich countries.

Only 0.9% of people in low-income countries have received at least one dose.

I am a scholar of global health who specializes in health care inequities. Using a data set on vaccine distribution compiled by the Global Health Innovation Center’s Launch and Scale Speedometer at Duke University in the United States, I analyzed what the global vaccine access gap means for the world.

A global health crisis

Supply is not the main reason some countries are able to vaccinate their populations while others experience severe disease outbreaks – distribution is.

Many rich countries pursued a strategy of overbuying COVID-19 vaccine doses in advance. My analyses demonstrate that the U.S., for example, has procured 1.2 billion COVID-19 vaccine doses, or 3.7 doses per person. Canada has ordered 381 million doses; every Canadian could be vaccinated five times over with the two doses needed.

Overall, countries representing just one-seventh of the world’s population had reserved more than half of all vaccines available by June 2021. That has made it very difficult for the remaining countries to procure doses, either directly or through COVAX, the global initiative created to enable low- to middle-income countries equitable access to COVID-19 vaccines.

Benin, for example, has obtained about 203,000 doses of China’s Sinovac vaccine – enough to fully vaccinate 1% of its population. Honduras, relying mainly on AstraZeneca, has procured approximately 1.4 million doses. That will fully vaccinate 7% of its population. In these “vaccine deserts,” even front-line health workers aren’t yet inoculated.

Haiti has received about 461,500 COVID-19 vaccine doses by donations and is grappling with a serious outbreak.

Even COVAX’s goal – for lower-income countries to “receive enough doses to vaccinate up to 20% of their population” – would not get COVID-19 transmission under control in those places.

The cost of not cooperating

Last year, researchers at Northeastern University modeled two vaccine rollout strategies. Their numerical simulations found that 61% of deaths worldwide would have been averted if countries cooperated to implement an equitable global vaccine distribution plan, compared with only 33% if high-income countries got the vaccines first.

Put briefly, when countries cooperate, COVID-19 deaths drop by approximately in half.

Vaccine access is inequitable within countries, too – especially in countries where severe inequality already exists.

In Latin America, for example, a disproportionate number of the tiny minority of people who’ve been vaccinated are elites: political leaders, business tycoons and those with the means to travel abroad to get vaccinated. This entrenches wider health and social inequities.

The result, for now, is two separate and unequal societies in which only the wealthy are protected from a devastating disease that continues to ravage those who are not able to access the vaccine.

A repeat of AIDS missteps?

This is a familiar story from the HIV era.

In the 1990s, the development of effective antiretroviral drugs for HIV/AIDS saved millions of lives in high-income countries. However, about 90% of the global poor who were living with HIV had no access to these lifesaving drugs.

Concerned about undercutting their markets in high-income countries, the pharmaceutical companies that produced antiretrovirals, such as Burroughs Wellcome, adopted internationally consistent prices. Azidothymidine, the first drug to fight HIV, cost about US$8,000 a year – over $19,000 in today’s dollars.

That effectively placed effective HIV/AIDS drugs out of reach for people in poor nations – including countries in sub-Saharan Africa, the epidemic’s epicenter. By the year 2000, 22 million people in sub-Saharan Africa were living with HIV, and AIDS was the region’s leading cause of death.

The crisis over inequitable access to AIDS treatment began dominating international news headlines, and the rich world’s obligation to respond became too great to ignore.

“History will surely judge us harshly if we do not respond with all the energy and resources that we can bring to bear in the fight against HIV/AIDS,” said South African President Nelson Mandela in 2004.

A 9-year-old girl in Johannesburg, South Africa, prays before taking her twice-daily HIV medications in 2002.
Per-Anders Pettersson/Getty Images

Pharmaceutical companies began donating antiretrovirals to countries in need and allowing local businesses to manufacture generic versions, providing bulk, low-cost access for highly affected poor countries. New global institutions like the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria were created to finance health programs in poor countries.

Pressured by grassroots activism, the United States and other high-income countries also spent billions of dollars to research, develop and distribute affordable HIV treatments worldwide.

A dose of global cooperation

It took over a decade after the development of antiretrovirals, and millions of unnecessary deaths, for rich countries to make those lifesaving medicines universally available.

Fifteen months into the current pandemic, wealthy, highly vaccinated countries are starting to assume some responsibility for boosting global vaccination rates.

Leaders of the United States, Canada, United Kingdom, European Union and Japan recently pledged to donate a total of 1 billion COVID-19 vaccine doses to poorer countries.

It is not yet clear how their plan to “vaccinate the world” by the end of 2022 will be implemented and whether recipient countries will receive enough doses to fully vaccinate enough people to control viral spread. And the late 2022 goal will not save people in the developing world who are dying of COVID-19 in record numbers now, from Brazil to India.

The HIV/AIDS epidemic shows that ending the coronavirus pandemic will require, first, prioritizing access to COVID-19 vaccines on the global political agenda. Then wealthy nations will need to work with other countries to build their vaccine manufacturing infrastructure, scaling up production worldwide.

Finally, poorer countries need more money to fund their public health systems and purchase vaccines. Wealthy countries and groups like the G-7 can provide that funding.

These actions benefit rich countries, too. As long as the world has unvaccinated populations, COVID-19 will continue to spread and mutate. Additional variants will emerge.

As a May 2021 UNICEF statement put it: “In our interdependent world no one is safe until everyone is safe.”

[The Conversation’s most important politics headlines, in our Politics Weekly newsletter.]

Maria De Jesus, Associate Professor and Research Fellow at the Center on Health, Risk, and Society, American University School of International Service

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

The COVID-19 lab leak theory highlights a glaring lack of global biosecurity regulation

Alexander Gillespie, University of WaikatoThe revived debate over whether COVID-19 could be the result of an accidental release from the Wuhan Institute of Virology may never be adequately resolved. Either way, we risk not seeing the wood for the trees.

While the World Health Organization (WHO) reported in February such a leak was “extremely unlikely”, it later advised more work was needed to rule it out.

But the real problem is not what might have happened in China — it’s that there is no meaningful international legal oversight in the first place.

The United Nations’ Convention on Biological Diversity puts the onus on individual countries to regulate their own biotech industries. While there are protocols for the safe handling and transfer of living modified organisms, there are still no agreed international standards governing laboratory safety, monitoring and information sharing.

This is concerning, given the long history of disease breaches at both civilian and military research establishments.

Laboratory escapes have included smallpox (1966, 1972 and 1978), H1N1 “swine flu” (1977 but probably a 1950s-era sample), Venezuelan Equine Encephalitis (1995) and at least six outbreaks of SARS (with two distinct events at the same Beijing laboratory in 2004).

In 2014, it was thought up to 75 workers might have been exposed to anthrax after an accident at the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, raising real concerns about pathogen safety. The same year, five researchers died while working on West African Ebola in Sierra Leone.

Accidents will happen

Rapid advances in biotechnology and the decentralisation of research industries have only increased the potential risks. Without greater control, it’s feared a new or revived disease could be inadvertently released.

Already, researchers have accidentally created a lethal mouse-pox virus, intentionally developed a synthetic strain of the polio virus, resurrected the virus that caused the 1918 influenza, and recreated an infectious horse-pox virus by ordering DNA fragments online.

---

Read more:
Why politicians should be wary of publicly pursuing the Wuhan lab-leak investigation

---

The potential risk from hostile state or terrorist acts in this area is clear, which makes the lack of global oversight all the more alarming.

This is true for even the highest risk “biosafety level 4” laboratories, such as the one in Wuhan. Analysis suggests these facilities can be operated safely, but individual countries and regions such as Europe are setting their own standards. There is also a preparedness gap between wealthy and poor countries.

The risk of bioterrorism

Beyond the WHO’s guidelines, however, there is no universal law, regulation or international oversight mandating even basic requirements, such as external independent inspections. We don’t even know how many level 4 laboratories exist. Officially there are 54, but some probably remain undisclosed for national security reasons.

The exclusion of military establishments from independent oversight compounds the problem. An international convention prohibits the creation, stockpiling and use of bioweapons, but there are only soft commitments to compliance and monitoring. Attempts to create a binding verification protocol have so far failed.

---

Read more:
Biden’s new Wuhan lab leak investigation ramps up US-China blame game

---

The UN Security Council, which monitors this regime, has noted a disturbing trend of countries not participating in its voluntary mechanisms and a lack of effective controls.

In any case, many countries lack the capacity to adequately detect disease outbreaks. Those that do have the capacity are often unco-ordinated and ineffective.

The general failure of effective oversight makes the risk of bioterrorism higher than it should be.

Global agreement urgently needed

Whether or not the conclusive truth about Wuhan ever emerges, if the international community is serious about minimising the risk of biotech accidents it could look to the Convention on Nuclear Safety as a model.

This would mean a system for enforcing global standards, independent inspections and support for best scientific practice.

---

Read more:
Covid-19: why the lab leak theory must be formally investigated

---

It would need to cover any location or establishment where there is a significant risk from human activity that could intentionally, accidentally or recklessly cause an outbreak.

All countries would have to become more transparent to accept such a rules-based international order. And while it’s possible, even probable, that China needs to improve its own systems, it is certainly far from alone in that.

Alexander Gillespie, Professor of Law, University of Waikato

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

We may never achieve long-term global herd immunity for COVID. But if we’re all vaccinated, we’ll be safe from the worst

Gideon Meyerowitz-Katz, University of WollongongIn early 2020, during the first thrashes of the pandemic, we were all talking about herd immunity.

At that stage, many commentators were arguing we should let COVID-19 rip through populations so we could get enough people immune to the virus that it would stop spreading. As I argued at the time, this was a terrible idea that would overwhelm hospitals and gravely sicken and kill many people.

Now we have safe and effective vaccines, we can aim to reach herd immunity in a much safer way. It’s certainly possible we’ll be able to reach and maintain local herd immunity in certain regions, states and countries. However the pandemic ends, it will involve this immunity to some extent.

But it’s still very uncertain whether long-term, global herd immunity is achievable. It’s quite likely the coronavirus could continue to spread even in places with high proportions of their populations vaccinated. It will probably never be eliminated.

However, if we’re all vaccinated, we’ll be largely safe from the worst ravages of the infection even if it does break out.

What is herd immunity again? And what does it mean for us long-term?

There are a few different definitions of herd immunity. Nevertheless, they all deal with the “reproductive number” of a disease, known as the R number. This is the average number of people an infected person will pass a disease on to, at a certain point in time.

---

Read more:
What is herd immunity and how many people need to be vaccinated to protect a community?

---

The R number depends on how infectious a disease is. Measles is often used as an example, because it’s one of the most infectious diseases. In a group of people among whom no one is immune to the disease, on average one person will pass measles on to around 15 others.

But as more people in the community become immune, either through vaccination or getting the disease and recovering, each infected person will pass on the infection to fewer and fewer others. Eventually, we reach a point at which the R number is below 1, and the disease starts to die out. The R number falling below 1 here is in a population where there are no social restrictions, so the disease starts to die out because of immunity and not because of measures like lockdowns. This is one definition of herd immunity.

However, another potential definition is that herd immunity is a state where enough people are immune in a population that a disease won’t spread at all. One of the more confusing parts of the pandemic is we scientists haven’t always used the same definition across the board.

For example, when we say “reached the herd immunity threshold”, we could be talking about a transient state where we’re likely to see another epidemic in the near future, or a situation where the vast majority of a population is immune and thus the disease won’t spread at all. Both are technically “herd immunity”, but they’re very different ideas.

How’s herd immunity calculated?

COVID-19 has an R number somewhere between 2 and 4 in groups of people where no one is immune. Using a simple mathematical formula, 50-75% of people need to be immune to COVID-19 for the R number to fall below 1 so it starts to die out, in a population with no social restrictions. Some researchers have done more complex versions of this calculation throughout the pandemic, but that’s the basic idea behind them all.

However, herd immunity is a moving target. For example, if everyone in your local population is taking great care to socially distance, COVID-19 won’t spread as much. Therefore, in practice, different cultures spread diseases to different extents, so the R number varies in both place and time.

Vaccines are the ultimate path to long-term immunity

Vaccines give us immunity against diseases, often to a greater extent than contracting the disease itself, and without the nasty consequences of being sick.

Our COVID-19 vaccines are safe and effective. Without going too much into the debate over which one is better, they are all capable of getting us to a point at which the disease would no longer spread through the community. For some vaccines, the percentage of people who we need to immunise is higher. But it’s the same basic idea regardless, and we need to vaccinate as many people as we can to have a shot at herd immunity.

We can already see this happening in some places. For example, in the United Kingdom and Israel, enough people have been vaccinated that even though restrictions are being relaxed, infection rates are staying low or continuing to drop. This is a beautiful sight.

The coronavirus will probably never be eliminated

Even with great vaccines, the problem is complex. There are almost always communities who aren’t immunised, for various reasons, even in countries with large proportions of the total population vaccinated. These small communities can continue to get sick and spread the disease long after the general population has passed the herd immunity line, which means there may always be some risk of COVID-19 outbreaks.

On top of this, new variants of the virus have emerged. Our current vaccines are probably enough to provide most people with immunity to the original strain in the long term. But several variants may substantially reduce our vaccines’ effectiveness as time goes by, so we may need boosters at some point.

What’s more, the global situation isn’t rosy. India and Brazil are currently experiencing horrifying COVID-19 outbreaks. The global case count continues to rise, partially because developed nations have hoarded vaccine doses jealously, despite this being a terrible approach to a pandemic. Rising case numbers anywhere increase the chances even more variants pop up, thereby impacting us all.

Even if we overcome vaccine hesitancy and global inaction, and we immunise most of the world, we may not be protected against the virus forever. Even higher-income nations may never get rid of COVID-19.

It’s quite likely this virus will never be eradicated (eliminated from every country across the globe). There may be places where the disease is gone, where local campaigns are successful, but there’ll also be places where the disease is still spreading.

---

Read more:
COVID-19 will probably become endemic – here’s what that means

---

What does this mean for Australia?

This presents a challenge for Australia. We have virtually no local COVID-19 transmission, so there’s no real risk from the virus as long as our border controls hold steady.

However, we probably can’t maintain this level of vigilance forever. And even with our very effective vaccines, we may not have long-term herd immunity — of any definition — to COVID-19.

At some point in the future, it’s likely we will see some cases of COVID-19 spreading in even the safest places in the world, including Australia.

Even so, getting vaccinated enormously reduces your risk of severe outcomes like hospitalisation and death. We should aim to vaccinate as many people as possible, while acknowledging that the future is inherently uncertain, and herd immunity is a challenging goal.

Gideon Meyerowitz-Katz, PhD Student/Epidemiologist, University of Wollongong

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

The big barriers to global vaccination: patent rights, national self-interest and the wealth gap

http://www.shutterstock.com

Ilan Noy, Te Herenga Waka — Victoria University of Wellington and Ami Neuberger, Technion – Israel Institute of Technology

We will not be able to put the COVID-19 pandemic behind us until the world’s population is mostly immune through vaccination or previous exposure to the disease.

A truly global vaccination campaign, however, would look very different from what we are seeing now. For example, as of January 20, many more people have been immunised in Israel (with a population less than 10 million) than in Africa and Latin America combined.

Notwithstanding recent questions about the effectiveness of the initial single dose of the vaccine, there is a clear disparity in vaccine rollouts internationally.

That is a problem. As long as there are still existing reservoirs of a propagating virus it will be able to spread again to populations that either cannot or would not vaccinate. It will also be able to mutate to variants that are either more transmissible or more deadly.

Counterintuitively, an increase in transmissibility, such as has been found with the new UK variant, is worse than the same percentage increase in mortality rate. This is because increased transmissibility increases the number of cases (and hence the number of deaths) exponentially, while an increase in mortality rates increases only deaths, and only linearly.

Evolutionary pressure on the virus will inevitably favour mutations that make the disease more transmissible, or the virus itself more vaccine-resistant. It is clear, therefore, that every nation’s interest is in universal vaccination. But this is not the trajectory we are on.

Fast roll out: a busy coronavirus vaccination station in Israel in mid-January.
GettyImages

Politics and profits

Fortunately, in the countries already vaccinating, the vaccine is (mostly) not allocated by wealth or power, but by prioritising those facing the highest risk. At a country level, however, national wealth is determining vaccine roll out.

Yet in the past we have managed to eradicate diseases worldwide, including small pox, a viral infection with much higher death rates than COVID-19.

There are two barriers that prevent us from rapidly pursuing a similar goal for the current pandemic:

• big pharma is profit-driven and therefore keeps a tight lid on the intellectual property it is developing in the new vaccines

• countries find it difficult to see beyond their national interest; not surprisingly, politicians are committed only to their own voters.

At this point, we don’t have a global system to confront either of these problems. Each vaccine’s patent is owned by its developer, and the World Health Organisation (WHO) is too weak to be the world’s Ministry of Health.

---

Read more:
Should children get the COVID-19 vaccine?

---

The polio vaccine model

Overcoming big pharma’s profit motive has been achieved before, however.

In 1955, Jonas Salk announced the development of a polio vaccine in the midst of a huge epidemic. The news initially met with scepticism. Even employees of his own laboratory resigned, protesting that he was moving too fast with clinical experimentation.

When a huge placebo–controlled clinical trial involving 1.6 million children proved him right, however, he declared that in order to maximise the global distribution of this lifesaving vaccine his lab would not patent it. Asked who owned the patent, he famously replied:

Well, the people I would say. There is no patent. Could you patent the sun?

In an echo of the current moment, Israel (then a new state) was also experiencing a rapidly spreading polio epidemic. Efforts to purchase vaccines from the US were unsuccessful, as not all American children were yet vaccinated. So a scientist named Natan Goldblum was sent to Salk’s laboratory to learn how to make the new vaccine.

No lawyers were involved and no contracts signed. The young Dr Goldblum spent 1956 setting up manufacturing facilities for Salk’s vaccine in Israel and by early 1957 mass vaccination was underway.

Could you patent the sun? Dr Jonas Salk and a nurse administer a polio vaccine in Pennsylvania in the 1950s.
GettyImages

Suspend patent rights

Israel, a small and relatively poor country in the 1950s, became the third country in the world (after the US and Denmark) to produce the vaccine locally and eventually eradicate polio. It took a handful of scientists, a modest budget and, most importantly, no patenting.

Like Salk, Goldblum was aware viruses have complete disregard for political borders. He was also involved in a very successful Palestinian polio vaccination campaign in Gaza.

---

Read more:
The great polio vaccine mess and the lessons it holds about federal coordination for today’s COVID-19 vaccination effort

---

More recently, a highly successful international campaign in the early 2000s saw AIDS treatments distributed in poorer countries. Pharmaceutical companies that owned the patented drugs were forced to supply them at cost or for free, not at market prices set in the rich countries. This was achieved through public pressure and the willingness of governments to support the required policies.

A temporary withdrawal of the patenting rights to the successful COVID-19 vaccines, with or without compensation for the developers, seems a small price to pay for an exit strategy from this global and incredibly costly crisis.

Act local, think global

Overcoming national interest is perhaps more complicated. Clearly, countries have an interest in vaccinating their most vulnerable populations first. But at some point, well before everyone is vaccinated, it becomes more efficient for countries to start vaccinating their neighbours (the countries they are most exposed to through movements of people and trade).

Disappointingly, rich countries today behave as though they will reach 100% vaccination rates before they give away a single dose, with many having bought well in excess of what is needed for 100% coverage.

---

Read more:
COVID vaccine: some waste is normal – but here’s how it is being kept to a minimum

---

The COVAX plan to distribute vaccines in poorer countries has so far been an under-funded effort that has not yet delivered a single dose of vaccine. Even if COVAX were to be fully funded, it mostly aims to donate an insufficient number of vaccine doses to the poorest countries, rather than really bring about a universal vaccination programme.

Nevertheless, overcoming the profit-maximising interest of big pharma and the national focus of governments is not a pipe dream. The world has done it before.

Ilan Noy, Professor and Chair in the Economics of Disasters and Climate Change, Te Herenga Waka — Victoria University of Wellington and Ami Neuberger, Clinical Assistant Professor, Technion – Israel Institute of Technology

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Yes, we need a global coronavirus inquiry, but not for petty political point-scoring

Rey Moon/Shutterstock

Paul Komesaroff, Monash University; Ian Kerridge, University of Sydney, and Ross Upshur, University of Toronto

The US government’s call for an international inquiry into the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic has a clear political motive: to shift the blame for its own failure to respond effectively to the epidemic within its own borders.

The finger-pointing by the Trump administration, and by US allies including Australia, has prompted China to refuse to cooperate.

This is unfortunate, because it is in everyone’s interest to work together, not to question China’s handling of the crisis but to discover the factors that cause new infections so we can avert future disasters.

---

Read more:
Murky origins: why China will never welcome a global inquiry into the source of COVID-19

---

We need to understand how SARS-CoV-2, the coronavirus that causes COVID-19, came into existence, and to look at how and when we might have been able to impede its progress.

This means examining the origins of the virus and the biological and environmental factors that allowed it to become so dangerous. To achieve this, an international, collaborative scientific investigation free from recriminations and narrow political agendas is needed.

What we know so far

Extensive scientific data have shown that SARS-CoV-2 was not deliberately engineered and there was no conspiracy to create an epidemic. It did not originate in or escape from a laboratory, in Wuhan or anywhere. The first human cases of COVID-19 did not come from the Wuhan wet market but from elsewhere in China, possibly outside Hubei province altogether.

In fact, the disease did not “originate” in a market at all, although an important spreading event linked to the Wuhan market did occur that brought it to the attention of Chinese public health authorities.

SARS-CoV-2 almost certainly descended from an animal virus that underwent a series of mutations that made it dangerous to humans. The path to humans probably involved intermediate animal hosts, although which animals remains uncertain.

So here is the most likely sequence of events: a coronavirus in a bat found its way into one or more other animal hosts, possibly including a pangolin or some kind of cat, somewhere in southern China. At that time, the virus could not infect or cause noticeable disease in humans, or else the animals infected had little contact with humans. Over an unknown period of time (possibly decades) the virus mutated in a way that made it highly dangerous and eventually, by chance, a human became infected, probably in about the second week of November 2019.

The new virus was quickly passed on to other people and found its way to Hubei province. On December 10, an infected individual visited the crowded market in Wuhan and was responsible for infecting 21 other people. Over the following two weeks, enough people became sick to alert doctors and public health officials, leading to an announcement on December 31 warning the world of the dangerous new disease. The market was closed the following day and vigorous efforts were made to identify and isolate contacts.

Three weeks later it was clear these measures could not contain the epidemic, and on January 23 Chinese authorities took the brave and unprecedented step of locking down the entire city. This controlled the spread of the virus in China, but it was too late to stop the spread internationally, because by that time the virus was already present in Taiwan, South Korea, Europe and the United States.

What we don’t know yet

What we now have to find out is what happened in the months or years leading up to November 2019 and whether, in retrospect, anything could have been done to prevent the disaster.

It is crucial we understand the evolution of this virus because, as with all human diseases that emerge from animals, it will have occurred as a result of both random biological events and responses to environmental pressures. The virus had to mutate, the original wild animal had to be exposed to other species, and the virus had to spread within that species and undergo further mutations. The animal had to come into close contact with a human who, at the right moment, has to contract the new infection.

---

Read more:
How do viruses mutate and jump species? And why are ‘spillovers’ becoming more common?

---

Despite the low probability of each individual step, in recent decades a long list of viruses has negotiated this entire pathway, including HIV, SARS, MERS, Ebola, Nipah, Lassa, Zika, Hendra, various types of influenza, and now SARS-CoV-2. This suggests new factors are increasing the chances of exposure, adaptation, infection and spread.

It is likely these factors include population growth, agricultural expansion, the loss of natural wild animal habitat, the loss of traditional food sources, and changing relationships between animal species and between animals and humans. Deforestation and climate change further exacerbate this process, as does increased movement of human populations, through domestic and international travel. The international illegal wildlife trade, inappropriate use of drugs and insecticides, and reluctance of governments to work together make matters even worse.

Knowing exactly how these factors affect the genetics and evolution of viruses will help us find ways to thwart them. We could develop a coordinated early warning system to identify and track potentially dangerous pathogens, and monitor interactions between species that could transmit them. We could preserve native habitats and reduce the pressure on wild animals to enter human habitats in search of food. We could strategically cull animals that act as reservoirs for dangerous viruses.

We could precisely target infection control procedures such as health monitoring and quarantine. We could work together to develop diagnostic tests, new drugs and vaccines. We could develop globally coordinated rapid response plans for when new outbreaks arise.

---

Read more:
Coronavirus shines a light on fractured global politics at a time when cohesion and leadership are vital

---

This process will only work if undertaken with openness, trust, and an acknowledgement that it is in the entire world’s best interest. It will only work if we accept that viruses are not national problems or sovereign responsibilities, but global challenges.

COVID-19 should be a wake-up call that petty recriminations, ideological rivalries and short-sighted political ambitions must be set aside. The countries of the world must encourage China and the United States to raise their sights to the greater challenge and help conduct the investigation we need to avert future disaster.

It is urgent, because the next pandemic may already be incubating somewhere in the world at this very moment.

Paul Komesaroff, Professor of Medicine, Monash University; Ian Kerridge, Professor of Bioethics & Medicine, Sydney Health Ethics, Haematologist/BMT Physician, Royal North Shore Hospital and Director, Praxis Australia, University of Sydney, and Ross Upshur, Professor, Dalla Lana School of Public Health, University of Toronto

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

The end of global travel as we know it: an opportunity for sustainable tourism

Shutterstock

Freya Higgins-Desbiolles, University of South Australia

Saturday, March 14 2020, is “The Day the World Stopped Travelling”, in the words of Rifat Ali, head of travel analytics company Skift.

That’s a little dramatic, perhaps, but every day since has brought us closer to it being reality.

The COVID-19 crisis has the global travel industry – “the most consequential industry in the world”, says Ali – in uncharted territory. Nations are shutting their borders. Airlines face bankruptcy. Ports are refusing entry to cruise ships, threatening the very basis of the cruise business model.

Associated hospitality, arts and cultural industries are threatened. Major events are being cancelled. Tourist seasons in many tourist destinations are collapsing. Vulnerable workers on casual, seasonal or gig contracts are suffering. It seems an epic disaster.

But is it?

Considering human activities need to change if we are to avoid the worst effects of human-induced climate change, the coronavirus crisis might offer us an unexpected opportunity.

Ali, like many others, wants recovery, “even if it takes a while to get back up and return to pre-coronavirus traveller numbers”.

But rather than try to return to business as usual as soon as possible, COVID-19 challenges us to think about the type of consumption that underpins the unsustainable ways of the travel and tourism industries.

Tourism dependency

Air travel features prominently in discussions about reducing carbon emissions. Even if commercial aviation accounts “only” for about 2.4% of all emissions from fossil-fuel use, flying is still how many of us in the industrialised world blow out our carbon footprints.

---

Read more:
Flight shame won’t fix airline emissions. We need a smarter solution

---

But sustainability concerns in the travel and tourism sectors extend far beyond carbon emissions.

In many places tourism has grown beyond its sustainable bounds, to the detriment of local communities.

The overtourism of places like Venice, Barcelona and Reykjavik is one result. Cruise ships disgorge thousands of people for half-day visits that overwhelm the destination but leave little economic benefit.

Graffiti in Barcelona: ‘Tourists go home. Refugees welcome.’
Dunk/flickr, CC BY-SA

Cheap airline fares encourage weekend breaks in Europe that have inundated old cities such as Prague and Dubrovnik. The need for growth becomes self-perpetuating as tourism dependency locks communities into the system.

In a 2010 paper I argued the problem was tourism underpinned by what sociologist Leslie Sklair called the “culture-ideology of consumerism” – by which consumption patterns that were once the preserve of the rich became endemic.

---

Read more:
Tourists behaving badly are a threat to global tourism, and the industry is partly to blame

---

Tourism is embedded in that culture-ideology as an essential pillar to achieve endless economic growth. For instance, the Australian government prioritises tourism as a “supergrowth industry”, accounting for almost 10% of “exports” in 2017-18.

Out of crisis comes creativity

Many are desperate to ensure business continues as usual. “If people will not travel,” said Ariel Cohen of California-based business travel agency TripActions, “the economy will grind to a halt.”

COVID-19 is a radical wake-up call to this way of thinking. Even if Cohen is right, that economic reality now needs to change to accommodate the more pressing public health reality.

It is a big economic hit, but crisis invites creativity. Grounded business travellers are realising virtual business meetings work satisfactorily. Conferences are reorganising for virtual sessions. Arts and cultural events and institutions are turning to live streaming to connect with audiences.

In Italian cities under lockdown, residents have come out on their balconies to create music as a community.

Local cafes and food co-ops, including my local, are reaching out with support for the community’s marginalised and elderly to ensure they are not forgotten.

These responses challenge the atomised individualism that has gone hand in hand with the consumerism of travel and tourism. This public health crisis reminds us our well-being depends not on being consumers but on being part of a community.

---

Read more:
Rethinking tourism so the locals actually benefit from hosting visitors

---

Staying closer to home could be a catalyst awakening us to the value of eating locally, travelling less and just slowing down and connecting to our community.

After this crisis passes, we might find the old business as usual less compelling. We might learn that not travelling long distances didn’t stop us travelling; it just enlivened us to the richness of local travel.

Freya Higgins-Desbiolles, Senior Lecturer in Tourism Management, University of South Australia

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

At the G20, a focus on sideshow diplomacy and photo opps, with limited material gains

As always, sideline diplomatic meetings dominated the G20, while multilateral cooperation was fleeting.
Lukas Coch/AAP

Caitlin Byrne, Griffith University

What a weekend it’s been: global leadership, diplomacy and theatrics, all at play on the world stage. US President Donald Trump – never one to shy away from the spotlight — has dominated. Significant breakthroughs, including a pause in the escalating China-US trade war and the resumption of dialogue between the US and North Korea, have been achieved.

One might question the strategy and motivations behind Trump’s latest diplomatic engagements. Known for his unorthodox approach to diplomacy, Trump’s latest activities are more likely driven by the prospect of a fight in the 2020 US elections than a genuine concern for regional and global stability. Trump’s turn towards dialogue has averted the immediate disaster of a trade war and confrontation with North Korea, but the longer-term implications point to a more significant shake-up in global diplomacy.

Limited success and blurred optics

As host of the 2019 G20 summit, Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is to be credited for his efforts in bringing global leaders together under what appeared to be difficult circumstances.

It was always going to be a tough meeting. Overshadowed by the US-China trade war, and set against a global backdrop of widening political fault lines, seething populism and fraying institutions, Abe certainly had his work cut out for him.

---

Read more:
Trade war tensions sky high as Trump and Xi prepare to meet at the G20

---

Just bringing together the leaders and other officials from 19 of the world’s biggest economies, plus the European Union, for a summit on global economic governance was, in itself, a major achievement. They were joined by a raft of invited guests, including the leaders of Singapore, Vietnam and Thailand, as well as representatives of key international organisations.

The summit delivered expected consensus support for “strong, sustainable, balanced and inclusive economic growth”, alongside renewed commitments to reform the World Trade Organisation and agreement on key initiatives on digital innovation and e-commerce, financial inclusion for ageing populations, and marine plastics.

More importantly, it provided the much-needed platform for US-China dialogue, bringing the escalating trade war to a halt.

Ultimately, though, the G20 gains were limited. The final communiqué reflected the deep political tensions globally at the moment and the overriding domestic focus of many leaders. For example, it stopped short of affirming the G20’s customary commitment to anti-protectionist measures and included watered-down language on climate change action.

One might be forgiven for mistaking the leaders’ summit for a glorified photo opportunity. G20 pics – ranging from the rambling family photos of leaders and spouses to awkward moments on the sidelines — dominated the weekend Twittersphere.

Of course, optics matter, and the images revealed much about the diversity and dynamics at play within this “premier” economic forum. Trump’s friendly interactions with Russian President Vladimir Putin and Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman, for instance, raised eyebrows and ire at home.

But it’s not all about the photo opps. The G20 leaders’ summit is the culmination of months of intense negotiations, and most importantly reinforces the underlying habits of cooperation so desperately needed for ongoing global economic stability.

Theresa May and Vladimir Putin shared one of the weekend’s more cringe-worthy moments.
Mikhail Metzel/Tass handout/EPA

Side-show diplomacy

As with any major summit, the G20 gathering offers the opportunity for leaders to engage in bilateral or minilateral discussions. For many, this is the main event, and for Abe, especially, the stakes on the sidelines at this G20 were high.

Saturday’s bilateral meeting between Trump and China’s President Xi Jinping did not disappoint, with both leaders agreeing to resume trade talks, stalled since the last G20 in Buenos Aires. Notably, Trump announced his suspension of some US$300 billion in threatened tariffs and eased restrictions on US companies selling components to Chinese telco, Huawei.

---

Read more:
US-China relations are certainly at a low point, but this is not the next Cold War

---

Other G20 sideline events, including Trump’s bilateral with Putin created their own drama, but it was Trump’s Saturday morning tweet suggesting a spontaneous visit with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un during his subsequent trip to Korea, that caught everyone off guard.

And with that, arrangements fell miraculously into place for Trump to take a historic first step for a sitting US president into North Korea, and for Kim and Trump to spend an hour in conversation in Freedom House on the South Korean side of the demilitarized zone.

Importantly, the two have now agreed to further talks intended to advance their ongoing denuclearization negotiations. Spectacle aside, there may well be positives to come from this interaction, but for the moment the endgame just isn’t clear.

Thumbs up for Morrison

Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison performed remarkably well at his second G20 leaders’ summit, marking a positive turn from last time round.

To be fair, Morrison attended his first G20 summit in November just three months into his term as prime minister following the Coalition leadership spill. He was unknown and inexperienced at the time.

---

Read more:
In his first major foreign policy test, Morrison needs to stick to the script

---

In Japan, Morrison was attending his first G20 as Australia’s elected leader, with decent summitry experience and far more established relationships with his global counterparts in place. His key message – that a US-China trade war was in nobody’s interests – was well-prepared, and it resonated with key G20 counterparts.

Other highlights for Morrison included his dinner on the eve of the summit with Trump. While the press pool may have been unimpressed, the fact that this was Trump’s first bilateral event of the summit is significant, even if it was, as some suggest simply to fill a gap in Trump’s program. Trump’s reflection on the US alliance with Australia, and Morrison’s election win with Australia was replete with praise.

Scott Morrison had plenty of face-time with Donald Trump over the weekend.
Lukas Coch/AAP

More importantly, though, Morrison’s win on curbing terrorist activities via social media was an important contribution to the summit outcome. G20 leaders were unanimous in their backing for the proposal that would increase pressure on tech giants like Facebook to block or remove the spread of violent extremism online.

The fact that Morrison shared news of the outcome with New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern added to the credibility of the concept within the G20 grouping and lifted its profile at home.

No clear path ahead

In all, the G20 summit was an important exercise in diplomacy and resulted in a positive outcome for Abe. This sort of cooperation is so desperately needed if the institutions, rules and norms underpinning economic governance are to carry any weight at all. And as Japan hands the G20 reins over to the 2020 host, Saudi Arabia, supporting diplomacy and cooperation will be more important than ever.

Trump’s sideshow-style diplomacy certainly stole the limelight. The resumption of dialogue with both China and North Korea reaffirms the necessary place of diplomacy in the region. But Trump is navigating dangerous territory, and the lack of clear strategy, dubious motivations and self-serving tactics should have everyone – including his allies – on guard.

Caitlin Byrne, Director, Griffith Asia Institute, Griffith University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

The false hope offered by talk of a living wage

Supporters outside the offices of the Fair Work Commission in Melbourne on Friday, June 1, 2018 after it lifted the minimum wage by 3.5%
JOE CASTRO/AAP

John Freebairn, University of Melbourne

Labor is promising a “living wage” rather than a “minimum wage” if elected.

It will ask the Fair Work Commission to first determine what wage would offer a “decent standard of living for families”, and then to determine the time frame over which it should be phased in, taking into account the capacity of businesses to pay, and the potential impact on employment, inflation and the broader economy.

It is selling the idea of what would be a very big increase on the present minimum wage as “good for workers and good for the economy”.

“Consumer spending makes up 60% of the Australian economy,” its employment spokesperson Brendan O’Connor said. “When low-paid workers get a pay rise, they spend it in the local shops and help small businesses. It’s good for everyone.”

The idea harks back to the 1907 Harvester judgement, in which an arbitration court judge decreed that wages at a Melbourne factory should be based on the cost of living “for a worker and his family”.

---

Read more:
Budget explainer: why is Australia’s wage growth so sluggish?

---

To get there from the current bare minimum wage of A$18.93 per hour would almost certainly require increases bigger than the sum of productivity growth and inflation, which are running at a combined annual rate of around 3%.

Unacknowledged by Labor in spruiking the policy this week was the fallacy of its consumer spending argument, the cost of the proposal to jobs, and the likelihood that it won’t much help many of the people who need it.

The false increased spending argument

One of the claimed benefits of a living wage is that employees will spend most of their extra income, resulting in large increases in national spending, national income, and even the tax take.

An implicit assumption is that the extra money comes “as manna from heaven” with no second-round effects.

But given that other labour costs won’t come down (it is hard to see executive pay being cut), the labour cost for each affected business will climb, pushing down returns to the providers of capital, including the returns to shareholders and small business owners.

With lower returns, less capital will be put up to invest.

Where businesses can, they will pass on the increased costs not matched by increased productivity by increasing prices.

They will get away with it unless they face competition from imports or other exporters.

---

Read more:
‘Once upon a time, when Australia had a steel industry …’

---

Where import competitors and exporters face international competition, they will reduce output. In turn, the greater amount of money sent out of the country will eventually push down the Australian dollar, pushing up the Australian dollar price of import and export products.

In the short term, the increases in prices of goods and services will cut the purchasing power of the wage increase. In the longer term, it might create a vicious cycle of wage and price hikes, with adverse economic consequences.

The bad news on jobs

It is well established that wage increases above the rate of productivity growth plus inflation lead to less employment than there would otherwise be, in both the number of employees and the hours worked per employee.

Labour costs are a major expense for most businesses.

In response to higher labour costs, many employers will choose less labour-intensive ways of making their products. The large and rapid wage increases in the mid-1970s and early 1980s resulted in sharp reductions in employment. In contrast, the recent low rates of labour cost increases have helped drive significant increases in employment and a fall in unemployment.

With the Australian economy facing a likely slowdown over the next year or two, a large increase in wages might be particularly poorly timed.

The false hope for those most in need

Universal education and health care, and the redistribution of income via social security payments funded by a progressive income tax, are the most direct and effective ways to fight household poverty.

The world today is very different to the world of the Harvester case in 1907. Then, most workers were in full-time employment and needed a living wage to support a family. Now, about a third are employed part-time. Redistribution via the tax and payments system is how we support families who need it.

---

Read more:
A national living wage is on the table. Now let’s talk about a global living wage

---

A higher minimum or “living wage” would provide minimal assistance to some on low incomes, and would lift the incomes of many others not generally considered in need of support.

Many of those below the poverty line who are only employed part-time or not at all would not be lifted out of poverty. A higher living wage would provide more to those already in full-time jobs than it would to part-time workers.

And it would provide more to low-wage employees who are members of high-income families, who probably shouldn’t be our first concern.

We can do more more directly to alleviate poverty by reforming the income tax and social security systems. They are specifically designed to redistribute income according to need.

We should start by reducing income tax on low earnings, automatically indexing tax brackets, and increasing Newstart.

John Freebairn, Professor, Department of Economics, University of Melbourne

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

A national living wage is on the table. Now let’s talk about a global living wage

Australia’s Harvester Judgement of 1907 defined a living wage as ‘fair and reasonable’ payment sufficient for an unskilled worker to support a family in reasonable comfort.
http://www.shutterstock.com

Shelley Marshall, RMIT University

The idea of the living wage is back on the political agenda. In the United States the Democrats are proposing to double the federal minimum wage. In Australia the federal Labor Party has promised to deliver a living wage.

“A living wage should make sure people earn enough to make ends meet, and be informed by what it costs to live in Australia today – to pay for housing, for food, for utilities, to pay for a basic phone and data plan,” Opposition leader Bill Shorten said this week.

The principle of the living wage is the subject of my book published in January. To write the book I spent five years researching working conditions in countries including Australia, Bulgaria, Cambodia, India and Thailand.

What my research underlines is that there are limits to thinking about a living wage for Australian workers without also making the principle global.

A ‘reasonable’ standard

Australia first embraced the living wage more than a century ago in what is arguably the nation’s most famous labour law case. The Harvester Judgement of 1907 defined a living wage as “fair and reasonable” payment sufficient for an unskilled worker to support a family in reasonable comfort.

In deciding exactly how much income was needed to assure this, Australia’s Conciliation and Arbitration Court examined 11 households to determine the cost of typical living expenses. These included lighting, clothes, boots, furniture, insurance, union membership, sickness, books, newspapers, alcohol and tobacco.

---

Read more:
Explainer: what exactly is a living wage?

---

Twelve years later the principle was enshrined in international labour law, when the International Labour Organisation was established in 1919. It defined a living wage as one “adequate to maintain a reasonable standard of life as this is understood in their time and country”.

A century on, Australia’s industrial relations system has long abandoned the central premise of the living wage. Around the world being paid enough to live on remains elusive. We are all intimately connected to many of these workers. They have assembled the phones we handle. They have sewn our clothes.

Women in Bangladesh who make clothes for brands such as Big W, Kmart, Target and Cotton On earn as little as 51 cents an hour, according to an Oxfam report published last month.

The report is based on interview with 470 garment workers in Bangladesh and Vietnam. Three-quarters of the Vietnam workers and all of the Bangladeshi workers earned less than a living wage (as calculated by the Global Living Wage Coalition).

---

Read more:
It would cost you 20 cents more per T-shirt to pay an Indian worker a living wage

---

Fear of capital flight

It is very hard for workers to mobilise for higher wages in many countries around the world. In January 5,000 garment workers in Bangladesh were sacked after going on strike for higher wages. During protests, police shot dead one worker. More than 50 others were injured.
Striking garment workers in Cambodia have also been shot dead by police during protests.

Especially in price-sensitive industries, globalisation exerts strong pressure on governments to keep minimum wages low, lest any increase lead to “capital flight”. This competition pits countries in a race to the bottom.

Should labour costs go up in Bangladesh, for example, its government fears garment brands moving production to, say, Ethiopia. It’s a legitimate fear; in my 15 years of research I’ve seen whole garment factories dismantled and trucked across borders to countries where the labour is cheaper.

Cooperation is the answer

The obvious solution would be for countries to cooperate and raise minimum wages collectively and incrementally (at an agreed percentage every year). This approach would help overcome “first mover risk”. Business would have less incentive to look for cheaper labour elsewhere.

For this to occur would, of course, require huge amounts of international political good will. Nation states would need to put aside the tendency to think in terms of immediate self-interest and work cooperatively for mutual benefit.

Here we face a problem with the architecture of international law in general, and labour law in particular.

Though the principle of a living wage was enshrined in the treaty that formed the International Labour Organisation, it is not codified in any of the eight fundamental international labour conventions. These cover forced labour, child labour, workplace discrimination and the right to unionise.

But even if it was, that wouldn’t necessarily make much difference. International law isn’t the same as national law. Most international treaties, conventions and agreements are not enforceable. There is no real penalty for any country that refuses to sign, nor for any signatory failing to meet its obligations. The ILO cannot enforce targets in the way needed to address a problem this big.

Emulating trade law

However, there is one area of international law that comes close to what we usually think of as law: international trade and investment law.

In addressing goals like reducing tariffs, countries faced similar coordination problems. Beginning with the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, which came into effect in 1948, half a dozen major multilateral trade deals were negotiated before the agreement in 1994 to establish the World Trade Organisation.

The WTO has since adjudicated hundreds of disputes in which one nation has accused another of failing to meet its WTO commitments. Investors can also take states to tribunals to seek compensation for unfair behaviour. States take these tribunals very seriously.

Why not emulate this architecture of international trade law for living wages?

Concrete targets for raising wages could be set through multilateral agreements. Countries would increase wages incrementally, by a certain percent each year, in a coordinated fashion, until they reached a living wage level.

An international tribunal would hear claims against states accused of failing to raise or enforce minimum wages as agreed. National tribunals would adjudicate cases involving corporations.

Cambodian garment workers, for example, would be able to take their government to the international tribunal for failing to raise wages or enforce minimum wage laws. A state held liable to pay compensation for wage breaches could pursue factory owners or their international buyers through national tribunals. This would be an incentive for states to police their own labour laws.

Instead of having separate national conversations about living wages, now is a good time to start the conversation at a global scale.

Shelley Marshall, Vice Chancellor’s Senior Research Fellow, expert in corporate accountability, RMIT University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Explainer: why is Australia adopting the global refugee compact but not the migration compact?

A young girl protesting at a rally to bring refugees on Nauru and Manus Island to Australia.
AAP/Penny Stephens

Azadeh Dastyari, Monash University

Australia was one of 176 countries to vote in favour of the Global Compact on Refugees (refugee compact) in mid-November this year. The United Nations General Assembly will adopt it by the end of 2018.

However, Australia did not join the Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration (migration compact) at a conference in Morocco on December 10-11.

What are the compacts and what do they aim to do?

There is much confusion about the two compacts, with commentators often conflating the two documents. However, they are distinct agreements with differing subjects.

The term “refugee” used in the refugee compact has a specific meaning under international law. It refers to a person outside their own country who fears persecution because of their race, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion.

As a signatory to the Refugee Convention and Refugee Protocol, Australia has particular obligations to refugees under these two treaties. The refugee compact does not replace these obligations. Instead, it is a non-binding agreement that “intends to provide a basis for predictable and equitable burden- and responsibility-sharing”.

The Refugee Compact lists four objectives. They are to:

1. ease pressures on host countries
2. enhance refugee self-reliance
3. expand access to third country solutions
4. support conditions in countries of origin for return in safety and dignity

Unlike the term “refugee”, the term “migrant” does not have a precise meaning under international law. Australia does not have any specific international legal obligations to migrants beyond respecting their human rights under the human rights treaties to which it is a party.

The migration compact does not create any new binding legal obligations on states such as Australia. Instead, it has a range of 23 objectives for safe, orderly and regular migration. These include the collection and better use of data on migration; strengthening responses to smuggling and trafficking; eliminating discrimination; using detention as a last resort; saving lives; managing borders in an integrated, secure and coordinated manner; addressing and reducing vulnerabilities in migration; and strengthening international cooperation.

Where did the compacts come from?

The two compacts have emerged from a need for the international community to better cooperate and respond to unprecedented numbers of people on the move, particularly into Europe. This includes refugees fleeing persecution from conflicts such as Syria.

In September 2016, the United Nations General Assembly unanimously adopted the New York Declaration for Refugee and Migrants to address such concerns. The declaration contained a commitment to begin two separate tracks of negotiations: the refugee compact and the migration compact.

Australia’s response

Australia has been relatively silent on the refugee compact, but has objected to the migration compact on the grounds that it would compromise Australia’s sovereignty.

The migration compact has also been accused of failing to:

adequately distinguish between people who enter Australia illegally and those who come to Australia the right way.

In addition, Australia has cited its success with migration as a reason for its refusal to adopt the migration compact. It has stated:

when we are asked to sign up to international agreements that we believe will compromise our successful way of doing things, we will pass.

The criticisms regarding the threat to Australia’s sovereignty and the lack of distinction between categories of migrants is surprising. As has been explained by Goodwin-Gill and McAdam, it is a misrepresentation of the document.

As with the refugee compact, the migration compact does not create any binding legal obligations on states. It affirms that “within their sovereign jurisdiction, States may distinguish between regular and irregular migration status”.

Furthermore, irrespective of whether Australia signs the migration compact, it is obliged to protect the human rights of migrants under existing international law. This includes, for example, the obligation to refrain from arbitrary detention. Thus the illegality of arbitrary detention, including on Nauru and Manus Island, under international law will not change whether Australia signs the migration compact or not.

Why has Australia signed the refugee compact but not the migration compact?

The United States is the only country to vote against the Refugee Compact. In contrast, the United States, Australia, the Netherlands, Austria, Bulgaria, Hungary, Czech Republic, Poland, Dominican Republic, Chile, Latvia, Slovakia, Estonia and Italy either withdrew from the migration compact negotiations or expressed reservations, often citing concerns about sovereignty as the reason.

But rather than being a real threat to sovereignty, the migration compact appears to have taken on a symbolic meaning that the refugee compact has not. Its opponents are governments with strong anti-immigration and asylum seeker policies. For such states, the migration compact has become a convenient strawman against which states can demonstrate a show of power and resistance to serve domestic political interests.

Syrian refugees at a camp at Haouch El Nabi in the Bekaa valley, Lebanon.
AAP/EPA/Wael Hamzeh

A reason why the migration compact has been used as a foil in this way may simply be in the timing. The United States has led the rejection of the migration compact. It was early to withdraw from the process. In contrast, it continued to support the refugee compact until close to the last minute.

The earlier withdrawal of the US may have contributed to the galvanisation against the migration compact. Each state rejecting the migration compact adds to its perception as problematic, even if such a characterisation is unreasonable.

There may also be a fear that signing the migration compact may lead to new binding international obligations to migrants in the future. By contrast, the refugee compact may be viewed as less of a threat since states have existing obligations to refugees under international law.

However, adopting any hypothetical additional binding legal obligations will be a choice that governments can make in the future. Signing the migration compact does not bring an obligation to sign any future binding agreements.

In addition, the reluctance to join the migration compact but vote for the refugee compact may be because of the perception that the refugee compact requires less of states. The refugee compact has been criticised for lacking concrete mechanisms for governments to take on burden and responsibility sharing.

This may be true, and is an issue that has been addressed in part in the latest version of the refugee compact, which calls for indicators that will track progress by states. But again, the non-binding nature of the agreements means that states do not have to do anything they do not wish to do.

As the opening lines of the New York Declaration attest:

since earliest times, humanity has been on the move.

Rejecting international cooperation cannot and will not stop people from fleeing danger, migrating for better economic opportunities or moving to be with loved ones.

However, without international cooperation the system is uneven, dangerous and unsustainable. The migration and refugee compacts are not perfect. But they offer countries the opportunity to do better for themselves, for those on the move and for the international community as a whole.

Azadeh Dastyari, Deputy Director of the Castan Centre for Human Rights Law, Senior Lecturer in the Faculty of Law, Monash University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.