When COVID Authoritarianism Met Border Authoritarianism
When the World Closed Its Doors: The COVID-19 Tragedy and the Future of Borders, by Edward Alden and Laurie Trautman, Oxford University Press, 344 pages, $29.99
In late 2021, Charlotte Bellis, an unmarried journalist from New Zealand, found herself pregnant while working in Qatar, a country where that status carries the risk of jail time or deportation. A doctor advised her to get married or get out of the country. But New Zealand, which at that point still was taking drastic measures to limit the spread of COVID-19, allowed its citizens to come home only if they secured lottery-allocated spots in a government-run quarantine program. Bellis applied but was unsuccessful. Desperate, she turned to the Taliban.
The Islamic fundamentalist group said yes. Bellis made her way to Afghanistan, where she had worked and where her boyfriend was based. “When the Taliban offers you—a pregnant, unmarried woman—safe haven, you know your situation is messed up,” she wrote in The New Zealand Herald in January 2022.
Bellis continued to ask the New Zealand government for permission to return home, concerned about the risks of giving birth in Afghanistan, but it kept turning her down. Only after New Zealand’s largest newspaper publicized her story did the government change course.
When the World Closed Its Doors, by Council on Foreign Relations Senior Fellow Edward Alden and Border Policy Research Institute Director Laurie Trautman, is filled with stories like this, which remind readers of the absurd measures governments took to prevent the spread of COVID-19 across borders. These policies were ostensibly directed outward, targeting foreigners. But as is often the case with border controls, they inflicted damage internally too, infringing on citizens’ rights and going hand in hand with domestic restrictions.
Travel restrictions, which all of the 194 World Health Organization (WHO) member states deployed against COVID-19, may seem like a sensible pandemic response. It is easy to forget that the WHO had long viewed such measures as ineffective and counterproductive. Beyond doing little to stop contagion, travel restrictions can stop critical personnel and equipment from crossing borders. They also can foster secrecy. After South African scientists discovered the new, fast-spreading omicron COVID-19 variant in November 2021, many countries respond
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