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SINGAPORE – When Covid-19 began its march across the world earlier this year, international diplomacy almost came to a halt. Meetings were canceled and diplomats were punished when borders were slammed shut.
It was a challenge, said Ambassador Umej Bhatia, Singapore’s permanent representative to the United Nations Office at Geneva, where several UN organizations, including the World Health Organization (WHO), are based.
“We couldn’t just stand in the trenches and say, ‘Oh, we can’t work because we don’t feel safe.’
Far from there.
Using modern communication technology and working remotely in his office, he and his staff in the Swiss city were among a group of Singapore government officials who spearheaded a multinational effort to develop and distribute a Covid-19 vaccine next year to all countries, rich and poor, large and small.
Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong stressed the need for such vaccine multilateralism at the World Vaccine Summit and the Global Goal Summit: Unite for our future, both held virtually in June.
Vaccine nationalism was on the rise as governments around the world scrambled to secure exclusive access to Covid-19 vaccines before anyone else.
Furthermore, multilateralism is not a luxury, Mr. Bhatia said, but an “existential necessity” for small states that depend on global health security for the safe flows of trade and people.
Grouping together to find a vaccine
The formation of the Friends of the Center for Global Access to the Covid-19 Vaccine (Covax), or FOF, involved officials from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, as well as the Ministry of Health (MOH) and the Economic Development Board (EDB) .
Switzerland also joined as co-chair of FOF.
“With the largest countries saving vaccines for their own use, we are working around the clock and around the clock to promote vaccine multilateralism,” said the 50-year-old diplomat.
Within weeks, the informal grouping had 15 members brought together by Singapore: Australia, Canada, the European Union, Iceland, Israel, Japan, South Korea, New Zealand, Norway, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, Switzerland, the United Arab Emirates and the UK.
As of last Friday, all 15 have submitted legally binding commitment agreements to participate in Covax.
FOF’s mission is to discuss and co-create the Covax design, particularly vaccine funding, governance and allocation.
Under the leadership of Singapore, it worked closely with Gavi, Cepi and WHO on these issues. Gavi is a public-private vaccine alliance, while Cepi (Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations) is a global vaccine alliance.
Covax aims to make two billion doses available by the end of next year.
The initiative did not go unnoticed. Vaccine Multilateralism
It has since been adopted by the President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, and senior WHO officials, to push back the forces of vaccine nationalism.
Size is not destiny
But why Covax and not a bilateral agreement, which could be faster?
Recognizing the complexities of multilateralism, Mr. Bhatia explained that its advantage is that the 193 nations of the UN must follow a rules-based order. This means that countries can expect a more predictable outcome, which benefits small states in particular, he said.
“Multilateralism broadens the range of options for smaller states like Singapore, not just on vaccines, but on other issues affecting the global commons that could impact us again, such as climate change.”
However, vaccines are only part of the picture, he said.
Access to other Covid-19 treatments and diagnostic test kits is also important, and this is where the WHO Covid-19 Tools Access Accelerator Facilitation Council (ACT) comes in.
In June, Singapore, as convener and chair of the Small States Forum, an informal grouping of 108 countries with populations of less than 10 million, was invited to the council.
“There is strength in the numbers, so this set a precedent for dealing with urgent issues (like Covid-19). Size is not destiny,” added Bhatia, emphasizing that Singapore tries to play a constructive role despite its small size. . “We were able to speak out and represent the interests of the smaller states, whose views could be ignored or sidelined by the larger ones.”
Budding space industry
One of the most esoteric bodies to which Singapore belongs is the UN Committee on the Peaceful Use of Outer Space (Copuos).
His interests at Copuos have more to do with the civil and governmental functions that outer space supports, such as urban planning, climate monitoring and telecommunications.
Singapore’s nascent space industry employs more than 1,000 people in 30 companies, in activities such as packaging satellite imagery data for the construction, maritime security and agriculture sectors.
Copuos watches over the rules that govern these activities and is the forum to coordinate and harmonize them worldwide.
Singapore does not join international groupings simply to satisfy its “national ego,” Bhatia said.
“When we do it, it is practical, there is a key function and it is in accordance with what we need to achieve in terms of the national interest.
Inspired by veteran diplomats
In the 1990s, Mr. Umej Bhatia hosted a local television current affairs show called Talking Point.
He saw how Singapore was making an impact on the international scene, with veteran diplomats such as Mr. Tommy Koh playing a pivotal role in the negotiations of the United Nations Conference on the Law of the Sea, which today is universally accepted as modern law from sea. .
Inspired also by former permanent secretaries Kishore Mahbubani and Bilahari Kausikan, he changed careers and joined the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) in 1996.
“They were really making a dent globally and that intrigued me,” Bhatia, now 50, told The Straits Times at the MFA building on Sherwood Road in Tanglin.
Currently, he oversees Singapore’s UN offices in Geneva and Vienna, as well as being a Permanent Representative of the International Atomic Energy Agency.
He has also been on the Middle East circuit and in 2001, his family was evacuated from his apartment during the 9/11 terrorist attacks in New York, where he was part of a team that represented Singapore in its first and only term as no elected member of the UN Security Council.
But the most memorable thing for him was the run-up to the 2003 war in Iraq, when he handled the Iraq dossier for Singapore. He and a group of junior diplomats drafted UN Security Council Resolution 1441, giving the regime of then Iraqi President Saddam Hussein one last chance to fulfill its disarmament obligations.
“I experienced first-hand the great risks of global war and peace in the council’s deliberations,” he said of the tense closed-door debates in the council’s overcrowded consultation room at the time.
“It was an invaluable lesson in the politics of royal power: how diplomacy worked and how it didn’t work.”
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