Vaccine Nationalism: The Need for Worldwide Convergence

Join the discussion on vaccine nationalism with Susana Malcorra, Dean of IE School of Global and Public Affairs and former Chief of Staff to UN Secretary General Bank Ki Moon who managed the emergency response to the Ebola crisis in West Africa, together with John W. H. Denton AO, Secretary General of the International Chamber of Commerce, a global business leader and expert on international trade and investment law and policy.

The race for vaccine inoculation has shown today’s blatant worldwide inequalities: countries’ capacity to immunize their population has been commensurate to the affordability of some countries against others, and we have witnessed how vaccines have even been used as a geopolitical tool. Global institutions such as the WTO, WHO, ICC, WEF, the World Bank, among others, warn against ‘vaccine nationalism’, a phenomenon describing the race of dozens of wealthy countries to secure deals with pharmaceutical companies to ensure vaccines for their own populations, thus limiting the stock for less privileged countries who are not in the same negotiating capacity. Such ‘vaccine nationalism’ has manifested in very concrete examples, including EU’s export ban on vaccines under very specific circumstances, in clash with EU principles and values.

The pace at which new variants of COVID-19 appear worldwide calls for a coordinated action among countries to ensure that the worldwide vaccination is timely, equitable and inclusive, moreover having witnessed how we need to improve or supplement the Covax initiative to tackle the immediate availability of vaccines for least-developed countries. The purpose of this event is thus to reflect on these developments and provide insights from world leadership to curb the detrimental effects of vaccine nationalism.