Addressing the United Nations General Assembly last month, Prime Minister Robert Abela, among other issues, stated that global leaders have a responsibility to show their citizens through action and not just words that their concerns can be addressed. Indeed, he specifically said:
“Our fine words to this assembly must not stand alone. They must be directly connected to our actions at home and the priorities of our people. We must show through deeds, not just words, that we can address the fears, as well as the hopes and aspirations, of the people we represent.”
Back home, now, Abela must prove to be at the forefront of translating into meaningful actions and decisions what he stated in that international forum. In short, he must get our future right.
If anything, COVID-19 has taught us that a global pandemic is not just a health crisis but also an economic crisis, an education crisis, an inequality crisis, and so much more. With COVID-19 still far from being behind us, though, Malta must pay close attention to the fault lines it has highlighted and deepened and that lie ahead. Robert Abela and his team have decisive choices to make that will determine whether the current state of our nation is sustainable going forward.
Issues of equality, in spite of the great progress already registered in our country over the last few years, have sadly regressed due to the pandemic. There is still no place or part of life where women are treated equally to men, and COVID-19 has worsened that discrepancy. We should all be horrified that domestic violence increased during the pandemic as women were quarantined with their abusers. Even the ubiquitous hospital-blue masks were bizarrely designed to fit a man’s face, not a woman’s, despite 70% of care workers being women and front-liners. Gender inequality is the unfinished business of our time. More needs to be done to make the process fairer and more inclusive. But we should also pay closer attention to the intersectional inequalities that COVID-19 has highlighted.
Another area of burgeoning inequality is education, which should be the central equaliser. With classrooms going remote or shifting online, a sizable section of our student population, lacking a basic internet connection or computer, was put at an unfair disadvantage, one that will only worsen over time. The gap between state and private or church schools continues to grow, and we do not have enough teachers to cater to all students.
We have targeted a number of sustainable goals to deliver a world of greater opportunity and prosperity for everyone on our small island. We face an uphill climb. The pandemic has greatly slowed human development. Yet at the same time, it has clarified why sustainable development goals are so important to begin with. This past year has crystallised how interconnected our challenges are. We should be pushing the frontiers of sustainable development. We will have to drive new solutions and forge new partnerships in much the same way as in the midst of a pandemic. We will have to see evidence of enterprising grassroots efforts at the local level to meet sustainable development targets. Local action, local implementation, and local leadership on sustainable development goals should be flowering in exciting ways. We have not yet started to witness any positive signs in that direction.
Pandemics and other related problems aside, we are facing a broader ecological crisis as ecosystems are collapsing, biodiversity is disappearing, and our marine waters are acidifying. Even though the slowdown in economic activity due to the pandemic created a brief drop in Malta’s carbon emissions, we cannot escape the cumulative effect of generations of unchecked human activity or ever afford to return to our pre-pandemic emission trajectory. The coming years will be decisive in determining the health of our country for generations to come. More and more companies are placing sustainability at the heart of their business models, while investors are hastily moving out of fossil fuels. The economics of clean energy are getting more attractive these days, which further enhances the opportunity for our future governments to make clean energy a driver of post-pandemic economic recovery in our nation.
As if all that were not enough, illegal or irregular immigration continues to threaten our stability in all senses. In 2020, the European Commission presented its plans for the future of migration and asylum in Europe (the ‘migration pact’). A new approach was urgently needed, but the European Commission’s plan looked like just a repackaged version of Europe’s failed ‘hotspot’ approach. The irregular immigration phenomenon will continue to heavily test Malta's ability to safeguard security through border control, provide fair, just, and humane treatment of migrants and asylum-seekers, expedite the determination of asylum claims, relocate, resettle, or repatriate, as the case may be, as well as build and enhance cooperation with third countries of origin and transit.
Increasing digital literacy rates, increasing the number of internet users, increasing the GDP per capita, increasing the number of women in Parliament in an independent and democratic manner, improving energy efficiency, controlling population growth, addressing income inequality, formulating sound infrastructure and planning policies, and fine-tuning the fight against corruption are all issues that cannot be neglected.
The way Malta deals with these challenges will determine its success. In the past, we have experienced failures. Past administrations of whatever colour made errors in calculation and judgement and got the rug pulled off their feet as a consequence. Yet they got up to try again. Our country’s recent history shows that we have had leaders who were resilient, meaning they had the courage to bounce back and take risks despite adversity and initial setbacks. Robert Abela and all those who will come after him will have to be resilient in the face of different and new challenges in the coming decades. It is the essential key to success.
Dr Mark Said is a lawyer