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In March 2020, as people worldwide grappled with the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic,
the United Nations Secretary General (UNSG) called for a global ceasefire “to help create
corridors for life-saving aid. To open precious windows for diplomacy. To bring hope to
places among the most vulnerable to COVID-19” (UN News, 2020). Following this call, and
positive responses from several conflict parties, researchers and practitioners questioned
whether these so-called “Corona Ceasefires” could fulfil all these objectives at once
(Ozcelik Olcay, 2020; Rustad et. al., 2020; Clayton, 2020). In February 2021, almost a year
on from the UNSG’s call and following the successful development of multiple vaccines
for Covid-19, the UN Security Council adopted Resolution 2565, which demanded that
“all parties to armed conflicts engage immediately in a durable, extensive, and sustained
humanitarian pause to facilitate, inter alia, the equitable, safe and unhindered delivery and
distribution of COVID-19 vaccinations in areas of armed conflict” (UN Security Council,
2021).
As part of the Covid-19 response at the Political Settlements Research Programme, we
wanted to understand how ceasefires could potentially support Covid-19 public health
responses, including vaccination campaigns. In pursuit of this goal, in this report we
examine past experiences of using ceasefires to facilitate vaccination campaigns in
contexts as diverse as El Salvador, Afghanistan, and the Philippines, and consider how these
experiences might help us to better understand the conflict-peace-Covid-19 nexus. In our
analysis, we rely on our original dataset of vaccination ceasefires, the VaxxPax Vaccination
Ceasefires Dataset, which covers vaccination ceasefires across the world from 1985 to
2018, as well as a comprehensive review of the available literature. |
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