Securitization of Communicable Diseases

Abstract

SARS Covid-19, a new coronavirus, is causing chaos all over the world. Politicians and media outlets appear to frequently employ war metaphors to illustrate the challenges posed by the outbreak. The Covid-19 pandemic is not a traditional security threat that portrays itself in the form of aggression from other states and their armed forces; instead, it is a non-traditional security concern that has been constructed as a security threat using the related language. This research aims to explain how Covid-19 has become securitized and by whom. We endeavor to analyze how the expansion of the concept of threat was emphasized through a complex set of frames and the use of ‘security language’ by leaders worldwide. Aligned with the objectives of this study, a qualitative explanatory research approach has been adopted. Therefore, this study employs Fairclough’s Critical Discourse Analysis Model as it is a qualitative, interpretative, and constructive approach and goes well with the research topic. With regards, this study argues that the UNSC has securitized the Covid-19 pandemic, and all the conditions for a successful securitization have been met. The identified actors evidently employed a security rhetoric while discussing the pandemic and challenges surrounding it. It further demonstrates that unlike the securitization of Ebola and HIV/AIDS by the UNSC, the securitization of Covid-19 is based in the human security domain.