In more ways than one the advent of the COVID-19 global pandemic has caused the world to ‘stand still,’ awakening the human community to its collective frailties, not least, what now appears to be a dismantling of that ‘one world to share’ chimera which, over time, and influenced by the Charter of the UN, we may have deluded ourselves into thinking of as a reality.
Surely, that notion now seems like so much chaff in the wind in the face of what, in effect, is the worst global threat to ‘normal life’ seen in generations.
As our continued failure to close the gap between rich and poor has amply demonstrated, this is not the first time that there has been some measure of pushback against a ‘one world’ notion. There are those who, with decidedly good reason, still hold the view that the real ‘international community’ is, in fact, a collection of have’s and ‘have not’s’, two sides driven by a single-minded self-interest and that the application of the word ’community’ to what we have has been placed there as a means of comforting ourselves into thinking that we are driven by a noble one-world motive.
In truth, once the stark picture of the real world manifests itself (as it has done in this instance) we very quickly come to understand, as we surely do now, that the frills of ‘noble motive’ that decorate the UN Charter cannot paper over the ‘haves and have not’s’ reality and that, in fact, poor countries, poor communities are simply tapping their feet to the drumbeat of the ‘one world’ notion whilst the well-appointed remain in their citadels at the top of the global pile and fiercely determined not to surrender those. In such an environment the practice of diplomacy can appear suspiciously to be a farce, a reinforcement of what is no more than a shared delusion.
One of the things that the advent of COVID-19 appears to have done is to tilt the whole façade of a one-world applecart, to expose the human community for what it really is, a world that remains underpinned by a preoccupation with survival, whether by clans of one sort or another. It is not the lip service that we glibly pay in less stressful times but the practicing, in difficult times, of what we preach, that matters. COVID-19, presents us with, among other things, a chance to vouch for the ‘one world’ notion and what is unfolding before us suggests that up until now we are failing to do so.
So that, setting aside the threat that COVID-19 poses to human health and (who knows?) to human existence as we know it, there is also the threat that it poses to some of those axioms that have, for generations, shaped international relations, not least what now appears to be a UN-driven ‘one world’ chimera.
It is, surely, a decided irony that in the face of what we now know to be the shocking prejudice that underpins the global distribution of COVID-19 vaccines, one of the more outspoken outbursts has come directly from a high profile UN diplomat, the Director General of the World Health Organization (WHO), the Ethiopian-born Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus. His pronouncement on the issue pulled no punches, making the point regarding the truism of the ‘one world’ fallacy that was as poignant as it was impassioned. In an ironic kind of way what Dr. Ghebreyesus had to say raises deeply worrying questions about the extent to which the UN has succeeded, or otherwise, in much of its stated mission since its creation in 1945.
The anomaly of individual self-centred indifference to a ‘global whole’ that has been at the heart of what the UN says has been its primary concern since 1945 must now surely be ventilated without delay. We should not allow this issue to disappear into the belly of what, unquestionably, will be a packed September General Assembly. For surely what confronts us now is the reality that the ‘one world’ doctrine (while there may be a generous measure of nobility attached to its conceptualization) continues to fall well short of the UN’s dream. Given what is at stake we have no choice but to address that gaping anomaly now.
