Rethinking security in the face of the COVID-19 crisis

The Catalan Council for the Promotion of Peace has made public its position on security in the midst of the global health crisis caused by the spread of the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus. In the press release, the Council calls for abandoning military language, symbols and metaphors and refocusing security and defense policies.
“Rethinking security”
The coronavirus crisis has forced governments and people around the world to make urgent and drastic decisions. Many of these decisions are made with a high degree of uncertainty. We are facing a public health threat for which we were not prepared.
However, the response to the crisis has revealed the ability people have to face common challenges when values such as solidarity, commitment and empathy prevail. But the crisis also reminds us that we need to make significant cultural and political changes to address increasingly obvious global threats. These threats include social inequalities and the fact that most of the world’s people lack access to basic resources, such as healthcare, and the climate emergency, which, by reducing biodiversity, makes us weaker in the presence of pandemics. In the face of the coronavirus pandemic, from a peace culture perspective, we believe it is important to:
Avoid or modify military language, symbols and metaphors. We are not at war with the virus; we are defending life, and there is nothing further from war than the protection of life. War is a human invention that we must eradicate. War needs a friend-enemy (us versus them) logic, while a pandemic does not distinguish between ideologies. War pits people against people while the pandemic calls us to unite beyond our differences and calls us to value care, which is always made invisible. We need discipline, not because we blindly obey orders, but out of responsibility to others. There are sacrifices, not for a specific cause, but for humanity. We admire heroic acts, not when a few stand out in battle, but when a lot of anonymous people put their health at risk protecting the health of everyone else. In crisis situations all assistance available is needed and therefore welcome. And that includes the assistance provided by security forces, which is happening in every country. However, some actions, such as military patrols with submachine guns or statements by senior civilian or military officials suggesting that “we are all soldiers in this war” seem inappropriate to us. We must prepare ourselves so that, in the future, the response to emergencies provided by the armed forces today can be provided by civilian organizations with sufficient resources and preparation.
Rethink and democratize security and defense policies. Global challenges need global solutions. Current tools and resources are insufficient to deal with threats that know no borders or flags. We need to move from security concepts and practices designed to protect states to policies that are more focused on defending people, recognizing the vulnerability and interdependence of all human beings. To develop these new public policies we must promote open and inclusive debates about the definition of security and reach agreement on the most appropriate responses. Faced with pressure to increase military budgets, governments need the courage and criteria to develop more appropriate defense strategies for current threats.
Threats like the coronavirus pandemic cannot have military-type responses because that would be accepting the militarization of public life for a problem that is health related.
At the Catalan Council for the Promotion of Peace we are committed to continue sounding the alarm about the risks of the militarization of public life, promoting public policies of security and defense of human rights rather than in the defense of state interests, and sending this letter to the Government of Catalonia.
7 April 2020
The Catalan Council for the Promotion of Peace is a consultative and participatory body of Catalan society for the promotion of peace in the activities of the Administration of the Catalan Government and local institutions in this field. It is made up of representatives of the Administration of the Catalan Government, local institutions, parliamentary groups, NGOs and other institutions and relevant personalities, recognized for their activities in favor of peace.