Crisis Governance Forum: rule of law-based policymaking for COVID-19 response and recovery

In crisis situations, more than in other circumstances, citizens demand effectiveness, accountability and transparency from public institutions and their leadership. Rule of law-based policymaking is critical to provide legitimacy and enhance public trust in government for the extraordinary measures that need to be deployed in both crisis response and recovery contexts.

In July 2020 IDLO launched the Crisis Governance Forum – a series of online dialogues sharing insights and exchanging policy solutions among policymakers and practitioners involved in COVID-19 response and recovery.

The initiative is intended as a contribution to the overall effort to project the 2030 Agenda, and Sustainable Development Goal 16 within that Agenda, as a roadmap in designing post-pandemic social and economic recovery strategies and in building community resilience to similar external ‘shocks’ in the future.

Opening the discussion, IDLO Director-General, Jan Beagle, said: “The pandemic has exposed and is, in turn, being aggravated by the fragility and inequalities to which no country, irrespective of stage of development, is wholly immune… The rule of law is critical to successfully managing the crisis – by protecting the least powerful and giving them a voice in the debate, by enabling the decision makers to balance competing interests, and by increasing their ability to act decisively through effective laws and institutions.”

Italy’s Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation, H.E. Emanuela Del Re, shared the experience of Italy, the first European country to deal with the crisis: “At the outset of the health crisis, the Italian government put in place safeguards to ensure that anti-COVID-19 measures complied with core constitutional principles and international law obligations… We have established a national platform composed of public and private actors so that we can build a coherent, unitary response. Our experience is now at the disposal of [all] countries”, she said, emphasizing that “only a multilateral approach will allow us to defeat the virus and overcome this global crisis.”

A thematic dialogue focused on the COVID-19 response and equitable access to health. The discussion was opened by the Rt. Hon. Helen Clark, Co-Chair of the Independent Panel for Pandemic Preparedness and Response, former Prime Minister of New Zealand and former Administrator of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), followed by a distinguished panel of experts and policymakers who shared lessons learned from the frontlines of efforts to ensure equitable access to health services during the pandemic.

© Alexandre Baron / Flickr