Jaber Mohamed Al Shuaibi, Emirati Researcher in Geopolitical Issues
31 May 2020
In the global crises, the significance of the community emerges from its ability to contribute to the recovery of the States from these crises, which sometimes are cross-border ones. Nowadays, local communities are relied on to confront the current challenge represented in Corona pandemic. The informed and responsible conduct has become a condition for overcoming this pandemic, which has affected all aspects of life and interrupted the course of ordinary life for periods of unpredictable length. Despite the fact the epidemic crises are not new, where this crisis was preceded by series of similar crises resulting in the death of millions of people, the real power of the State is directly proportional to the state of reassurance experienced by the community members while confronting the crisis.
In the era of globalization and economic and technological interdependence, the social conduct cannot be predicted only through measuring the standards of life quality. This is because the impact of the exterior implications on the other communities, in which the health, economic and logistics issues aggravate, may lead some of their segments to split off. Therefore, the significance of the community awareness increases because it goes beyond decent life to the immunity against any penetration by the ideologies of the terrorist groups, such as the Muslim Brotherhood and their opportunism through incitement against the State’s precautionary measures, such as closing the mosques to save lives.
Since the establishment of the UAE, it forged a unique social formula render the UAE a developmental model relies on the citizen and the resident, namely on the human that is the core of the State advancement. This model depends also on a humanitarian vision for dealing with crises abroad, where the external aids provided by the UAE to more than 40 countries and the evacuation of the nationals of Arab and foreign countries trapped in China’s Wuhan city and provision of accommodation to them at the Humanitarian City in Abu Dhabi are steps confirming the humanitarian mission of the State. At the same time, these steps consolidate and spread reassurance in the State’s community and confirm the effectiveness of the State’s role in managing the crisis of COVID-19 pandemic insider and outside the UAE.
The UAE has adopted the best international practice to preserve the societal balance during the crisis, where briefings were made and the community was being addressed transparently on daily basis on the number of the COVID-19 tests that reached around one and half million tests, and the number of recovery cases was being announced. This inspires optimism and encourages thinking about post- Corona stage. Moreover, the State took the closure measures gradually for sanitization and to ensure the physical distancing, and this increased the community’s ability to absorb the impact of these measures and promoted the individuals’ mental health. This also led to high desire to volunteer by all cadres and talents, forging a beautiful image of national harmony. The social institutions succeeded in converting the dilemma into an opportunity of social responsibility, through launching initiatives, such as “Together We are Good” to support the affected individuals and families and the initiative “The Fund of the UAE, the homeland of humanity” to reduce the social implications…etc. It is expected that a local register will be established later on for the potential social risks at the time of crises in most of the modern societies. This register will determine all aspects affected by the crisis as experienced by the individuals and families, and then it will develop integrated policies accordingly with the various critical sectors, in order to ensure balance between health, economy, security and other key sources in the society. Moreover, the desired social role always requires balance. This is because excessive optimism may help in the spread of the pandemic among the community members, while the pessimism may aggravate the severity of the crisis with regard to food and drug shortage or help in accepting unjustified rumors that could be relevant to other communities having special circumstances, such as loss of jobs or tax increase.
