Appeals for help and chilling predictions of imminent disaster are coming thick and fast. The world is on red alert in a way few people alive today have experienced. Yet, despite the urgent clamour, the international response to the coronavirus catastrophe is lacking, leaderless and late.



Lacking in the sense that the scale of the problem, especially in developing countries, is so huge as to be almost numbing. Oxfam says more than half a billion people may be pushed into poverty by the economic fallout. Global poverty reduction could be set back 30 years.



Food companies, farmers and civil society groups are pointing to a rising tide of hunger unless food supply chains are maintained and borders kept open to trade. Coordinated action by governments is necessary “to prevent the Covid-19 pandemic turning into a global food and humanitarian crisis”, they say.



Already creaking health systems in countries across sub-Saharan Africa and south Asia face collapse. “Covid-19 is poised to tear through poor, displaced and conflict-affected communities around the world,” Samantha Power, a former US ambassador who helped build a coalition to combat the Ebola epidemic in 2014, warned last week.

“Three billion people are unable to wash their hands at home, making it impossible to follow sanitation protocols,” she wrote. “Because clinics in these communities have few or no gloves, masks, coronavirus tests, ventilators or ability to isolate patients, the contagion will be exponentially more lethal than in developed countries.”



David Miliband’s International Rescue Committee says it is a double emergency. First, there is the direct impact “on unprepared health systems and populations with pre-existing vulnerabilities”. Then there is the “secondary havoc” that will be caused to fragile states’ economies and political systems.

Concerned about deteriorating security, the UN wants an end to unilateral US sanctions on countries such as Iran, Cuba and Venezuela. But the Trump administration has shown little give. António Guterres, the UN secretary-general, is also seeking a Covid-related “global ceasefire”.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest A police officer helps to organise people queueing to buy food in Havana, Cuba. The UN wants to end sanctions against the country. Photograph: Alexandre Meneghini/Reuters

Progress has been made in 12 conflict countries, the International Crisis Group reported, “although with differing levels of zeal and very unequal degrees of follow-through”. That includes Yemen, where a temporary ceasefire by the Saudi-led coalition began last week.



But Yemenis have another problem, which the pandemic will only worsen: an imminent halving of World Food Programme aid to areas controlled by Houthi rebels. At least 100,000 Yemenis have died in the war. Thousands more may soon follow, condemned by a lethal mix of disease, malnutrition and pointless violence.

In Iraq and Syria, the spread of the virus is stirring up old enmities, not calming them. The US, Britain and France have reportedly halted training and assistance missions, and expedited troop withdrawals. For Islamic State jihadists, this presents an opportunity.

Isis is urging followers to step up attacks on the “crusader nations” while they are distracted. “Fear of this contagion has affected them more than the contagion itself,” the group’s propaganda outlet, al-Naba, sneered – as quoted by a Baghdad-based journalist, Pesha Magid, writing in Foreign Policy magazine.



As the pandemic rages, the absence, or failure, of international leadership, waxes both chronic and scandalous. Obstructed by self-serving disagreements between the US and China, the UN security council – meeting in virtual session – discussed the pandemic for the first time last week, more than three months after it erupted.

“The pandemic poses a significant threat to the maintenance of international peace and security, potentially leading to an increase in social unrest and violence,” Guterres declared. Yet despite his pleas, and notwithstanding 103,500 deaths and 1.7 million infections worldwide as of Saturday, no action was taken.



Other international institutions are also thrashing about, mostly ineffectually. The World Bank, the IMF, and the G20 group of countries are all due to discuss debt relief this week after the UN said $2.5tn was needed to help developing countries weather the storm. Oxfam is calling for $1tn in immediate emergency funding.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Gordon Brown has joined a group of former presidents and prime ministers who are calling for a global taskforce to tackle the outbreak. Photograph: Duncan McGlynn/Getty Images

Meanwhile, the World Health Organization, which played a crucial early role in raising awareness, is distracted by a row over Taiwan and malicious claims by Donald Trump and rightwing American commentators that it is in hock to China. Displaying the bad timing only he could manage, Trump threatened to freeze funding.



Trump’s abject failure to show the international leadership expected of US presidents has serious, negative implications for future American global influence. Other politicians are floundering too. Xi Jinping, China’s president, has angered many by trying to score propaganda points. Russia’s Vladimir Putin is isolating himself from harm.

EU leaders belatedly agreed a record €500bn rescue package on Friday. But they could not resolve a bitter north-south squabble over “corona-bonds” to bail out the worst-hit European countries. This may have done lasting damage. The prime ministers of Italy and Spain were blunt: this is a defining moment for the EU. It flunks its biggest test at its peril.



Has the world left it too late to save itself? Richard Haass, a former US diplomat, says the lack of a meaningful international response “speaks volumes to the poor state of global governance”. The phrase “international community” had little actual basis in today’s geopolitical realities, Haass wrote in Foreign Affairs magazine.



But Gordon Brown, the former British prime minister who led the global fightback during the 2008 financial crash, is not giving up. Along with dozens of retired presidents and prime ministers, Brown is proposing an international taskforce to direct both the humanitarian and economic response to Covid-19.

Brown’s idea of a grand coalition has not gained traction yet. But at least he has a plan. And a plan – any plan – is badly needed.



