COVID-19 has been disrupting people’s lives and forcing governments to take measures rapidly to contain the virus and prevent further deaths. It took governments by surprise and revealed their lack of preparedness, leading them to formulate policy responses which engaged with securitisation. [1] To fight the pandemic, authorities have introduced measures that drastically infringed upon citizens’ personal freedoms, starting with their freedom of movement. They engaged in a process of securitising COVID-19 using these exceptional times as a rationale to enact exceptional measures. A glaring example is the introduction of contact tracing apps: for citizens to be able to move around freely again, governments had to find a way to track the virus by identifying contaminated citizens and their contacts. Seen by some as an open door to governments collecting more health data, this measure is questionable in terms of ethics and privacy. This article argues that the introduction of contact tracing apps is the result of a securitisation process that stems from governments’ desire to show that they are taking action and controlling the situation.
By Apolline Rolland
Securitising Global Health
The securitisation process refers to the action of defining an issue as a threat and framing it as a security issue that calls for exceptional measures. It gives legitimacy to governments to enact measures that would not have been accepted by the audience under different circumstances. Securitisation is performed through speech acts and requires a securitising actor, here governments, a securitising move, here calling COVID-19 a security threat, and a target audience that needs to accept the securitising move, here the citizenry. Generally, an issue becomes securitised when it poses a threat to the values and norms of a society.
In recent years, global health has been increasingly subject to securitisation. In the case of COVID-19, the pandemic was framed as an ‘existential threat to the people’s lives and the regular functioning of societies’. [2] COVID-19 is not as deadly as viruses such as Ebola or AIDS, but it has a higher mortality rate than that of influenza and is also more contagious. [3] As it is a new strain of virus, governments quickly engaged in exceptional measures such as confinement, social distancing policies, the collection of citizens’ health data, and made numerous emergency declarations. This virus quickly became a threat to the public health of all states as it had the potential to spread internationally due to globalisation and the rapid flows of people transnationally. [4]
The securitisation of diseases is dangerous as it gives good ground to the militarisation of public health, which shifts the focus from civil society to intelligence and military agencies, undermining personal freedoms. [5] In fact, diseases are usually development and poverty issues rather than security issues. [6] It is therefore important to incorporate oversight in mitigation policies to ensure that the COVID-19 crisis does not unduly erode individual freedoms in democracies.
The use of the Word ‘Pandemic’
On March 11th, 2020, the World Health Organization (WHO) finally declared the COVID-19 epidemic a pandemic, constituting the speech act in securitisation theory. In its classical definition, a pandemic is ‘an epidemic occurring worldwide, or over a very wide area, crossing international boundaries and usually affecting a large number of people’. [7] It considers who is infected and where they got sick. [8] A pandemic occurs when chains of transmissions multiply throughout the world and clusters appear beyond the birthplace of the outbreak. What does this qualification change in practice? In reality, not much; it simply allows the WHO to legally make recommendations, unlock funding, and provide political support to affected countries. [9] However, the word can trigger fear easily. The WHO was late to announce the pandemic and was careful to use the terminology to prevent unnecessary suffering and panic. [10] Indeed, although the qualification does not change many things in practice, it does mean that the virus is no longer contained. The focus shifts towards slowing down the spread of the disease by introducing mitigation policies. [11]
Framing COVID-19 as a Security Issue in Political Discourses
First presented as a distant health issue, COVID-19 quickly became a fundamental security threat which required exceptional measures. [12] It bypassed normal politics and impacted the regular functioning of health services, of nations, and of society as a whole.
In the academic literature, two different kinds of discourses have appeared since the pandemic was announced. [13] First, it was framed as a common threat to citizens from across the globe which required a coordinated and global response. This discourse was usually found in the speeches of representatives of international institutions, examples include qualifying COVID-19 as ‘an enemy against humanity’ (Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus) and ‘a common threat’ (António Guterres).
Secondly, it was framed as a national security threat. This rhetoric was more likely to be found in the speeches of world leaders addressing their nations. [14] Examples include Emmanuel Macron’s ‘Nous sommes en guerre’, Boris Johnson’s declaration of a ‘national fightback’ against COVID-19 calling for the need of ‘drastic action’ and ‘extreme measures’, as well as his call for victory against the virus — ‘we’re going to win, we’re going to beat it’ ‘we have the resolve and the resources to win the fight’. [15] [16] This war rhetoric reflects the securitisation process, invoking a sense of emergency and state power to claim the legitimate use of extraordinary measures, which have the potential to undermine sovereignty of the people. [17]
Technology to the Rescue?
National economic output stopped suddenly as lockdowns were introduced all over the world. This choice was not adopted as the optimal strategy, rather as the only option available given the lack of government preparedness. [18] In many countries, which quickly became overwhelmed by the amount of deaths, this lack of preparedness was the result of years of budget cuts which have reduced the capacity of health systems to answer to such crises efficiently, and showed how vulnerable the neoliberal model is. [19]
Governments faced a security dilemma every time they had to make a choice between pursuing lockdown measures to preserve public health and the life of their citizens or easing the measures to prevent a worse economic crisis from occurring. [20] Being able to track and trace the whereabouts of citizens to know if they had been in contact with infected individuals seemed to become a prerequisite to return to ‘normal life’, therefore governments introduced contact tracing apps. To cite a few examples: the Chinese government opted for issuing QR codes to allow its citizens to go out or to enforce quarantine. [21] In South Korea and Taiwan, personal data was used to ensure that people respected quarantine measures. [22] Israeli intelligence services used counterterrorism tools to locate Israelis’ phones and order a quarantine to those who had come into contact with infected people. [23] In Europe, downloading the app relied on a voluntary basis due to privacy concerns, but health authorities have been able to receive data from telephonic operators to see movements of populations when lockdown measures were introduced, such as in France or Italy. [24]
As Pr. Didier Bigo of Science Po Paris-CERI puts it, government officials were quick to embrace the “folly of technological solutionism”, or in other words, in ‘the belief that one can solve every problem with a click’. [25] Was it really a necessity or rather a willingness of governments to prove that they were in control and ready to react?
Governments have looked at what we have to gain from the development of contact tracing apps: the ability to regain our freedom of movement during the pandemic. But have we, the people, weighed what we could lose? In reality, contact tracing apps in Europe have mostly been developed safely. However, they normalise mass data collection by governments from populations. Today we accept it for our health, but we must at least question whether we want this to become the norm to solve any issues without real safeguards and oversight.
The emergence of these new monitoring technologies are understandable during the crisis to fight the pandemic. But the real question is whether this will become a lasting feature of our democracies under the guise of security purposes. [26] The risk we run is the normalisation and the trivialisation of data collection.
Sources
[1] Sears, N A (2020) ‘The Securitization of COVID-19: Three Political Dilemma,’ [online] available from https://www.globalpolicyjournal.com/blog/25/03/2020/securitization-covid-19-three-political-dilemmas, accessed on 25th August 2020.
[2] Nunes, J (2020) ‘The COVID-19 pandemic: securitization, neoliberal crisis, and global vulnerabilization,’ Cadernos de Saúde Pública, Vol. 36, No. 4, pp. 1-4.
[3] Breteau, P (2020) ‘Coronavirus, Zika, Ebola… quelles maladies sont les plus contagieuses ou les plus mortelles?,’ [online] available from https://www.lemonde.fr/les-decodeurs/article/2020/01/29/coronavirus-zika-ebola-quelles-maladies-sont-les-plus-contagieuses-ou-les-plus-mortelles_6027661_4355770.html, accessed on 25th August 2020.
[4] Ventura, D (2016) ‘From Ebola to Zika: international emergencies and the securitization of global health,’ Cadernos de Saúde Pública, Vol. 32, No. 4, pp. 1-4.
[5] Bigo, D (2020) ‘Covid-19 tracking apps, or: how to deal with a pandemic most unsuccessfully,’ [online] available from https://aboutintel.eu/covid-digital-tracking/, accessed 25th August 2020.
[6] Baele, S (2020) ‘On the Securitization of COVID-19,’ [online] available from https://pandemipolitics.net/baele/, accessed on 25th August 2020.
[7] Kelly, H (2011) ‘The classical definition of a pandemic is not elusive,’ Bulletin of the World Health Organization Vol. 89, No. 7, pp. 540-541.
[8] McKeever, A (2020) ‘Coronavirus is officially a pandemic. Here is why that matters.,’ [online] available from https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/2020/02/how-coronavirus-could-become-pandemic-and-why-it-matters/, accessed on 25th of August 2020.
[9] Ibid.
[10] Ibid.
[11] Ibid.
[12] Baele, 2020.
[13] Sears, 2020.
[14] Ibid.
[15] Le Monde, Transcription of the speech ‘‘Nous sommes en guerre’: le verbatim du discours d’Emmanuel Macron,’ [online] available from https://www.lemonde.fr/politique/article/2020/03/16/nous-sommes-en-guerre-retrouvez-le-discours-de-macron-pour-lutter-contre-le-coronavirus_6033314_823448.html, accessed on 25th August 2020.
[16] Baele, 2020.
[17] Hanrieder, T and Christian Kreuder-Sonnen (2014) ‘WHO decides on the exception? Securitization and emergency governance in global health,’ Security Dialogue, Vol. 45, No. 4, pp.331-348.
[18] Bigo, 2020.
[19] Nunes, p. 2.
[20] Eves, L and James Thedam ‘Applying Securitzation’s Second Generation to COVID-19,’ [online] available from https://www.e-ir.info/2020/05/14/applying-securitizations-second-generation-to-covid-19/, accessed 25th August 2020.
[21] Mozur, P, Raymond Zhong and Aaron Krolik (2020) ‘In coronavirus fight, China gives citizens a color code, with red flags,’ [online] available from https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/01/business/china-coronavirus-surveillance.html, accessed 14th September 2020.
[22] Utersinger, M (2020) ‘Contre la pandémie due au coronavirus, de nombreux pays misent sur la surveillance permise par le “big data”,’ [online] available from https://www.lemonde.fr/pixels/article/2020/03/20/contre-la-pandemie-de-nombreux-pays-misent-sur-la-surveillance-permise-par-le-big-data_6033851_4408996.html, accessed 14th September 2020.
[23] Halbfinger, D M , Isabel Kershner and Ronen Bergman (2020) ‘To track coronavirus, Israel moves to tap secret trove of cellphone data,’ [online] available from https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/16/world/middleeast/israel-coronavirus-cellphone-tracking.html, accessed 14th September 2020.
[24] Utersinger, 2020.
[25] Sears, 2020.
[26] Bigo, 2020.
