On the 50th anniversary of Sultan Qabus coming to power in a palace coup d’etat - an event often seen as the founding of the modern Omani state - we consider the impact of the coronavirus pandemic on Oman from the perspective of ‘human security’ for Omani citizens and first and second generation foreign migrants.
The broadening of the agenda of security studies in the 1990s moved beyond an almost exclusive state-centred concern to encompass the concept of ‘human security’. In this conceptualization the referent object of security - what or who is being threatened - was widened from the state to embrace human communities and their security from threat, including threats to health - a prime one being a pandemic disease. Following Sultan Qaboos’ death in January 2020, Oman’s response under Sultan Haitham to the current challenges of COVID-19 and associated low oil prices is placed in context as we critically assess the development of Oman’s health system since 1970 and important related issues of education, migration and citizenship.
Oil for health
When Sultan Qaboos took power on 23 July 1970 removing his father, Sultan Sa’id bin Taimur, in a British-supported palace coup d’etat at the height of the Dhofar War, the so-called Nahda (Renaissance) started in the country. Pursuing a very cautious budgetary policy, Sa’id bin Taimur had little concern for the welfare of the Omani populace who often had to migrate to the other Gulf states to find work, and health services were limited. Emerging from Britain’s informal empire in the Gulf, over the next fifty years Oman under Qaboos pursued important achievements in economic and social development and sought to adapt the local Islamic religious discourse (Ibadism) and its value-system to a modernization process.
