The securitization of health is not a new phenomenon. However, global responses to the 2014–2016 Ebola outbreak in West Africa reveal the extent to which epidemic preparedness and response is now shaped by geopolitical concerns. UN Security Council Resolution 2177 epitomizes this. The resolution asserted that “the outbreak is undermining the stability of the most affected countries … [and] the Ebola outbreak in Africa constitutes a threat to international peace and security” (UN 2014: 1). The resolution paved the way for a militarized approach to treatment and containment, one not motivated primarily by the health needs of the affected population but rather by the potential political and social consequences of their health crises for others. It provided justification for forms of public authority to impose quarantine and enforced containment on a large scale.
Are responses to COVID-19 accentuating these trends? To date, UN Security Council Resolutions have not explicitly sanctioned the use of international armed forces to contain COVID-19. Nevertheless, the involvement of national armies and police forces is widespread and unprecedented (Levine and Manderson 2020). Such approaches chime with public health paradigms which historically have not held back from curtailing individual rights in the interests of protecting populations from infectious diseases. In fact, a growing body of research, when taken together, indicates that it is not unusual for different kinds of democratic and authoritarian regimes to impose quarantine and enforce containment. This body of work also highlights how historical and socio-political dynamics have had profound unintended impacts on the course of epidemics from Avian flu (Scoones and Forster 2010), Ebola (Parker et al. 2019; Wilkinson and Fairhead 2017), HIV/AIDS (Allen 2006; Allen and Heald 2004), SARS (Biao 2003), cholera (Chigudu 2020) and trypanosomiasis (MacKenzie 1990). Ongoing research in Uganda and South Africa builds on this research. It suggests that it is vital to analyze the impact of enforcement measures for COVID-19 in relation to past political histories and current sociopolitical dynamics, with a public authority lens, i.e. with a focus on those measures which allow for mutual or collective action beyond the immediate family with a degree of consent (CPAID 2018).