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Poorest countries left to 'sink or swim' in response to Covid, says David Miliband

David Miliband says there has been a "striking lack" of multilateralism during the Covid-19 pandemic - Paul Morigi/Getty Images
David Miliband says there has been a "striking lack" of multilateralism during the Covid-19 pandemic - Paul Morigi/Getty Images
Coronavirus Article Bar with counter ..
Coronavirus Article Bar with counter ..

Former foreign secretary David Miliband has criticised the “striking lack” of global cooperation that has characterised the global response to the coronavirus pandemic, saying poorer countries had been left to “sink or swim”.

In an interview with the Telegraph on the eve of the United Nations General Assembly – taking place virtually this year – Mr Miliband, president of the New-York based charity, International Rescue Committee, called on world leaders to recognise their “responsibilities beyond their own borders, as well as responsibilities within their own borders”.

And he added that multilateral cooperation has been absent during the pandemic.

“If you look at the global response to the previous crises, whether the 2008 financial crisis which led to the G20, or the oil crisis of 1973 which led to the creation of the G7 there has been a striking lack of institutional innovation, or international cooperation, in the wake of this crisis.

“Countries have been really left to sink or swim,” he said.

He pointed out that the richest countries had spent trillions shoring up their own economies, but very little helping the poorest.

“We can't afford a leaderless world. We can't afford a world in which the global commons is neglected, because if you neglect the common interests of people in the poorest countries, you end up shortchanging the interests of people in countries everywhere,” he said.

Earlier this month Mr Miliband was appointed to the panel commissioned by the World Health Organization that will be investigating the global response to the coronavirus pandemic.

The panel, chaired by former Liberian president Ellen Johnson Sirleaf and former New Zealand prime minister Helen Clark, is a who’s who of international elder statesmen and women.

The panel had its first virtual meeting earlier this week and is to report to the World Health Assembly, the decision-making body of the WHO, by May 2021 - a daunting timeline given the scale of the task ahead.

Mr Miliband said that panel members had been asked not to go “freelancing on the media front” and when asked if he hoped to visit China he said that he hoped the panel would be able to “engage globally”.

He added that the global response so far has been “weak”.

“Some countries have responded well. Other countries have struggled, but no one I think could argue that there's been an adequate global response,” he said.

Covid has led to a “triple emergency” - there was the threat of the virus itself, the indirect impacts of the pandemic including the disruption to vital health services such as immunisations, and the economic impact which had been “severe”.

“At the most extreme end it’s pushing people into famine,” he said.

Mr Miliband is not impressed with the UK’s response. “I’m very concerned that, to put it mildly, the disease is not under control,” he said.

“The UK is playing a positive role on things like Covax – the global vaccine facility – and that's encouraging, But obviously anyone who is a either a citizen of the UK or a friend of the UK has to be worried that the number of cases and the number of death are so high relative to the percentage of the global population that we represent,” he said.

When interviewing Mr Miliband it is always tempting to wonder what might have been – he was beaten to the Labour leadership by his younger brother Ed in 2010, a blow that led him to quit UK politics and carve out a role on the international.

Ed stood down after losing the 2015 election, sitting out Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership on the back benches. But he made a spectacular return to front-line politics earlier this week when, standing in for leader Keir Starmer, he delivered a stinging attack on Boris Johnson in the Commons.

Mr Miliband won’t comment on his younger brother’s fiery intervention, which won plaudits from all sides of the political spectrum, but said: “It’s great that Labour is able to hold the government to account. And that's obviously Keir Starmer’s job and it's good that he's not having to do it on his own.

“Labour’s under new management, which is serious and electable. The country needs more than one effective political party,” he said.

In the past Mr Miliband and the IRC have spoken out against merging the Department for International Development into Foreign Office. He told the Telegraph last year that Dfid had given the UK “global clout”.

The departments became the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) earlier this month and Mr Miliband says there is no point rehashing arguments about the “fate of Dfid because it’s now been done”.

“[The IRC is] proud of our partnership with the British government... The UK doesn't just have a large aid budget, it's also an intelligent, thoughtful aid reformer. That's very much the approach of the IRC - we think of ourselves as a solutions-focused NGO, and we want to work with the FCDO as the solutions-focused donor that can join aid with diplomacy in a coherent way.

"So our energy is about how the UK can re-establish itself as a leading reformer of the global aid system because that's what it needs,” he says.

He would like to see more focus on education, particularly that of refugees. “Half of the world's refugees and displaced are children, but less than three per cent of the aid budget goes on education. And 80 per cent of acutely malnourished children don't get any help at all. These are areas where UK leadership could be really impactful for people in need, and the UK has the budget and the heft, and the expertise to do that,” he says.

Some argue that putting the foreign secretary - a senior member of the cabinet - in charge of UK aid means that it will get the attention at the top of government that it deserves. Although others argue that the portfolio is too broad.

As a former foreign secretary and the person who advised prime minister Tony Blair to split the two functions what does Mr Miliband think?

“The UK has always been most powerful when its commitment to international affairs has been led from the top by Prime Ministers, not just by foreign secretaries and development secretaries. And secondly when there's been close working between the different arms of foreign policy, between diplomacy and aid.

“What one's got to hope is that the current government follows through on its stated commitment to make sure that the UK is a strong voice diplomatically as well as a strong voice in the aid world,” he said.

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