About the project
In early 2021, as a global scramble for COVID-19 vaccines unfolded, Nordic leaders maintained that there was no contradiction between protecting their own citizens and helping people everywhere get access to vaccines.
In practice, however, Nordic and European success at obtaining vaccines directly contributed to relegating low-income countries to the back of the vaccine queue. By the end of the year, most Scandinavian adults had been boosted with a third dose, while only 8.5% of people in low-income countries had received an injection - a situation that the WHO has dubbed global “vaccine apartheid.”
In the SCANVAX project, we analyse this important tension between national, regional, and international vaccine solidarity, and ask how the dominant policy goal of securing COVID-19 vaccines in the interest of national health security has been intertwined with global health security and broader foreign policy objectives, whether related to international solidarity, diplomatic influence, or geopolitical interests.
The project focuses on three topics:
- The Nordic COVID-19 vaccine response from 2020 until 2022 and the role of Nordic, European and global cooperation in Norway’s, Sweden’s and Denmark’s COVID-19 strategies. We also ask how each of the three Scandinavian countries has managed the tensions and ethical dilemmas between national health security and international solidarity.
- Current Nordic vaccine preparedness efforts and how Scandinavian countries build on past cooperation around vaccine access to strengthen Nordic, European and global vaccine preparedness today. We also investigate what role the European Union (EU) sees for the Nordic region in vaccine preparedness overall and in the EU’s new Health Emergency Preparedness and Response Authority (HERA) in particular.
- Academic theory in the fields of security studies and global health governance by analysing whether a specifically Nordic approach to health security or health diplomacy exists.
In studying the Nordic response to the COVID-19 pandemic and current vaccine preparedness efforts, SCANVAX will help improve pandemic preparedness, aiming to make our collective response to the next dangerous pathogen both more effective and more equitable.
Cooperation
SCANVAX is implemented by a consortium of international relations scholars and anthropologists from the University of Oslo (project owner), Lund University in Sweden and DIIS - Danish Institute for International Studies.
Financing
The project is financed by NordForsk, an organisation under the Nordic Council of Ministers.
Project duration
2023 - 2026
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