The former head of the World Trade Organization (WTO) has said that the Covid-19 pandemic revealed a global trust deficit and that civil society, rather than states, could help rebuild the trust needed to respond to future crises.
Speaking at the Caixin Summit on Thursday via video link, Pascal Lamy, director-general of the WTO from 2005 to 2013, said the shock of the new coronavirus revealed “terrible deficiencies” in the ability of sovereign states and multilateral institutions to cooperate in battling the deadly virus.