IRAN: US-Iran ties enter new period of brinkmanship
Iran and the US seem determined to demonstrate to each other they are not desperate for a nuclear weapons agreement. Iran may seek to hedge the destabilizing effects of its nuclear actions by lowering tensions with regional neighbors. The Biden team came in convinced th… Become a member to read the rest of this […]
JAPAN: Kono enters the race as government charts a path out of restrictions
Favorite Taro Kono has announced his LDP leadership candidacy running as a paternalistic conservative and has notably softened his opposition to nuclear power. Fumio Kishida is adopting a more populist economic rhetoric, and low-polling hardliner Sanae Takaichi would doubl… Become a member to read the rest of this article
Transforming education systems through family-school collaboration
After COVID-19 forced schools around the world to pivot and devise new outreach mechanisms, many school leaders had an “aha” moment when they saw family engagement in education rise. From Argentina to India to the United States, leaders realized that what they thought were “hard-to-reach” families turned out to be “hard-to-reach” schools; it was schools’ own approaches to engagement that had been getting in the way.
This new focus on ways to connect families with schools presents an opportunity to markedly shift broader approaches—and the overall vision—for long-term collaboration. With the ongoing support of 50 government, civil society, and private sector organizations in the Family Engagement in Education Network (FEEN), the Center for Universal Education (CUE) at Brookings has been researching how families and schools can work better together to improve and transform how education is delivered and what it can achieve. Successful engagement has far-reaching implications for everything from improving student learning outcomes to creating a shared vision between educators and families on the purpose of education.
On September 30, CUE will host a virtual event to launch its new playbook “Collaborating to transform and improve education systems: A playbook for family-school engagement.” After a short presentation on the playbook’s key findings, lead author and CUE Co-director Rebecca Winthrop will moderate intimate chats with members of FEEN and other education decisionmakers about the role of family-school engagement and why it is so urgently needed—showcasing both speakers’ on-the-ground experiences and other findings from the playbook. The discussions will focus on how effective family engagement approaches can transform education systems to address growing inequality and give all children the breadth of skills needed to thrive in the 21st century—and the practical strategies for doing so.
Viewers can submit questions via email to events@brookings.edu or via Twitter at #FamilyEngagement.
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MYANMAR: Opposition calls for an uprising, but its capabilities remain limited
Myanmar’s shadow National Unity Government (NUG) this week launched an armed resistance to the junta in Yangon, calling on citizens to “revolt against the rule of the military terrorists.” The NUG also outlined its plans to raise funds to operate an alternative government, which … Become a member to read the rest of this […]
Biden’s two types of mulilateralism
In April, U.S. President Joe Biden gathered 40 world leaders for a virtual summit on tackling the climate crisis. They included representatives of major emitting countries, such as Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping, as well as heads of states that are particularly vulnerable to the effects of climate change. Civil-society and business leaders also took part. Biden and many other attendees announced more ambitious climate policies ahead of the United Nations climate change summit (COP26) in November.
On December 9-10, Biden will fulfill a preelection promise by hosting another virtual gathering, dubbed a Summit for Democracy. Although details have yet to be released, the meeting will focus on “defending against authoritarianism, fighting corruption, and promoting respect for human rights.” Biden will again invite leaders from government, civil society, and the private sector.
But the objectives of the two summits exemplify sharply different aspects of multilateral cooperation. Reducing greenhouse-gas emissions to combat climate change is the archetypal global public good (GPG), resulting in benefits that are both nonrival and nonexcludable. Their accrual to one country does not diminish the benefit to others, and no one can be excluded from them once they are provided.
This typically gives rise to a free-rider problem, because every country has an incentive to minimize its own costs for providing the GPG and instead rely on others’ contributions. Recently, new technologies enabling net economic benefits from a green transformation have reduced but not eliminated the problem. Global cooperation is thus still needed to address it.
Democracy and human rights, by contrast, are not GPGs so defined, although they may generate positive externalities because their benefits are enjoyed almost solely by the citizens of the countries practicing them. Achieving the objectives of Biden’s democracy summit will thus depend much more on common values than cooperation to limit climate change does.
Whereas cooperation on GPGs can proceed pragmatically with global participation, cooperation based on values and beliefs involves the challenge of determining which governments may qualify. Putin and Xi presumably will not be invited in December, because they not only practice but also proclaim values different from those of liberal democracies.
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Values-based multilateralism is both easier and more difficult than multilateralism based on interests. It is easier because there is likely to be more trust among actors sharing basic values. But it is more difficult because potential material gains may remain out of reach, owing to ideological competition and lack of trust vis-à-vis those not sharing similar values.
The December democracy summit will thus face the key difficulty for liberal values-based multilateralism: who exactly should be present? When Biden announced his firm intention to organize such a gathering earlier this year, Javier Solana eloquently outlined the difficulties, to which I also drew attention in an essay last year.
Keeping the participant list short and including only governments fully committed to and practicing liberal democracy—albeit with some failures to protect human rights, as is the case in the United States itself—would antagonize many borderline cases and offend fewer democratic allies. But if the list is too long and resembles a catalog of U.S. allies or governments that America hopes to enlist in an effort to contain China, then the summit and Biden’s promise to promote democracy will lose their credibility. Hard choices will be unavoidable.
Biden should keep the tent large while emphasizing that the summit’s objective is not to create a new formal alliance of democracies. Instead, the aim should be to discuss with whomever is willing how to contain autocratic tendencies that exist everywhere, how to protect human and minority rights that often are violated even in countries formally committed to upholding them, and how to fight the universal problem of corruption.
Focusing on these three issues, and on individual and common commitments to actions that would be reviewed at a follow-up summit next year, now seems to be the Biden administration’s strategy. If there is plenty of self-criticism at the summit, the presence of illiberal leaders—including those who call themselves democrats but seem committed only to majoritarian, winner-take-all governance—may not be so offensive. The participants, including the U.S., will be encouraged to listen and to learn from experience, not to lecture each other. And the prospect of a second summit could give governments an incentive to make improvements.
A gathering along these lines could strengthen the values-driven part of multilateralism, and the soft power of the world’s democracies. The criticism that it will accentuate the rivalry between leading autocratic and democratic powers is misplaced, because such competition is inevitable in the years ahead. In many areas, including climate action and pandemic control, cooperation can and should prevail. But for believers in values such as those enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, upholding their political-freedom component is as essential as enhancing material welfare. Competition with autocracy is not just unavoidable, but welcome.
The two dimensions of multilateralism projected by Biden’s climate and democracy summits are not contradictory. The first meeting sought to enhance the provision of a crucial GPG, while the second aims to promote values deemed universal.
The West’s failures in Afghanistan and Iraq should remind us that forced regime change and top-down nation-building do not belong on a democracy-promotion agenda. But leading by example, learning from best practice, and peacefully promoting human rights certainly do. Biden’s democracy summit could thus send a powerful message that deeply held values regarding human dignity and freedom have their place alongside economic and security interests in the way democracies approach international affairs.
Africa must produce its own vaccines
WASHINGTON, DC – During the pandemic, wealthy countries led the way in rapidly developing and producing COVID-19 vaccines. The same countries then bought up and administered those vaccines to their own populations, and have even ordered boosters for already-vaccinated people. Meanwhile, many developing countries have not been able to deliver even one dose to most of their populations.
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Africa, in particular, is struggling with limited access to COVID-19 vaccines. As of August 31, African countries had administered 94 million doses to the continent’s population of nearly 1.4 billion, with a total supply of 134.5 million. By contrast, the United States – with a total population of 332 million – has administered over 375 million vaccine doses.
This disparity partly reflects the fact that most African countries are not able to produce the vaccines needed to protect their populations against not only COVID-19, but also the myriad other diseases that plague the continent. Africa is home to only four local drug substance vaccine manufacturers – two more are in development – and two “fill-and-finish” facilities that rely on imported vaccine substances to produce distributable doses. Supply-chain disruptions during the COVID-19 pandemic showed just how risky this dependence on imports of critical medical supplies can be.
Africa is almost totally dependent on vaccine imports, producing just 1% of the vaccines it administers. So far during the pandemic, African countries have received most of their COVID-19 vaccine doses through either bilateral agreements or the COVID-19 Vaccine Global Access (COVAX) facility, an initiative launched last year by the World Health Organization and Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance. COVAX aims to provide vaccines for 20% of people in low- and middle-income countries.
But while initiatives like COVAX are clearly needed to fulfill Africa’s short-term needs, they will do little to improve the continent’s capacity to provide crucial vaccines for itself in the future. That is why the Mastercard Foundation has pledged $1.3 billion to support local manufacturing and distribution of COVID-19 vaccines, through a partnership with the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The program, which will include a focus on human-capital development, aligns with the African Union (AU) and the Africa CDC’s Partnerships for African Vaccine Manufacturing (PAVM) initiative. Launched this past April, PAVM aims to establish five vaccine research and manufacturing hubs on the continent over the next 10-15 years, and increase the share of vaccines produced locally for use on the continent to as much as 60% within the next 20 years. The European Union, in collaboration with the International Finance Corporation, France, Germany, and the United States, has announced plans to invest €1 billion ($1.2 billion) in the hub-development project.
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Developing Africa’s vaccine-manufacturing capabilities will not only help the continent to cope with future unexpected crises; it will also enable countries to improve the provision of existing vaccines. According to the Anadolu Agency, in 2019 an estimated 19.8 million children worldwide did not receive the measles vaccine through routine immunization coverage; the majority of those children live in Africa.
Moreover, these efforts will place Africa on a much stronger footing to meet demand for future public-health solutions. For example, vaccines for Lassa fever – an acute viral hemorrhagic illness that is endemic in eight countries in West Africa – are currently in the development phase. Researchers are also getting closer to developing an effective and affordable vaccine for malaria. In 2019, 94% of malaria cases and deaths occurred in Sub-Saharan Africa.
Yet vaccines are only one part of a long list of pharmaceutical products to which African countries often struggle to secure access. In 2015, 1.6 million Africans died from malaria, tuberculosis, or HIV/AIDS – all preventable or treatable diseases – because of chronic drug shortages.
Fortunately, there are also initiatives focused on dismantling barriers to pharmaceutical manufacturing in Africa. In 2012, the AU Development Agency (AUDA-NEPAD) published the Pharmaceutical Manufacturing Plan for Africa (PMPA), which proposes technical solutions to many of the challenges facing the pharmaceutical manufacturing industry. The implementation of the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA), by enabling the creation of economies of scale, should support progress on realizing the PMPA.
As the PMPA notes, the African Medicines Regulatory Harmonization (AMRH) program, established by AUDA-NEPAD in 2009 to address regulatory weaknesses affecting Africa’s pharmaceutical industry, is also critical to its success. The program’s achievements so far include the AU Model Law on Medical Products Regulation, the African Medical Devices Forum, and progress toward an African Medicines Agency.
The AMRH program is supported by a number of international organizations, including the AU, the WHO, Gavi, and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Multilateral institutions like the AU and the United Nations Industrial Development Organization are also working with the Federation of African Pharmaceutical Manufacturers Associations, which was launched in 2013 by a group of regional associations to advance the AMRH’s mission.
Multilateral institutions and initiatives must do even more to close the implementation gap and accelerate the development of Africa’s pharmaceutical industry. This means, for example, supporting capacity-building, knowledge transfer, and cross-sector coordination; backing rigorous implementation of the AfCFTA; mobilizing financial resources from international financial institutions and development banks; and cross-country collaboration to strengthen human capital.
Such efforts received a boost during the pandemic. African leaders and multilateral organizations alike must make the most of this momentum to ensure that when the next crisis arrives, Africa is ready.
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UK: Government wins on social care in parliament but loses in opinion polls
PM Boris Johnson this week managed to get parliamentary approval for a package to tackle Covid healthcare backlogs and improve social care funding. GBP 12bn annually in extra taxation will be raised via a 1.25 percentage point increase in national insurance contributions (… Become a member to read the rest of this article
Responding to risks of COVID debt distress
Report by eminent experts offers recommendations to ensure governments emerging from debt distress can still invest in sustainable development.As many countries continue to face severe economic pressures from the COVID-19 pandemic, the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung (FES) and the Consensus Building Institute (CBI) jointly convened the Roundtable on Responding to the Risks of COVID Debt Distress.The Roundtable convened eminent experts with direct experience in dealing with debt distress at the policy and operational levels, including former senior government officials and private attorneys who have represented sovereign debtors, bilateral and multilateral creditors, and academics who have closely studied the recent history of sovereign debt restructuring. This new report represents the consensus of the group on a set of recommendations that could make private creditor participation in managing the risks of debt distress more complete, more equitable, and more effective. The group also developed recommendations for integrating new and additional multilateral finance into restructuring, to ensure that governments emerging from debt distress are able to continue making investments for sustainable development.In this context, the group sees many opportunities to build on existing commitments, policies, and tools for managing the risks of debt distress, including those established in response to the pandemic by the G20, Paris Club IMF, and MDBs, in order to minimize the risk of widespread debt distress. The most important challenges to meet are 1) ensuring that debt restructuring by vulnerable low- and middle-income countries on the basis of comparable treatment is sufficiently timely and inclusive to enable sovereign creditors to maintain public services and investments, and 2) providing additional public and private finance to meet the very substantial needs for investment in recovery and sustainable development.FES is planning a formal launch and discussion of the Roundtable Report in early fall. If you are interested in more information about this event, please email info(at)fesny.org. Download the full report below.