Covid-19 is the first global pandemic in a hundred years. It has tested the international crisis response and financing system in novel ways, aggravating well-known challenges and casting light on other unanticipated shortcomings. It has exposed fundamental weaknesses in global preparedness, including substantial under-investment, a tendency to adopt narrow thematic approaches and a widespread failure to prepare for secondary socioeconomic impacts. It has exposed critical dependencies in crisis response systems, including the risks that major disruptions of transport and key commodity markets pose to business continuity.
The pandemic demonstrates that the international response system needs to be prepared for a new order of crises, for an era in which large-scale systemic shocks may overlay and aggravate existing risks and significant long-standing humanitarian needs. Incremental reforms will not deliver a system fit to respond effectively.