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From balloons to masks: the surprising results of doing research during the COVID-19 pandemic

By ISS Blog Bliss 18 October 20224 January 2025 1712 views

The COVID-19 pandemic and the lockdown that ensued caused disruption in every possible dimension of life, including the way in which academic research projects were conducted. In this article Wendy Harcourt, who led the recently completed EU-funded WEGO project, reflects on the effect the pandemic had on the project, showing how its network of researchers had to think and work together creatively and innovatively to keep the project going.

In March 2018, I was proud to launch the EU-funded WEGO (Well-being, Ecology, Gender and cOmmunity Innovation Training Network) project – my dream project. I had been awarded 4 million euro to set up this innovative training network with a group of dynamic feminist political ecologists and had the chance to select 15 talented young people from around the world to do their PhDs with us. As we celebrated with balloons and cake on Women’s Day at the ISS, what we couldn’t have foreseen is that the COVID-19 pandemic would appear smack bang in the middle of our four years together. The pandemic scattered the dreams we had but, as I suggest here, it also offered surprising insights into how to do research differently. The project was recently concluded, which allows me to reflect on what happened during the past four years – the good and the bad.

WEGO’s research focus was the hugely challenging idea to investigate how communities were building resilience strategies to cope with environmental, political, and economic change in Europe, Latin America, Asia, and Africa by learning from the ground up. WEGO PhD projects were designed as intimate studies on communities’ resistance to extractivism, embodied experiences of ageing and care, community economies, emotional engagements with water, and contested academic debates around and political protests.

The PhD researchers, supported by a network of nearly 30 academic mentors from around the world, headed out in 2019 to record and analyze the dynamic everyday experiences of damaged and contested environments, collaborating with women and men in communities who are rarely visible in political ecology research. The network used participatory action methods along with self-reflective and non-extractive feminist research approaches to engage with individuals, local communities, and social movements.

Then COVID-19 hit in early 2020, and all PhDs had to close down their research projects and literally flee to places where they had permission to reside. For some, that meant going home; for others it meant moving back to the place of their university. For all of them, it meant major adjustments to their research plans. The network as a whole was thrown into the unknown – could we continue to do research as the world was shutting down? Would we continue to be funded? We worried that it seemed we had to break every rule in the EU book. But, like everywhere else in the world, the EU had to adjust – and so did we.

And, to our surprise, we survived and even, in an odd way, became stronger. The two-and-a-half years of the pandemic meant moving from individual research projects with rigid expectations of what were to be the results to learning to work collectively, connecting online, opening up conversations about how we dealt with our emotions, as well as our concerns about how the (often very vulnerable) communities with whom the PhDs were doing research were coping with pandemic restrictions and lockdowns.

The pandemic changed the nature and focus of WEGO’s research in creative and unexpected ways. Going online meant opening up new questions about embodied and in-place convergences and between the personal and political space. This posed a challenge in the implementation of feminist methodologies engaged with participatory action research techniques, but it also allowed for creativity to transform how we harnessed digital spaces to reach faraway voices in the places the research was situated.

Doing research during the pandemic allowed the network to raise diverse questions around languages of care in feminist and environmental justice research, and politics. The encounters with the virus, and our isolation, reinforced conversations about how to include more-than-human actors to think together with non-western epistemologies, natures, and voices.

Moving from a research project that was designed for face-to-face connections to going online, forced us to respond and adapt to disruptions. We realized it was important to make visible the troubles of doing politically engaged research, learning from the pandemic restrictions on mobility, lack of face-to-face engagement, as well as the possibilities of using the technical openings in digital space. We created new methodological, theoretical, and epistemological ways of doing research across geographical arenas, breaking down some older barriers around needing to travel and be in-place. As a result, WEGO produced writing that is collaborative and fluid (Harcourt et al. 2022) allowing for reflective, emotional, and creative responses to the thorny questions we found ourselves asking about power, resistance, and pain, using art, photos, drawings, and storytelling.

The experience of WEGO during the pandemic illustrates the importance of innovation and adaptation in research. It is crucial to be experimental, creative, and flexible in order to deal with individual, institutional and global uncertainties. And, in this way, we learn to cope with disruption as the new normal.

Reference

Harcourt, W., K. van den Berg, C. Dupuis and J. Gaybor (2022) Feminist Methodologies: Experiments, Collaborations and Reflections

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Opinions expressed in Bliss posts reflect solely the views of the author of the post in question.

About the author:

Dr Wendy Harcourt was appointed full Professor and a Westerdijk Professor together with an endowed Chair of Gender, Diversity and Sustainable Development at the International Institute of Social Studies of the Erasmus University Rotterdam in The Hague in October 2017. She was Coordinator of the EU H2020-MSCA-ITN-2017 Marie Sklodowska-Curie WEGO-ITN from 2018-2022. From 1988-2011 she was editor and director of programmes at the Society for International Development in Rome, Italy. She has published 12 monographs and edited books and over 100 articles in critical development theory, gender and diversity and feminist political ecology.

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How recognizing the Amazon rainforest as non-human helps counter human-driven ‘sustainable development’ interventions

By ISS Blog Bliss 30 September 20224 January 2025 3832 views

Projects introduced in the Amazon rainforest to ‘protect’ it from harm hardly ever follow this objective; instead, they represent human interests while negating the interests of non-humans. But the rainforest as non-human also deserves the right to be represented. Luciana dos Santos Duarte in this article draws on developments in three academic fields to show how non-humans can become recognized in such projects.

Known as the Green Hell , the western part of the Amazon rainforest stretching across Brazil has been a stage for many projects that claim to save the world in the name of ‘sustainable development’. These projects are often conceived using the problematic paradigms of ‘new’ and ‘modern’ (for example introducing ‘new ways to…’), and other buzzwords like ‘Forest 4.0’, where technology is always the presumed answer to sustainable development issues because it ensures the making of profits while saving the forest.

Although we are living in the Anthropocene[1], slowly pushing the button of self-destruction, entrepreneurs motivated to ‘save the world’ are not an endangered species. They create projects connecting a company (buyer), an NGO (to provide technical assistance and credibility in the forest), some cooperatives (workforce of rural farmers), multilateral banks (investors), and the Brazilian government (subsidies). All these actors (called stakeholders) are humans, as are their creations (e.g. corporations). They constitute culture and are Culture.

Dichotomous thinking

But what about the Amazon rainforest? The forest, or the ‘stage’ that these actors occupy, is seen as ‘just Nature’, assumed to be separate from ‘Culture’ – something we can literally step on, extract, and reshape based on our will. These binaries – culture/nature, human/non-human – feed the paradigms mentioned above, allowing them to permanently exist in the forest and enabling them to come and go. Like waves, the projects go to the Amazon in accordance with anticipated opportunities for profit. Then, they go away. They incorporate ‘new’ ideas, but do not maintain previous ideas.

There is a key difference between humans and non-humans according to French anthropologist Philippe Descola (author of Beyond Nature and Culture, 2005), “Humans are subjects who have rights on account of their condition as men, while nonhumans are natural or artificial objects that do not have rights in their own right”. Therefore, exercising authority over a certain domain of affairs is considered exclusively human. We humans think from the top down, representing our Culture, and are not so diplomatic with Nature.

Diplomacy for non-humans

As part of Culture – because it is a human invention – diplomacy mediates between different interests, traditionally benefiting humans, but not non-humans[2]. However, the complexity of this mediation between the interests of hundreds of cultures and nations around the world, which we can see on daily news (wars, terrorism, etc.) becomes overshadowed by the need to mediate between human interference in nature and the right of existence of the thousands of animal and plant species (to highlight just two categories of non-humans) that are dying due to deforestation, pollution, etc.. Due to humans, non-humans are disappearing.

The lack of representation of Nature in ‘sustainable development’ projects leads to the core question: How can we think about diplomacy for non-humans in Nature?

My positionality allows me to answer this question not as a diplomat, but as a product designer pursuing a double-degree PhD in Production Engineering and Development Studies, inspired by the outputs of my research in the Amazon. In saying that, and recalling a famous quote on creativity by Albert Einstein, “we cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them”, I offer three different paths that could possibly inspire a more concrete answer to diplomacy for non-humans: Law, Anthropology, and Industrial Design.

The right to representation

In 1972, Christopher D. Stone wrote the breakthrough article; “Should trees have standing?”, launching a worldwide debate on the basic nature of legal rights that eventually reached the U.S. Supreme Court. He based his argument on the reasons why nature should be represented in court, for instance remembering that children in the past were seen as objects without rights or just an extension of their parents until their rights became recognized. Also, if non-humans like corporations can be represented by lawyers, why not trees and rivers?

Indeed, half a century after this seminal article was published, Whanganui River in New Zealand became the first river in the world to finally be represented in court [4]. The Maori people had been fighting for over 160 years to get it recognized as a legal entity. The river’s interest is now represented by one member from the Maori tribe and one from the government.

Regarding the field of anthropology, some scholars have been placing non-humans at the same epistemological level as humans, for instance, making science from what is the form of life of indigenous peoples, creating ideas like pluriverse[6]. However, our indigenous brothers and sisters do not know that their thinking-feeling can be framed in such fragmented terms. They do not see or live the Nature/Culture division. They are Nature.

Likewise, we as humans can be Nature, too, in our rational thinking and our creation of science and projects. As a lecturer in the field of Design, I am teaching my students to represent the voices of non-humans in their designs and to consider their positionalities in the design process. I believe that the agency of a lawyer should start at the embryonic stage of a project, amplifying the agency of the designer. In other words, the designer can represent Nature and non-humans through design inasmuch as they can do this for humans, mediating between the two as diplomats do. We become Nature by allying with Nature in our human activities.

The way forward

Once a project is in the Amazon, where we find thousands of non-human species (animals, plants, spirits), there is a lot of work to do – for anyone who can recreate their agency and their positionalities in projects, either for an entrepreneur, a scientist, a policy maker, or a designer – before we can go to court or march on to the apocalypse.

References

DESCOLA, Philippe. Beyond Nature and Culture. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2013, p. 488.

ESCOBAR, Arturo. Sustainability: Design for the Pluriverse. Development, 2011, 54(2), pp. 137-140.

LATOUR, Bruno. Telling Friends from Foes in the Time of the Anthropocene. In Clive Hamilton, Christophe Bonneuil & François Gemenne (editors). The Anthropocene and the Global Environment Crisis – Rethinking Modernity in a New Epoch, London, Routledge, 2015, pp.145-155.

HARAWAY, Donna. Anthropocene, Capitalocene, Plantatiocene, Chthulucene: Making Kin. Environmental Humanities, vol. 6, 2015, pp. 159-165.

HUTCHISON, Abigail. The Whanganui River as Legal Person. Alternative Law Journal, vol 39, 3 2014, pp. 179-182.

ROBINSON, Kim Stanley. The Ministry for the Future. London: Orbit, 2020, p. 576.

STONE, Christopher D. Should Trees Have Standing?–Towards Legal Rights for Natural Objects. Southern California Law Review 45, 1972, pp. 450-501.

STONE, Christopher D. Should Trees Have Standing? Law, Morality, and the Environment. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010, p. 264.

VIVEIROS DE CASTRO, Eduardo. From the Enemy’s Point of View: Humanity and Aivinity in an Amazonian Society. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992, p. 428.

WALSH, Catherine. Development as Buen Vivir: Institutional Arrangements and (De)colonial Entanglements. Development, 53(1), 2010, pp. 15-21.

[1] The Anthropocene is a concept proposed as a geological epoch to mark the impact of humans on Earth, like changing the climate and causing irreversible damage. According to Latour (2015, p. 2), the Anthropocene is “the best alternative we have to usher us out of the notion of modernization. […] Like the concept of Gaia, the risk of using such an unstable notion is worth taking. […] The use of this hybrid term made up of geology, philosophy, theology and social science is a wakeup call. What I want to do is to probe here in what sort of time and in what sort of space we do find ourselves when we accept the idea of living in the Anthropocene.”

[2] The recent launched science fiction, or climate fiction, book ‘The Ministry for the Future’ (ROBINSON, 2020) provides some insights in breaking this tradition. In the plot, a body stablished in the Paris Agreement acts as an advocate for the world’s future generations of citizens as if their rights were as valid as the present generation’s – humans considering their own non-humans.

[3] The status of legal personhood has been broadened in the course of history. For instance, slaves were once treated as property; however, with the abolition of slavery – a process, not a single event, in many countries – slaves were no longer regarded as property but as legal persons (HUTCHISON, 2014). Likewise, the status of legal personhood for nature – Stone’s idea – has been impacting courts, the academe, and society, which can be read in his book launched almost fifty years after the original article (STONE, 2010).

[4] In practical terms, it means the river can be represented at legal proceedings with two lawyers protecting its interests – one from the Maori, the other from the government. The Maori also received a NZD 80 million (USD 56 million) settlement from the government after their marathon legal battle, as well as NZD 30 million to improve the river’s health.

[5] Viveiros de Castro (1992) had proposed the term ‘perspectivism’ for a mode that could not possibly hold inside the narrow structures of nature versus culture. By studying indigenous people in Brazil and their shamanic practices, he saw that “human culture is what binds all beings together – animals and plants included – whereas they are divided by their different natures, that is, their bodies” (Latour, 2009, p. 1).

^[6] According to Escobar (2011, p. 139) “the modern ontology presumes the existence of One World – a universe. This assumption is undermined by discussions in transition discourses, like the buen vivir” (in Spanish, or suma qamaña, a concept from the indigenous people Aymara, in South America), and the rights of Nature. For Walsh (2010, p. 18), the concept of buen vivir “denotes, organizes, and constructs a system of knowledge and living based on the communion of humans and nature and on the spatial-temporal-harmonious totality of existence”. Coming back to Escobar (idem), “in emphasizing the profound relationality of all life, these newer tendencies show that there are indeed relational worldviews or ontologies for which the world is always multiple – a pluriverse”.

Opinions expressed in Bliss posts reflect solely the views of the author of the post in question.

About the author:

Luciana dos Santos Duarte is doing a double-degree PhD in Production Engineering (Federal University of Minas Gerais, Brazil) and Development Studies (International Institute of Social Studies). She holds a master’s degree in Production Engineering, and a Bachelor degree in Product Design. She is a lecturer in Industrial Design Engineering at The Hague University of Applied Sciences. Part of her research is shared on her website ethicalfashionbrazil.com

Will Colombia ever witness peace?

By ISS Blog Bliss 18 May 202118 January 2025 3407 views

The most recent wave of state violence against Colombian citizens that culminated in the killing of 47 demonstrators during a single week of protests taking place across the country is extremely worrying given the massive human rights violations it signifies. Yet far from being an isolated episode, the events that recently transpired are rooted in a deeper socio-economic and political crisis that has been exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic. State violence that has plagued the country for so long can be interpreted as the expression of institutional imbalances and may signify a worrying move toward securitisation – one that should be avoided at all cost.

Picture taken from El Espectador 01.05.2021.

“If the people go out to protest within a pandemic, it is because the government is more dangerous than the virus.”
– Slogan of the most recent (28A) protests

As a country known for having undergone decades of social unrest and political tensions, Colombia has been hurled back into the spotlight in the past two weeks as police and military forces cracked down on protesters. A current national strike against a tax reform starting on 28 April – aptly called 28A – has since escalated massively, leading to international calls for peace as repression fuelled further protests and tensions. Disturbing and painful images and audio clips of the police shooting demonstrators seemingly indiscriminately in different Colombian cities, hitting human rights defenders, and even threatening a humanitarian and verification mission in Cali have now been spread all over the world.

What led to these protests?

The answer is not straightforward. On 5 April 2021, a tax reform was proposed by Ivan Duque’s government. Given the enormous social tensions in Colombia, the proposed regressive tax reforms, through which the upper classes would benefit from tax cuts, and middle- and low-income classes would pay more for public services and consumption, fuelled a runaway fire, leading to a national protest scheduled for 28 April, but lasting much longer. This act of defiance should be interpreted not as a reckless act during a pandemic, but a desperate effort of protesters to protect their own futures. The tax reform proposal was finally withdrawn on 4 May, but only after 31 demonstrators had been killed, 814 had been arbitrarily detained, and 10 cases of sexual violence by police representatives had been reported.

The use of state violence against Colombian citizens is unfortunately not new. The recent round of protests was preceded by a national strike on 21 November 2019 called 21N, which was also met with force. Yet each moment of resurgence of violence is equally devastating for Colombia, a Latin American nation that has been struggling hard to shake its image as politically unstable. What’s more worrying are hints of a move toward securitisation that can normalise violence. Instead of strengthening the independence and capacity of the country’s judiciary and other bodies that are supposed to hold the state accountable for its deployment of force and citizens for the private use of the violence, securitisation would reinforce the vulnerability of social leaders and human rights defenders who play an important role in helping maintain the country’s democratic system and who can press for structural change.

Picture taken from BBC News Mundo 03.05.2021

Why is this so worrying?

Besides protesting against a proposed tax reform, Colombian society is using the 28A protests to urge a fundamental change in the socio-economic policies driven by a neoliberal government logic. Young people are advocating for affordable, good-quality, public higher education institutions and access to decent jobs. Workers and pensioners are rejecting the growing ‘flexibiliation’ of the labour market and the increased age of retirement. Public sanitation workers and health workers are asking for better working conditions and better public health care given the strain placed on them by the COVID-19 pandemic. It was never only about the tax reforms. Citizens feel betrayed by a government that does not seem to govern in their interests.

The right to protest (peacefully) to make such concerns heard is thus crucial for many groups across Colombia. Unfortunately, protests have taken place against a backdrop of violence that has haunted the country for decades. Continued state violence against protesters can be linked to the country’s violent history. Repression following the rejection of the 2016 Peace Agreement is also visible in the dramatic increase of other violent events, including recent massacres in rural areas of Colombia fuelled by broken promises of strengthening the state’s civil infrastructure for those residing in rural areas. And after the end of the Colombian conflict, new armed factions have sprung up to dispute the territories formerly controlled by FARC guerrillas. The result has been a predictable resurgence in illegal market activity and violence against civilians. Afro-Colombian, indigenous, and peasant communities are caught in the crossfire or are direct targets.

Pictures taken by Juliana Poveda during the demonstrations in front the Colombian Embassy in The Hague 07.05.2021

What’s worse, during COVID-19, the government has demonstrated a growing inclination towards authoritarianism, imposing curfews and militarising control of the lockdown. The pandemic has exacerbated the country’s socio-economic crisis, and both escalating violence in rural areas and lockdowns in cities intensified ordinary citizens’ socio-economic vulnerability. In effect, a decade of social policies to reduce poverty were reversed in a single year given the government’s erratic handling of the pandemic. Reducing ordinary people’s vulnerability and addressing inequalities were simply not priorities for this government. The proposed tax reform was the last straw, signifying to Colombians a government that was not doing its duty to make their lives better, both when it comes to the safety of civilians and their welfare.

What needs to be explored once the violence has been stopped is whether this inclination toward violent repression signifies the securitisation of state institutions and an even greater risk for social leaders and human rights defenders in the cities and rural areas of Colombia to continue keeping the state accountable. This would be devastating for Colombia, which has long sought peace and freedom, and whose citizens thought that the end of its conflict some five years ago signified a new era in which the state and citizens would be able to co-exist in harmony. The government should also take a long, hard look at whether it is actually actively pursuing peace – recent events seem to indicate the opposite.

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Thanks go to Lize Swartz for helping shape this article.

Opinions do not necessarily reflect the views of the ISS or members of the Bliss team.

About the author:

Juliana Poveda is a lawyer specialized in human rights and international humanitarian law of the National University of Colombia. She is currently pursuing her master’s degree at the ISS. Prior to that, she received her M.A. in Political Studies at the Institute of Political Studies and International Relations (IEPRI).

#SOSColombia: A call for international solidarity against the brutal repression of protestors in Colombia

By ISS Blog Bliss 12 May 202118 January 2025 4102 views

The recent surge in violence against Colombian citizens has led to thousands of reports of police brutality in a matter of days as the state cracked down on protesters taking to the streets starting 28 April. This has prompted a global outcry and pressure from international organisations and several countries on the Colombian government to end the violence so that the human rights of the protesters remain guaranteed. In this article, Ana María Arbelaéz Trujillo and Diego Hernández Morales present a brief overview of the situation and propose some ways in which the general public can get involved in raising awareness about the events and what they mean.

Over the past weeks, Colombians have been witnessing the brutal repression of their legitimate right to protest. According to reports by non-governmental actors, between 28 April and 9 May, at least 1,876 cases of police brutality had been recorded. This includes 39 deaths (34 caused by the use of firearms)[1], 963 arbitrary detentions, 278 instances of physical violence, 12 acts of sexual violence, and the disappearance of at least 500 protestors. The severity of the situation has led the United Nations, the European Union, Amnesty International, and several other international organisations to express their concern about the situation and remind the Colombian government that in any democracy, the state must protect the human rights of protesters and the public assembly of its people, not prevent and purposefully undermine it. The crackdown was particularly severe because of its swiftness – the police managed to threaten or cause harm to thousands of people in a matter of days.

Why were people protesting?

The spark that ignited the fire was a tax reform. The government upon initiating a tax reform argued that the new package of taxes was necessary to fund social policies to protect vulnerable people. However, the proposal included new taxes on essential goods which would had put additional pressure on the working and middle classes[2] who were already struggling to cope with the economic impacts of the pandemic.

Last year, the living conditions of the population, who already lived precarious lives before COVID-19 swept across the globe, worsened as the pandemic raged on. Colombia is the second most unequal country of South America, with a GINI coefficient of 0.53. In the last year, the monetary poverty rate increased from 37.5% to 42.3%, and 21 million people now live on less than USD 2 per day. Additionally, the unemployment rate for March 2021 was 14.2% and informal workers remain disproportionately affected by the restrictions imposed during the pandemic.

To oppose the tax reform and overall decreases in welfare, the National Strike Committee called for a national strike on 28 April. This call was supported by trade unions, indigenous groups, students, and social organisations that also protested against the persistent killing of social leaders and new proposals to reform Colombia’s health and pension schemes. Thus, what started with a tax reform ended in a massive protest about both old and new problems that led to thousands of people taking to the streets.

Following widespread popular discontent, the proposal was retired, and the Minister of Finance resigned. However, after several days of protests, people continue to protest, in part due to the outrage caused by the state’s violent response to the protest and the persistence of the additional reasons that motivated the national strike.

Why is the Colombian case different?

The introduction of new or higher taxes has led to discontent and triggered protests everywhere. But these changes need to be put into context in order to understand their significance. Social protest has historically been criminalised in Colombia. The dominant discourse of the political and economic elites of the country is that protesters are violent and associated with illegal groups. This narrative is harmful for democracy and puts at risk the life and health of peaceful protestors.

Recently, former president Alvaro Uribe used his Twitter account to delegitimise the national strike and encourage the use of deadly force against protestors:

“Let’s support the right of soldiers and police to use their firearms to defend their integrity and to defend people and property from criminal acts of terrorist vandalism.”

Twitter deleted this tweet due to the violation of its rules – a welcome step. The former president is also using the controversial concept of a ‘dissipated molecular revolution’ to discredit the demonstrations. According to this theory, social protests, even when peaceful, are deemed crimes against state institutions; protestors accordingly must be treated as internal enemies.

The spread of this hate speech, which defines protestors as military objectives, is especially problematic in a country with a long history of armed conflict where the military forces have been involved in several human rights violations against civilians, such as the ‘false positive scandals’. The violent oppression of protesters thus serves as a stark reminder of the power of the Colombian state and how the signing of the peace agreement may not be a guarantee for peace or political reforms.

Moreover, such rhetoric is especially dangerous in a country in which social leaders are routinely murdered with impunity. The ‘Front Line Defenders Global Analysis 2020’ reported that in 2020, half of social leaders killed in the world were assassinated in Colombia. According to Indepaz,[3] between the signing of the peace agreement in November 2016 and December 2020, 1,088 social leaders have been killed. The stigmatisation of social leaders and human rights defenders increases their level of risk, preventing the social transformation that Colombia needs. It is thus in light of this that the protests and state retaliation should be understood.

How can the international community contribute?

The solidarity of the international community is key for placing pressure on the Colombian government to stop using violence against protesters and to prevent impunity. Raising awareness through sharing this or other articles is a key starting point in getting the message out there. There are multiple ways in which you could contribute:

By promoting the creation of a public statement of solidarity at the organisation where you work
By sending a message to your government asking them to urge the Colombian state to respect the rights of protesters
By signing this petition from citizens worldwide addressed to OAS, OEA, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, and President Joe Biden to conduct a thorough investigation of the human rights violations during the recent protest in Colombia
By signing this Open Letter to the Colombian Government and the International Community from professionals of public international law
By signing this letter from Colombian academics and students calling for an inclusive dialogue to end the recent violence in Colombia
By donating to independent organisations reporting the current situation such as Temblores, Cuestión Pública and Mutante
By simply following reliable sources of news and sharing the information with the hashtag #SOSColombia on social media.

Footnotes

[1] According to Temblores and Indepaz, 47 people have been killed since 28 April 2021. Of these cases of homicidal violence, it has been possible to determine that 39 of them were due to police violence.

[2] Among the most controversial points were extending the income tax to people earning more than 684 USD per month, charging VAT tax on public and funerary services, and eliminating tax exemptions on essential goods and products such as eggs, milk, tampons, sanitary towels, and menstrual cups.

[3] Founded in 1984, INDEPAZ is part of the national network of peacebuilding organisations in Colombia. Its work is focused on researching and spreading information about the conflict, and it contributes to the peace process through the promotion of dialogue and non-violence.

Opinions do not necessarily reflect the views of the ISS or members of the Bliss team.

About the authors:

Ana María Arbeláez Trujillo is a lawyer, specialist in Environmental Law, and holds an Erasmus Mundus Master in Public Policy. She works as an environmental consultant on climate change policies and forest governance. Her research interests include the political economy of extractivist industries, environmental conflicts, and rural development.

Diego Hernández Morales is a Colombian lawyer with 25 years of experience in various fields. In Colombia, he was a professor of Democracy Theory at the Universidad Libre of Bogotá, and a professor of Politics and International Relations at the Universidad Santo Tomás. He has a Master’s degree in Development Studies from the ISS, conducting a research paper on the media representation in the Netherlands of the Colombian conflict. At this moment he is in the process of publishing a book on his testimonies and his appreciations related to the events in Colombia in the last half-century.

Now it’s time to start monitoring how children learn: moving beyond universal access to education in Bolivia

By ISS Blog Bliss 10 May 202118 January 2025 4026 views

A recently published UNESCO-led evaluation of the quality of education in Bolivia and other countries in Latin America and the Caribbean revealed just how badly it is faring in providing education of sound quality. The report shows that despite near-universal access to education, primary school learners are struggling at school. Alvaro Deuer made similar observations for his Master’s thesis and here argues that to change this, Bolivia’s education system needs to be transformed through the long-term prioritisation of evidence-based research and policy informing the ongoing monitoring and improvement of education quality.

Two years ago, while I was studying at ISS, I conducted two studies on the quality of secondary and tertiary education systems in Bolivia. While doing the literature review, I noticed that between 1994 and 2019[1], Bolivian authorities were more concerned with increasing the coverage rate of education than monitoring its standards. This is concerning given that SDG4 mentions the need for education to be universal and of sound quality (United Nations, 2021). For countries such as Bolivia where access to education is almost universal, the next step is thus ensuring that learners fare well in school and in university (Deuer, 2019).

UNESCO recently published the findings of a curriculum study forming part of its ERCE 2019 (Fourth Regional Comparative and Explanatory Study), an evaluation of education quality across 18 countries in Latin America and the Caribbean. The study echoed my findings that the quality of education is lagging behind access to education in Bolivia. This comes despite the existence of a number of institutions that are supposed to support the monitoring of education standards in the country.

For instance, the Bolivian Constitution makes room for the evaluation of the country’s education system by an independent body (Asamblea Plurinacional de Bolivia, 2009). Accordingly, the Plurinational Observatory of Educational Quality (OPCE) was created under the Law of Education (Asamblea Plurinacional de Bolivia, 2010). The OPCE has been part of different initiatives to monitor and evaluate the quality of Education in Latin America, including the ERCE 2019. Yet monitoring does not take place frequently.

A sad state of affairs

The most recent evaluation the country’s education system has been subjected to is the ERCE 2019. This evaluation measured the learning achievements of students in primary education with the aim of informing decisions of stakeholders of participating countries. The ERCE is subject to careful planning. The entire evaluation takes around three years (Aguilar, 2016). The test evaluates learning outcomes and studies for those learners registered in the third and sixth grade at both private and public primary schools, for four areas: languages, writing, math, and science (the latter only sixth grade) (United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization, 2018).

The results of the ERCE 2019 were published at the beginning of February 2021. Its most important findings for Bolivia are (United Nations Educational and Cultural Organization, 2021):

Bolivian learners generally are not doing well in school.
Learners from indigenous groups fare comparatively worse than other, non-indigenous learners.
Those attending private schools fare significantly better.
The quality of education is higher for schools in urban (versus rural) areas.

It’s clear from the findings that the education sector needs to be overhauled. Yet addressing gaps in learning capacities that affect poor school performance will require more than simply increased funding. Although the addition of ‘facilitating factors’ like improved physical infrastructure, more equipment, or the employment of more teachers can create a better learning environment that helps teachers and students work and study better, they do not necessarily help learners to learn better (Deuer, 2019). What’s needed is evidence-based research on what learners really struggle with and why. I thus argue that studies such as the ERCE could be used as a baseline to evaluate the quality of primary education in general from a transformational approach.

However, Bolivia has not developed a ‘tradition’ of conducting rigorous studies aimed at measuring the ‘impact’ of the education schemes implemented in the ‘transformation’ of student learning. It is only the second time that Bolivia participates in the ERCE[2], which reveals that monitoring and evaluation are not yet adequately emphasised. Although creating a culture of evaluation takes time, once the necessary institutional capacities are developed, these can be extrapolated to other sectors (and education subsystems), which can contribute to improved transparency and qualitative indicators development that goes beyond the percentage of execution of spending. Moreover, accountability regarding expenditures in the educational sector is particularly important, considering that 5% of the country’s GDP is committed to education and that this sector employs 150,000 teachers (Contreras, 2021).

Thus, only when governance networks of the Bolivian education system commit to investing in more evidence-based research, will policy makers start to take measures to close education gaps detected by the ERCE 2019. Following the recommendations of the ERCE, tackling the inequalities of Bolivian society includes focusing on closing the gaps between public and private schools, urban and rural schools, and between learners that live in indigenous and other regions. The gendered access to education should also receive special attention.

Footnotes

[1] This was set as the time frame of the study given that the main struggles and milestones of quality assessment mechanism implementation in Bolivia occurred in this period.

[2] UNESCO conducted the ERCE four times in Latin America and the Caribbean (in 1997, 2006, 2013, and in 2019), but Bolivia has only participated in the first and last evaluations (United Nations Educational and Cultural Organization, 2021). Bolivia was not part of ERCE 2006 since, in 2007 and 2008, the Constitution Assembly rewrote the Constitution. In the framework set by the new Constitution, the current Law of Education was promulgated only by December 2010. Therefore, the timing did not coincide with ERCE 2013, given that its implementation started some years before. However, in 2017 UNESCO implemented a specific assessment in Bolivia as pilot for ERCE 2019.

On the other hand, at the begging of 2018, an evaluation was conducted in Bolivia as part of ERCE 2013. It constituted a preparatory study for ERCE 2019. According to this study, Bolivia ranked 13th out of 16 countries regarding quality education (Brújula Digital, 2021).

Opinions do not necessarily reflect the views of the ISS or members of the Bliss team.

About the author:

Alvaro Deuer is a Bolivian development practitioner committed to bringing about evidence-based research and policy. He recently finished the Master’s degree in Development Studies at the International Institute for Social Studies (ISS). Previously, he obtained Bachelor’s degree in Business Administration and later in Political Science and Public Management. Deuer has 7+ years of working experience in various thematic areas such as institutional capabilities building, governance tools implementation, and indicators design. His research interest includes good practices in the areas of education, decentralization, public finance, and national identities building. Currently, he is studying the (de) construction of the indigenous identity during the Evo Morale´s government (2006 – 2019).

COVID-19 and Conflict | COVID-19 in the Brazilian Amazon: forging solidarity bonds against devastation

By ISS Blog Bliss 2 February 202119 January 2025 3325 views

The indigenous populations in the Amazon are putting up a commendable fight against the Brazilian government’s lack of adequate response to the COVID-19 pandemic. They are fighting an epic battle, not only trying to prevent being infected by the virus, but also encroachment by multiple actors on Amazonian land—a process that continues despite the pandemic. Here, we present the ongoing struggle of indigenous peoples in the Brazilian Amazon and how they are resisting several threats simultaneously.

“The indigenous peoples, quilombolas, and the black population … they were always the invisible targets of such necropolitics. The only issue is that these matters are in the spotlight under this government.” (Pedro Raposo, Professor at the State University of the Amazonas)

The struggle for control over land in the Amazon is far from over. The region that is so diverse and rich in natural resources has been targeted by large capital, garimpeiros[1], loggers, and agribusiness that aim to extend the soy frontier through forced burnings of the forest. As the Amazon spans several country borders, border dynamics are also a challenge for the region, which faces problems such as drug trafficking, smuggling, narcotics, and a drug war among criminal gangs of different countries. When elected, Bolsonaro, current President of Brazil, announced that his government would not proceed with indigenous territory demarcation, a statement that made evident the prioritization of agribusiness interests over the rights of indigenous peoples. His policies are connected to the deforestation of the Amazon and to the deterioration in the livelihoods of the indigenous peoples in the region. In this context, the fight of indigenous peoples for the right to their land continues unabatedly.

COVID-19 accentuated these land crises and pushed Brazilian indigenous peoples to the limit, making their struggle for survival even more profound.[2] Due to the pandemic, the land-grabbing situation has deteriorated exponentially.[3] Even with a decrease in economic activity, land grabbers seem to have profited (i.e. increased their actions, sensing implicit approval) from the lack of control and loose laws during the pandemic. Deforestation and burnings have increased dramatically[4] in a context where we would generally expect them to have declined.

Yet indigenous peoples are not giving up without a concerted and coordinated fight.

Despite original observations that the new coronavirus may be an urban crisis, unfortunately it got to the Amazon. Since indigenous peoples have had less contact with pathogens than the non-indigenous populations, mortality due to COVID-19 is higher among rural indigenous populations than among any other group in Brazil. An analysis of the impact of COVID-19 on this population performed by the Coordination of the Indigenous Organizations in the Brazilian Amazon (COIAB), and the Institute for Environmental Research in the Amazon (IPAM) showed that the mortality rate from COVID-19 among indigenous people is 150% higher than the Brazilian average and 20% higher than recorded in the country’s northern region, where the highest mortality rate has been cited.[5] By January 2021, the number of deaths among the indigenous population hit 936, and 46,834 people from 161 different indigenous groups have been infected according to Brazil’s Indigenous People Articulation (APIB).[6] Real numbers are expected to be higher as cases are underreported. As the guardians and propagators of their history, indigenous elders face the highest infection risks and mortality rates.[7]

Manaus is one of the cities that was worst hit by the pandemic. After leading a dramatic peak of deaths in the country in April 2020, the capital of the State of Amazonas revealed the potential devastation of COVID-19 in the Amazon region when the health system in the city collapsed. This situation became even direr due to the lack of oxygen available for patients at the start of this year. In April 2020, the municipal administration dug collective graves for burying bodies as the death rate tripled and burial services were overwhelmed. Now, in January 2021, Manaus is experiencing new record-high hospitalization and death rates.[8]

Collective graves being dug by tractors in April 2020 in municipal cemeteries in Manaus to deal with the sharp rise of burials due to the COVID-19 pandemic and related deaths. Source: Sandro Pereira, https://noticias.uol.com.br/saude/ultimas-noticias/redacao/2020/04/21/apos-boom-em-enterros-manaus-abre-covas-coletivas-para-vitimas-de-covid-19.htm

These numbers show that the Amazon is not excluded from globalization processes, which comes as both a benefit and a curse. While the connections among indigenous and non-indigenous groups brought the former health supplies and information, it was impossible to prevent this connection from being one of the vectors of transmission of the virus in the region.[9] This was the case even in the very isolated regions of the Amazon. Unable to rely on federal government support, indigenous organizations have come to rely on existing and new connections with local universities and the local public ministry to partially overcome the crisis. Working with organizations at the local level represents a change of strategy for groups that were used to lobbying only at the federal level. In Brazil, indigenous ‘matters’ are officially the responsibility of the federal government.

“Since the first case, with the death of our warrior Borari in Alter do Chão, we felt helpless… Different indigenous groups started working from their own organizations, making sure that public policies would work.” (Anderson Tapuia, CITA[10])

These partnerships supported the translation of informative materials to indigenous languages[11] that in some cases do not even have the word ‘disease’. Health support arrived by boats organized by civil society organizations. The ‘Saúde e Alegria’ initiative for example organized an ambulance boat that could reach isolated communities. In addition, they distributed donated food and hygiene products.

But all these efforts are not enough—the battle is also against those who should be protecting them. As presented in this series of three blogs, the present Brazilian government’s lack of strategy and specific policy to deal with the pandemic can be understood as necropolitics (Achille Mbembe[12]), as it weakens current protective institutions and destroys the chances of already vulnerable populations to survive in the pandemic.

Brazilian civil society may have acted in a fast, vocal, and organized way, reaching places that the state did not. These initiatives showed traces of a society based on solidarity bonds, citizen engagement, and may render them protagonists of their own transformation. However, to win this battle in the Brazilian Amazon, more is needed. A major change in the way the Brazilian government perceives indigenous peoples and the forest must first take place.

Footnotes

[1] ‘Garimpo’ is a form of prospecting, often illegal and accompanied by precarious labour conditions, that uses rudimentary techniques to extract minerals. It generates a range of social and environmental problems as prospectors (garimpeiros) invade state or indigenous reserves, often through violence, diverting rivers and embankments and contaminating soil, air, and, water contamination with heavy metals, mainly mercury. In Yanomami indigenous territory, there are about 25,000 illegal gold miners https://observatoriodamineracao.com.br/maior-terra-indigena-do-brasil-ti-yanomami-sofre-com-25-mil-garimpeiros-ilegais-alta-do-ouro-preocupa-liderancas-que-tentam-evitar-disseminacao-da-covid-19/

[2] To understand this process, we performed desk research and a qualitative comparative analysis of in-depth semi-structured interviews among indigenous peoples, activists, researchers and senior academics in the Brazilian Amazon. This is the third and last post out of the three published on Bliss, in which we have been presenting the main findings of the research work about COVID-19 in Brazil for the ISS project ‘When Disaster Meets Conflict’.

[3] In April 2020, during a peak of deaths related to the pandemic, the number of deforestation alerts in the Amazon rose by 64% compared to the same month in 2019. See https://epoca.globo.com/sociedade/como-desmatamento-se-alastra-na-amazonia-durante-escalada-de-pandemia-de-coronavirus-24441196

[4] For further information, please see (1) https://noticias.uol.com.br/meio-ambiente/ultimas-noticias/redacao/2021/01/08/desmatamento-na-amazonia-cresce-137-em-dezembro-diz-inpe.htm

(2) https://www.dw.com/pt-br/em-meio-%C3%A0-pandemia-amaz%C3%B4nia-enfrenta-amea%C3%A7a-tripla/a-53827092 and (3) https://www.opendemocracy.net/pt/covid-19-desmatamento-amazonia-brasil-colombia/

[5] See https://ipam.org.br/mortalidade-de-indigenas-por-covid-19-na-amazonia-e-maior-do-que-medias-nacional-e-regional/

[6] Information collected in January 26th, 2021. See https://covid19.socioambiental.org/

[7] See https://g1.globo.com/bemestar/coronavirus/noticia/2020/07/10/mortes-de-indigenas-idosos-por-covid-19-colocam-em-risco-linguas-e-festas-tradicionais-que-nao-podem-ser-resgatadas.ghtml and https://www.bbc.com/portuguese/brasil-53914416

[8] https://g1.globo.com/am/amazonas/noticia/2021/01/03/manaus-bate-novo-recorde-de-internacoes-por-covid-19-desde-o-inicio-da-pandemia.ghtml

[9] Besides the spread of the virus due to the movements of different actors related to land disputes (garimpeiros, loggers, etc.), contagion also occurred because of the displacement of health services to urban centres and the withdrawal of emergency aid. And there were also cases in which health workers spread the disease to indigenous communities. However, it is also important to note that not all indigenous peoples live in isolation from other indigenous communities or outside of urban areas.

[10] CITA, the Conselho Indígena Tapajós Arapiuns (Tapajós Arapiuns Indigenous Council), is an NGO that aims to ensure that public policies reach indigenous peoples, mainly those related to health, education, land issues, and social security.

[11] For more information, please see: https://ufrr.br/ultimas-noticias/6374-coronavirus-equipe-da-ufrr-traduz-para-linguas-indigenas-folhetos-informativos and https://www.ufam.edu.br/noticias-coronavirus/1238-instituto-de-natureza-e-cultura-produz-material-de-orientacao-sobre-o-covid-19-aos-indigenas-da-etnia-ticuna.html

[12] Necropolitics is a process in which the state uses political power – by its discourses, actions and omissions – to put specific groups into a more marginalised and vulnerable position (Mbembe, 2019).

Opinions expressed in Bliss posts reflect solely the views of the author of the post in question.

About the authors:

Fiorella Macchiavello is an economist and holds an MA degree in Urban and Regional Development from the Federal University of Santa Catarina (UFSC), Brazil. Currently, she is a PhD researcher in the third year of a Joint Degree between the International Institute of Social Studies (ISS) of Erasmus University Rotterdam and UnB, University of Brasilia, Brazil.

Renata Cavalcanti Muniz is a full time PhD researcher at ISS in the last year of her research. Her PhD research was funded by CNPQ-Brasil, and she is part of two research groups at ISS, DEC and CI.

Lee Pegler spent his early career working as an economist with the Australian Labour Movement. More recent times have seen him researching the labour implications of “new” management strategies of TNCs in Brazil/ Latin America. This interest expanded to a focus on the implications of value chain insertion on labour, both for formal and informal workers. Trained as an economist and sociologist (PhD – LSE), he currently works as Assistant Professor (Work, Organisation and Labour Rights) at the ISS.

COVID-19 and Conflict | From the Chilean miracle to hunger protests: how COVID-19 and social conflict responses relate

By ISS Blog Bliss 14 January 202119 January 2025 4382 views

COVID-19 broke out in Chile last year in the midst of an intensive social conflict rooted in the deep-seated inequalities caused by the free-market reforms in the country. The case of Chile shows how pre-existing conflict dynamics can be strongly intertwined with pandemic responses as earlier protests for greater equality paved the way for a climate facilitating ‘hunger protests’ during the pandemic. In response to growing mistrust in the state, citizens had a strong social mobilization base that drove collective action.

For many decades, Chile’s development trajectory was considered an inspiration due to its positive macroeconomic results achieved following the implementation of neoliberal policies by the dictatorship in the 1980s and supported by democratic governments to present. However, these policies produced deep inequalities among the population (Flores et al. 2019)[1]. With the eruption of protests in 2019 and the COVID-19 outbreak last year, the idea of a ‘Chilean miracle’ started to fade.

The COVID-19 pandemic reached Chile in the middle of the largest social conflict since the end of its dictatorship in 1990. Starting in October 2019, more than a million of people protested each Friday for five months in the center of Santiago, the capital city, to show their discontent and demand improved livelihood conditions. The response of the government to this movement was brutal, leading to high levels of repression, partial curfews, and large, violent clashes that ended in more than 34 casualties and 445 people with eye injuries (from riot guns wielded by the riot police) between October 2019 and February 2020.

As the mass protests proved, the government ignored the socio-economic problems faced by many sectors of the population. A clear expression of the lack of awareness from the government of the conditions experienced in many low-income neighbourhoods was shown in a public statement made by the former health minister of the country, when he stated in an interview that “[t]here is a level of poverty and overcrowding [in Chile] of which I was not aware”[2].

The measures implemented to address the challenges imposed by the COVID-19 were also an expression of this level of ignorance. One of the first measures to address the COVID-19 outbreak was to implement dynamic quarantines[3], which failed to prevent the virus from spreading from less vulnerable to the most vulnerable populations, instead increasing infection levels and mortality rates[4] (Galarce 2020). The failure of this measure is associated with overcrowding in households, the precarity of wages, and the impossibility for people who survive off a daily income to comply with quarantine measures.

In addition to the complete lockdown that followed the dynamic quarantines, another of the early measures was to implement nighttime curfews. This measure was not well received by citizens, nor by the scientific community, which indicated that the quarantine did not have experts’ approval since there was no proof that it reduced the infection rate. They argued that it was intended to reduce civil liberties[5], and, generally, this measure was seen as an expression of the authoritarian nature of the government.

The inability of the measures to counter the effects of COVID-19 led to multiple demonstrations that were known as ‘hunger protests’. This time, people demanded access to food, water, and shelter as many lost their daily incomes due to the lockdown measures. The hunger protests followed the government’s announcement about the distribution of food baskets. People felt that, again, the government did not understand people’s needs—families could not wait to receive food supplies, but urgently required money to obtain (other) basic goods. The government’s response to the protests was highly repressive once more, mirroring its response to the previous protests back in October 2019.

The countrywide social movement leading protests in 2019 and 2020 articulated different demands and had no centralized leadership. It encouraged self-organized local assemblies (asambleas territoriales) composed of young and elderly people and was founded due to mistrust in the existing institutions. These local assemblies embodied collective organization to resist and shape new relationships and solve immediate problems in the neighbourhoods. The movement that led protests months before COVID-19 emerged therefore played an important role during the pandemic, enabling Chileans to solve difficulties the pandemic and the government’s response to it by themselves through collective action.

One of these initiatives is the so-called ‘ollas comunes’ (‘common pots’)[6] through which people helped stave off hunger by cooking for each other. This measure to respond to the COVID-19 disaster is related to previous responses to social conflicts in Chile. As stated by Clarisa Hardy (1986), the ollas comunes initiative is associated with workers’ layoffs and repression suffered after the 1973 coup d’état that brought Augusto Pinochet to power. Therefore it has a strong component of collective memory. This initiative also proved that the self-organization that arose during the protests could solve immediate problems in a context characterized by high levels of mistrust towards the government in a crucial moment for state intervention like a pandemic. It also opened the possibility to act collectively outside of the common frameworks provided by the state and the market.

References

Hardy, C. 1986. ‘Hambre + Dignidad = Ollas Comunes.’ Accessed August 11, 2020 http://www.memoriachilena.gob.cl/archivos2/pdfs/MC0033331.pdf

Flores, I.; Sanhueza, C.; Atria, J. 2019. ‘Top incomes in Chile: a historical perspective on income inequality, 1964-2017’, Review of Income and Wealth, pp. 1-25.

Tinsman, H. 2006. ‘Reviving Feminist Materialism: Gender and Neoliberalism in Pinochet’s Chile,’ The University of Chicago Press 26(1): 145-188.

Foot Notes

[1] Many estimations had been made using different methodologies. All of them are relatively consistent in suggesting that the richest 1% hold between 25%-33% of the national income. For an in-depth discussion, see the following analysis (in Spanish): https://www.ciperchile.cl/2019/12/10/parte-ii-la-desigualdad-es-una-decision-politica/

[2] For the complete declarations, see the following interview (in Spanish): https://www.latercera.com/politica/noticia/manalich-reconoce-que-en-un-sector-de-santiago-hay-un-nivel-de-pobreza-y-hacinamiento-del-cual-yo-no-tenia-conciencia-de-la-magnitud-que-tenia/5BQZLGLOPVDDPKQ2SNSSSWRGYU/

[3] Dynamic quarantines are those applied to a specific place in a territory (a municipality, for example), and that can be lifted or imposed based on the regular analysis of certain patterns, particularly the number of COVID-19 cases in each place under quarantine.

[4] Galarce, A. (2020, May 19). Experto en salud pública USACH: “Las cuarentenas dinámicas hicieron que el virus migrara hacia una población más vulnerable”. Radiousach.cl. Accessed August 10, 2020 https://www.radiousach.cl/experto-en-salud-publica-usach-las-cuarentenas-dinamicas-hicieron-que

[5] At the time of publication, the curfews were still imposed, even though the partial lockdowns were lifted and the COVID-19 infection rate diminishing.

[6] “Common pots involve women pooling the food rations of individual families to collectively provide more substantial meals to entire groups of families, workers and neighborhoods” (Tinsman 2006).

This research was part of the “When Disaster Meets Conflict” project. It was undertaken between July and September 2020 and comprised the analysis of secondary sources (news and articles related to the Chilean protests of 2019-2020 and the government’s responses to the COVID-19 crisis). Additionally, five semi-structured interviews were carried out. The interviews included key actors from the Chilean private sector, government, and civil society. The purpose of these interviews was to know these actors’ points of view on the impact and the government’s response to the sanitary crisis

About the authors:

Ana Isabel Alduenda studied International Relations at the National Autonomous University of Mexico and is a current student of the MA in Development Studies at ISS, major Governance and Development Policy. She has worked in the public sector and as a consultant in topics related to government accountability and human rights. Her research interests focus on anti-corruption policies, open data, and gender violence. In addition, she has developed a genuine interest in the social phenomena surrounding pandemics.

Camila Ramos Vilches studied Social Work at Pontifical Catholic University of Chile and is a current student of the MA in Development Studies at ISS, major Human Rights, Gender and Conflict Studies: Social Justice Perspectives. She has worked in local NGOs related to grassroots development, and international NGOs related to sustainable development in the private sector. Her research interests focus on gendered analysis within organizations, diversity and inclusion management and sustainable development.

COVID-19 and Conflict | Between myth and mistrust: the role of interlocutors in managing COVID-19 in Haiti

By ISS Blog Bliss 11 January 202119 January 2025 3231 views

Mistrust in state-provided information about COVID-19 has characterized citizen responses to the pandemic in Haiti, preventing the effective management of the virus. This article shows that this mistrust is rooted in a number of historical, political, and social factors, including the perceived mismanagement of past crises. In the wake of resistance to pandemic measures and failure to adhere to regulations, local organizations can play an important role in contexts with low institutional trustworthiness.

To date, Haiti has managed to register a relatively low number of COVID-19 infections and related deaths. Initial concerns regarding the potential devastation COVID-19 could cause in Haiti were related to insufficient sanitary standards and medical facilities necessary to prevent the spread of the virus and ensure the proper treatment of infected patients. However, it turned out that the misunderstanding of COVID-19-related information was another major challenge that prevented people from taking preventative measures and going to hospital when infected.

Some studies conducted during the cholera outbreak in 2010 have pointed out that extreme poverty and low levels of education can cause mistrust in information on health instructions (Cénat, 2020). Nevertheless, these narrow explanations disregard the historical and socio-political background that has nurtured the mistrust of the population in public institutions that is also visible in responses to the COVID-19 pandemic. Local organizations have played a central role in addressing the Haitian community’s disbeliefs around COVID-19, stepping in as interlocutors in the fight against the spread of the virus.

Over the past few years, discontent with the performance of the state has led to extensive protests. On many occasions, people have called for the resignation of the president and the dissolution of the government, denouncing its inability to manage past crises, claiming a lack of accountability, and citing worsening inequality. Furthermore, the community’s anger has been extended to international institutions, particularly the Core Group[i], the Organization of American States (OAS), and the United Nations Integrated Office in Haiti (BINUH). They are blamed for intervening in Haiti’s internal politics and supporting the current regime, thus keeping the president from resigning (AFP, 2019).

Such anger at, and mistrust in, people in power has been constructed historically. The importation of cholera to Haiti by a UN agent in 2010 as well as successive governments’ mismanagement of the consequent outbreak, the lack of accountability for and the dissatisfaction with the 2010 earthquake responses, the exposure of PetroCaribe fund-related corruption, and the widely reported sexual abuse scandal are just some of the cases that have led to widespread mistrust of those in power.

Damage already done?

When the first COVID-19 infection was confirmed, the government immediately declared a health emergency, imposing restrictive measures and undertaking information campaigns to raise awareness of the pandemic and the necessary sanitary measures to be taken through broadcasts on television, radio, and social media, or by means of vehicles circulating in suburbs with speakers mounted on their roofs[ii]. Despite these efforts, due to the general mistrust and lack of legitimacy of the current government, not only protests against ‘lockdown’ measures and the refusal to adhere to them, but also disbelief surrounding the disease led to the spread of rumours and misinformation (See also Dorcela and St. Jean, 2020). “People think of COVID-19 as a political matter”, said a head of a local youth group.

Hearsay varied from the government having invented the virus to receive money from international aid agencies or diverting attention from the internal political issues[iii] to the hospitals testing a new vaccine on the Haitian population. The disbeliefs were such that people ended up claiming that those showing the same symptoms of COVID-19 were not infected by the virus, but with a different disease that they called ‘Ti lafyèv’ (‘small fever’)[iv], which was assumed to be easily treatable with ‘te anmè’ (bitter tea), therefore ensuring that hospital visits (and testing) were ‘not necessary’.

Given the misinformation, on the one hand people have not taken the virus seriously and therefore failed to follow preventative measures, while on the other hand panic was created and people stigmatized, which prevented them from going to the doctor and accelerated the spread of the virus. Additionally, some acts of sabotage of medical services were reported.

Countering disbelief, panic, and stigma, some local leaders and organizations took important initiatives to disseminate correct information and to help the communities cope with the government measures. For example, Doctors Without Borders and Gheskio, a leading Haitian healthcare institution, trained volunteers as field officers to spread information about the virus by visiting people (what it is, how to protect oneself, which hospitals to go to, etc.). In this regard, Dr. Pape, a founder of Gheskio, argued that “poor people are not stupid. [They] want to make sure that what you’re telling them is real.”[v]

Other civil society organizations (CSOs) also took various initiatives to communicate with people. While some initiatives used campaign music or held quiz contests with questions about COVID-19, allowing participants to learn about the virus while having fun, others visited street vendors and residents, going door to door with information leaflets to clear up the misunderstanding, to remind people that the virus is still present, and to ask them to wear face masks and wash their hands even if others do not follow the measures. Also, the CSO Ekoloji pou Ayiti established hand-washing stations in Furcy and its members stood at the stations to explain to the users which precautions and preventative measures to take, as well as how to make homemade sanitizer.

Thus, in places where the legitimacy and credibility of the government is disputed, such as Haiti, interlocutors such as CSOs and other local organizations can significantly contribute to effective crisis management. The above examples once again highlight the vital role of local actors in articulating and ‘narrowing down’ key messages and practices among the population that are central in managing the spread and effects of the virus.

References

AFP (2019) “Haïti: l’opposition manifeste contre « l’ingérence internationale » (Haiti: the opposition manifestes against the « international interference »”. Available at: https://5minutes.rtl.lu/actu/monde/a/1413480.html (Accessed: 14 December 2020).

Cénat, J. M. (2020) “The Vulnerability of Low-and Middle-Income Countries Facing the COVID-19 Pandemic: The Case of Haiti”, in Travel Medicine and Infectious Disease 37 (101684). Doi: 10.1016/j.tmaid.2020.101684

Dorcela, S. and St. Jean, M. (2020) “Covid-19: Haiti is Vulnerable, but the International Community Can Help”. Available at: https://www.the-hospitalist.org/hospitalist/article/224836/coronavirus-updates/covid-19-haiti-vulnerable-international-community-can (Accessed: 19 July 2020).

Footnotes

[i] Refers to a diplomatic group composed of the UN Secretary-General’s Special Representative, the ambassadors of Brazil, Canada, the EU, France, Germany, Spain, the US, and the OAS.

[ii] Telephonic conversation with a physician in Port-au-Prince on 4 July 2020 and with a health professional in Les Cayes on 20 July 2020.

[iii] Telephonic conversation with a physician in Port-au-Prince on 4 July 2020.

[iv] Telephonic conversation with a health professional in Les Cayes on 20 July 2020.

[v] See Feliciano, I. and Kargbo, C. (2020) “As COVID cases surge, Haiti’s Dr. Pape is on the frontline again”.[/vc_column_text][vc_separator color=”custom” accent_color=”#a80000″ css=”.vc_custom_1594895181078{margin-top: -15px !important;margin-bottom: 10px !important;}”][vc_column_text]This article is an outcome of research conducted by the authors between June and August 2020 as part of the International Institute of Social Studies (ISS) of Erasmus University Rotterdam’s ‘When Disaster Meets Conflict’ project. The research aimed to analyze the tensions between top-down measures implemented to face the COVID-19 emergency and the bottom-up responses and mechanisms seen among local leaders and institutions in Haiti. Methodologically, it was conducted by doing a secondary sources review and remote interviews with a number of Haitian health professionals.

About the authors:

Angela Sabogal is a sociologist who graduated from Pontificia Universidad Javeriana in Bogotá, Colombia. She is currently finishing an MA degree in Development Studies at the International Institute of Social Studies ISS of Erasmus University Rotterdam. She has six years of working experience in social project management in Colombia and Haiti.

Yuki Fujita is MA degree student in Development Studies at the International Institute of Social Studies (ISS) of Erasmus University Rotterdam. Her major at the ISS is the Social Policy for Development. Before coming to the ISS, she worked in the diplomatic corps in Haiti for two years from 2017 to 2019.

COVID-19 and Conflict | Pandemic responses in Brazil’s favelas and beyond: making the invisible visible

By ISS Blog Bliss 22 December 202019 January 2025 2990 views

The inaction of the Brazilian government during the COVID-19 pandemic has pushed some members of Brazilian society into an even more vulnerable position. Yet many of these groups seem to know what they need to do to fight the virus. Here, we highlight the capacity of some domestic workers and residents of favelas to organize both quickly and innovatively during the pandemic. Importantly, we show that favelas can be a site for empowering transformation, rather than just a place of misfortune.

“I watched a report on the TV. They were interviewing an upper-middle class family about the lockdown. But the domestic worker could be seen in the background, working. “Oh, this family is isolated”. But what about that worker back there? Isn’t she someone?” (Cleide Pinto, from FENATRAD, domestic workers union).

Sharing videos of life in quarantine has become a commonplace during the pandemic in Brazil. Television personalities have provided a glimpse of their lives at home, showing what it has been like for them to be in quarantine. Yet, staying home in Brazil is a privilege and not possible for more than 50 million Brazilians[i]. Although a large part of the population is dependent on informal jobs and must continue to leave their houses every day, they are virtually invisible—to most.

This scenario is just another reflection of the abysmal inequality where the richest 10% hold 41.9% of the country’s total income^[ii]. In the labour market—where around 36% of employed people work under informal conditions—domestic workers number approximately 7 million^[iii]. Despite these numbers, their jobs remain precarious—domestic work was finally recognized as formal work in 2015[1], but most of domestic workers still do not have formal contracts.

To aggravate this state of affairs, during the pandemic domestic work was declared an ‘essential service’ in several states of Brazil[2], forcing a large number of women to continue working and having to risk being infected whilst taking public transport or whilst toiling in the households of the elites. In cases where employers allowed them not to work for their own safety, many were also not paid or feared losing their jobs.

Crowded BRT by the reopening of commerce in Rio de Janeiro during the pandemic, on June 9th, 2020. Image: Yan Marcelo / @ yanzitx. Authorized by authors.

However, Brazilian civil society was organized and often vocal, playing an active and central role in the fight against COVID-19[3]. Collaborative initiatives based in solidarity emerged in various settings to provide temporary support for those in need. Civil society used existing networks and infrastructure of support, but was also innovative in its actions, forging new and strengthening existing solidarity networks. The trigger was the knowledge that the state was not going to see them, nor take care of them. On top of that, many of these workers, including domestic workers, live in communities with poor socioeconomic conditions, often known as favelas (informal settlements).

As a response to the pandemic, the national association of domestic workers (FENATRAD) organized national campaigns, such as the Cuida de quem te cuida (‘care for those who care’)[iv] to pressure public institutions not to consider domestic work as essential during the pandemic and to encourage employers to put workers on paid leave. FENATRAD published videos on social networks to raise awareness and promote other forms of support, such as gaining access to the online platform for the federal government’s emergency fund. Such organization played a crucial role in informing workers about their rights, particularly how to protect themselves.

Leaders from within the favelas took charge, organizing online fundraising campaigns and the distribution of primary goods. The Favela of Paraisópolis, situated next to a rich neighbourhood in São Paulo, made it to the Dutch news as an example of a community that managed to fight COVID-19 using its own means. Vital to this success has been a partnership with the network ‘G10 das Favelas’[v], an organization that supports entrepreneurship within different communities across the country. Their lemma is based on the idea of favelas as a place for empowering transformation rather than a place of misfortune, according to Gilson Rodrigues, a community leader in Paraisópolis.

Through the partnership, civil society created the idea of ‘presidents of the street’, employing 542 volunteers as ‘street presidents’ responsible for distributing food and hygiene products in their allocated areas. A further deficiency in social assistance is that of SAMU, public service for ambulance urgencies, as noted below:

“SAMU does not get to Paraisópolis. It did not do so even before the pandemic, even less so now” (Gilson Rodrigues).

As many public services were not available, they trained 240 first aid brigades within the community, hired private ambulances and medical staff, and organized information campaigns on hygiene procedures and on how to recognize symptoms of the disease.

Two schools in the neighbourhood were transformed into centres to host those who tested positive for the virus, allowing them to be in isolation, with food, a TV room, and a proper space in which to recover. To support domestic workers of the community, they created the program ‘Adote uma diarista’ (‘adopt a domestic worker’), providing financial resources, hygiene material, and/or food for more than one thousand informal workers.

These examples show an exceptional response from civil society in Paraisópolis[4]. However, not all favelas have the same level of organization. Although these initiatives temporarily alleviated the burden of the pandemic for the people in these communities, they do not offer structural solutions for their situation. Domestic workers unexpectedly became frontline workers. An optimistic future would be to imagine that these initiatives would result in greater recognition of domestic work and greater empowerment and rights for the people in these communities. However, with the present political scenario, this future is hard to imagine.

[1] http://g1.globo.com/politica/noticia/2015/06/dilma-assina-regulamentacao-dos-direitos-das-domesticas-diz-planalto.html

[2] Governments of the states of Pará, Maranhão, Rio Grande do Sul and Ceará are among some of the states in which domestic work was declared as essential during the pandemic.

[3] This is the second out of three posts to be published on Bliss presenting the main findings of the research work about COVID-19 in Brazil for the project ‘When Disaster Meets Conflict’. We performed desk research and a qualitative comparative analysis of in-depth semi-structured interviews conducted with members of three civil society groups in Brazil: residents of favelas (informal settlements), domestic workers, and indigenous peoples of the Amazon. Interviews took place in July 2020, at the peak of the first wave of the pandemic in Brazil.

[4] For more info, please see: https://g1.globo.com/sp/sao-paulo/noticia/2020/04/07/paraisopolis-se-une-contra-o-coronavirus-contrata-ambulancias-medicos-e-distribui-mais-de-mil-marmitas-por-dia.ghtml and https://newsus.cgtn.com/news/2020-04-19/Favela-fights-coronavirus-PNzcVTweKk/index.html

[i] IBGE – Instituto Brasileiro de Geografia e Estatística. Síntese de Indicadores Sociais 2017.

[ii] https://cee.fiocruz.br/?q=node/1090

[iii] According to FENATRAD.

[iv] The campaign Cuida de quem te cuida (Care for those who take care of you) is an attempt to pressure the Public Ministry to forbid states from filing decrees declaring domestic work as essential work. Despite the campaign, the decrees continued to happen and with the reopening of the economy, it became even hard to implement a monitoring system that would guarantee a safe work condition for these women.

[v] http://www.g10favelas.org

About the authors:

Renata Cavalcanti Muniz is a full time PhD researcher at ISS in the last year of her research. Her PhD research was funded by CNPQ-Brasil, and she is part of two research groups at ISS, DEC and CI.

Lee Pegler spent his early career working as an economist with the Australian Labour Movement. More recent times have seen him researching the labour implications of “new” management strategies of TNCs in Brazil/ Latin America. This interest expanded to a focus on the implications of value chain insertion on labour, both for formal and informal workers. Trained as an economist and sociologist (PhD – LSE), he currently works as Assistant Professor (Work, Organisation and Labour Rights) at the ISS.

COVID-19 and Conflict | The state’s failure to respond to COVID-19 in Brazil: an intentional disaster

By ISS Blog Bliss 16 December 202019 January 2025 3956 views

The COVID-19 pandemic in Brazil stretches beyond the fight against the SARS-CoV-2 virus. The inaction of the government over the past year to counter the effects of the pandemic has worsened living conditions for millions of Brazilians and ultimately resulted in the loss of lives. We argue that the intentional disaster resulting from the mismanagement of the pandemic was caused by the direct (in)action of the federal government as gross negligence rooted in apathy clashed with historically constructed conditions.

“The famous ‘stay home’ idea does not work for us here; it is not our reality […] quarantine in the favelas is the biggest fake news invented.” (Gilson Rodrigues, communitarian leader)

“The domestic worker already has a lot against her. If the boss gets sick, he uses his private healthcare system and is treated and cured. Domestic workers use the public system, stand in a large queue, and most of them die. This is the case not only for the domestic worker, but for all poor workers.” (Cleide Pinto, domestic workers union)

The above quotes provide just a glimpse of life during the COVID-19 pandemic in Brazil, painting a picture of gross negligence, mismanagement, and death. These stories are not exceptions. Millions of Brazilians have had to navigate the pandemic, suffering as much from the inaction of the federal government as they did in fighting the SARS-CoV-2 virus. The pandemic became a crisis as the virus entered the country via elites and as existing inequities were compounded as the government stalled. The failure to act to save lives through imposing crucial pandemic measures is why we call it an intentional disaster.

To understand how this intentional disaster came to pass, we performed desk research and a qualitative comparative analysis of in-depth semi-structured interviews[1] conducted with members of three civil society groups in Brazil: residents of favelas (informal settlements), domestic workers, and indigenous peoples of the Amazon. Interviews took place in July 2020, at the peak of the first wave of the pandemic in Brazil. The struggles of the three groups to survive the pandemic represent an ongoing fight, but also show their capacity to be organized, innovative, and quick in resistance. The common threat to the studied groups, besides the virus, was and remains the inaction of the government.

Inequalities in Brazilian society were dramatically exposed by the posture of president Jair Bolsonaro, who relativized deaths and disregarded the importance of the disease by claiming it was “just a simple flu”. Bolsonaro’s government attempted to obscure the official number of lives lost to COVID-19[2] and created obstacles for governors and mayors who felt compelled to implement measures to fight the virus[3]. Initially, governors rejected the directions of the president and implemented lockdown measures. It came to a point where the Supreme Court had to intervene, clarifying that the governors indeed had the responsibility to intervene and were permitted to do so. This provided a shimmer of hope in the face of the absence of larger, national measures.

Moreover, after the resignation of the Minister of Health in May this year, no other minister has been proclaimed; the ministry has since been run by a military general. It is notable that the country is facing the worst pandemic in a century without an official health minister. A lack of leadership, lack of planning, and lack of care for the dying population became the norm.

The devastation this level of inaction caused should not go unnoticed. The number of deaths from COVID-19 in Brazil surpassed 175,000 by beginning December – as a country of continental numbers, Brazil is now the third country in the world in terms of numbers of lives lost to the virus and confirmed cases. Similar to the US, a populist government openly denied scientific findings showing that COVID-19 was real and potentially lethal. A difference between the two countries, however, is that in the United States, Donald Trump eventually realized the need to take measures to contain the pandemic (even if due to electoral motivations). In Brazil, Bolsonaro seems to continue to ignore that responsibility.

What can now be witnessed is that Bolsonaro did not seem to learn, with all the lives lost, nor with Trump’s defeat, how crucial the imposition of measures are. The president continues to appear in pictures without wearing a mask and without adhering to social distancing measures. He now behaves as if the pandemic was over, plans to cut the emergency cash support to the population, and incites the population not to trust a vaccine originating from China. The year has gone from bad to worse.

Copacabana Beach in Rio de Janeiro: protest in remembrance of 100,000 lives lost to the new coronavirus during the first weeks of August 2020, when the country hit the second place in the number of lives lost to COVID-19.
Picture: Rio da Paz. Authorized by authors.

How is this failure to act felt on the ground? What studies revealed in the Brazilian case is that a virus that arrived through elites when returning from vacation in Europe had a bigger impact in the most vulnerable spaces. People on the peripheries, residents of favelas, informal workers, the black population, and indigenous groups are hit hardest. The highest number of deaths seems also to be among the poorest. In a study of infections in São Paulo, almost 66% of the victims lived in neighbourhoods with average salaries of below R$3,000 reais (around 200 euros) per month, and 21% in places with an income of up to R$6,500 reais (around 1.000 euros) per month. Within regions where the average income was above R$19,000 (around 3,167 euros) per month, only just over 1% of deaths were registered.

This pattern found in São Paulo is likely to be repeated in other parts of the country. Populations with a higher socioeconomic status are those who can afford to be in isolation or lockdown and can work from home. A large part of the population cannot afford to do that. In the State of Rio de Janeiro, the first death due to COVID-19 was of a black domestic worker infected in the house where she worked after her employers had returned from a trip to Italy and were tested positive. COVID-19 in Brazil brings to the fore historic inequalities that follow the country’s development. Additionally, these inequalities are aggravated by an intentional policy of negligence by the federal government.

The failure of the Brazilian government to deal with the pandemic seems to be a combination of: (1) the obscure discourse of the president; (2) the lack of specific policies and proper communication with different groups; (3) the cover-up of official information, especially regarding the number of deaths; (4) the deliberate weakening of public services by the current government; and (5) a lack of strategy and planning. In summary, it is an act of complete neglect by the federal government, which in times of pandemic can be perceived as an intentional strategy to decimate the population, especially the most vulnerable, which is known in the literature as necropolitics[4].

In the words of indigenous leader Anderson Tapuia,

“here in Brazil we have a government that sends the message that if corona arrives at the villages, it should continue there, doing its work, which means exterminating indigenous peoples”.

[1] This is the first out of three posts to be published on Bliss presenting the main findings of the research work about COVID-19 in Brazil for the project ‘When Disaster Meets Conflict’.

[2] https://g1.globo.com/politica/noticia/2020/06/08/veiculos-de-comunicacao-formam-parceria-para-dar-transparencia-a-dados-de-covid-19.ghtml

[3] https://g1.globo.com/politica/noticia/2020/06/08/veiculos-de-comunicacao-formam-parceria-para-dar-transparencia-a-dados-de-covid-19.ghtml

[4] Necropolitics is a process in which the state uses political power – by its discourses, actions and omissions – to put specific groups into a more marginalised and vulnerable position (Mbembe, 2019).

References:

MBEMBE, Achille. 2019. Necropolitics. Durham, London : Duke University Press.

About the authors:

COVID-19 | There’s no stopping feminist struggles in Latin America during the COVID-19 pandemic

By ISS Blog Bliss 10 December 202019 January 2025 2840 views

As the 16 Days of Activism Against Gender-Based Violence campaign draws to a close today, Agustina Solera and Brenda Rodríguez Cortés reflect on the challenges women in Latin America have faced over the past year and how, despite the COVID-19 pandemic, they have stood strong as ever, braving the particularly difficult conditions that they have had to face this year.

During an academic retreat in late August, we reflected on feminist struggles in Latin America during the COVID-19 pandemic. We recalled that the last time we had seen each other in person before the retreat was during the International Women’s Day march in Amsterdam as part of ‘Feministas en Holanda’, a collective of self-identified feminists from Latin America living in the Netherlands. ‘

The foundation of ‘Feministas en Holanda’ dates back to the summer of 2018, when we joined a group of other Latin American women to demonstrate outside of the Argentinian Embassy in The Hague in favour of the decriminalization of abortion. Even though the bill that could have decriminalized abortion in Argentina wasn’t passed, the protest was a moment for feminist women from Latin American living in the Netherlands to meet face to face. It was there where we realized that there were many of us who have the same commitment to gender issues and that we weren’t alone in our struggles; on the contrary, we embraced each other, and from that day on the movement continued to bloom, both online and on the streets.

Some of the most pressing issues that women face in Latin America include feminicides and disappearances, gender and sexual violence, racial discrimination, the lack of access to sexual and reproductive health services and rights, violence targeted against environmental defenders and activists, poverty, and the precarization of work and employment for women. The multiplicity of struggles of Latin American women has also brought boundless ways of fighting back and resisting. Examples include the feminist performance ‘Un violador en tu camino’ (‘A rapist on your path’) in Chile denouncing violence against women and state violence, the #EleNão (‘Not him’) movement in Brazil against Jair Bolsonaro’s sexism and fascism, the #NiUnaMenos (‘Not one woman less’) movement that started in Argentina against gender-based violence and feminicides and quickly spread to other Latin-American countries, and Mexico’s #MiPrimerAcoso campaign denouncing sexual harassment and violence even before the #MeToo movement captured global attention.

Importantly, the COVID-19 pandemic has not stopped the feminist struggles in Latin America. While the pandemic has clearly shown us the interconnections between different systems of oppression and its effects on marginalized communities, women and racial and ethnic minorities, it has also magnified and deepened several social inequalities, including gender inequality.

The massive scope of the virus highlights the unequal access to basic services like safe water, sanitation and hygiene, as well as public services such as health and education, access to affordable housing, food and decent work. Quarantine became a privilege accessible only to those who have a house or who could lock themselves up and work remotely. Moreover, in many cases, seeking refuge from the danger of the virus meant being locked up in a situation no less dangerous for some women: a situation of domestic violence and abuse. Protection of life during the COVID-19 pandemic requires that we stay inside our homes. However, this puts many women in greater risk by living 24/7 with their abuser. Unfortunately, due to social distancing and protective sanitary measures, women’s shelters soon reached full capacity, thus preventing women from seeking refuge.

Moreover, household and care work—activities that primarily fall on women’s shoulders—have also increased since the outbreak of the pandemic. Women now have to ensure total hygiene, constantly clean the house, look after their children and elderly relatives, and assist children in virtual schooling, which overburdens them even more. The most is being asked of those who have been guaranteed the least (Maffia, 2020). The pandemic has brought the domestic sphere to centre stage. Many of the issues that feminist movements had already been denouncing and that were not visible precisely because they were in the realm of the intimate today emerge strongly. We see that all of this work is essential for society to continue and, above all, for life to be preserved.

And the pandemic has also disrupted the already limited access to sexual and reproductive health services that women have in Latin America. A UN policy brief reported that an additional 18 million women in the region would cease to have access to contraceptives because of the pandemic (UN, 2020). The ongoing lockdowns, lack of access to birth control and family planning in addition to an increase in gender-based and sexual violence could lead to an estimated 600,000 unintended pregnancies in the region (Murray and Moloney, 2020).

Despite having some of the strictest lockdown measures in the world, feminist groups in Latin America put their bodies on the line and went out on the streets to demand justice for social problems that existed even before the pandemic and those that have intensified because of it.

In Mexico, for example, women and family members of victims of gender and sexual violence and disappeared women, together with the support of feminist collectives, have occupied the headquarters of the National Human Rights Commission (CNDH) since early September as a response to the inability of the government to provide access to justice and the impunity of such crimes. In Quito, Ecuador, as in other cities in the region, hundreds of women went out on the streets on 28 September, International Safe Abortion Day, to demand access to legal and safe abortion. And in Colombia, feminist collectives started the campaign ‘¡Estamos Putas! ¡Juntas somos más poderosas!’ to support cis and trans women sex workers who have been affected by the coronavirus-related ban on sex work during the lockdown.

These are just some examples of how the feminist movements in Latin America continue to transform society and to enact social change and social justice, even throughout a pandemic. As two migrant women, feminists from Latin America living in Europe and working in academia, we acknowledge our privileges and choose to use our voices to amplify those of our compañeras back home and make visible their struggles and contributions. The enormous efforts by women who, collectively, support victims of gender violence, accompany women to abortions, report police brutality, look for disappeared people and fight extractive industries, were being made before the COVID-19 pandemic and will continue to be made. We hope that now women’s fundamental contributions become even more visible and valued by the whole of our society.

References

Bartels-Bland, E. (2020) “COVID-19 Could Worsen Gender Inequality in Latin America and the Caribbean”, World Bank. In https://eur03.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.worldbank.org%2Fen%2Fnews%2Ffeature%2F2020%2F05%2F15%2Fcovid-19-could-worsen-gender-inequality-in-latin-america-and-the-caribbean&data=04%7C01%7Cbliss%40iss.nl%7Cdfad3f9f62124c4b6ab008d89cf034c5%7C715902d6f63e4b8d929b4bb170bad492%7C0%7C0%7C637431902783559546%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C1000&sdata=oFG0rjBqELfmooAtieUHMxzk79Cw7WmpehUCQsVB7Pg%3D&reserved=0

Lugones, M. (2007) “Heterosexualism and the Colonial/Modern Gender System”. Hypatia 22(1), 186-209.

Maffia, Diana (2020) “Violencia de Género: ¿La otra pandemia?” In El futuro después del COVID-19. Argentina Unida. In https://eur03.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.argentina.gob.ar%2Fsites%2Fdefault%2Ffiles%2Fel_futuro_despues_del_covid-19_0.pdf&data=04%7C01%7Cbliss%40iss.nl%7Cdfad3f9f62124c4b6ab008d89cf034c5%7C715902d6f63e4b8d929b4bb170bad492%7C0%7C0%7C637431902783559546%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C1000&sdata=I9IPssiI8Rzzzvran9Okzrqa813asSwkZcIDtUkOVkk%3D&reserved=0

Murray C. and Moloney, A. (2020). “Pandemic brings growing risk of pregnancy, abuse to Latin American girls”. In https://eur03.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.reuters.com%2Farticle%2Fus-health-coronavirus-latamgirls-trfn-idUSKCN24W1EN&data=04%7C01%7Cbliss%40iss.nl%7Cdfad3f9f62124c4b6ab008d89cf034c5%7C715902d6f63e4b8d929b4bb170bad492%7C0%7C0%7C637431902783559546%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C1000&sdata=BZZcVyhhahmxGJA6T3GfMZ%2FBtOkPOkjcQtaNB1DN4KM%3D&reserved=0

UN (2020), “Policy Brief: The Impact of COVID-19 on Women”. In https://eur03.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.un.org%2Fsites%2Fun2.un.org%2Ffiles%2Fpolicy_brief_on_covid_impact_on_women_9_april_2020.pdf&data=04%7C01%7Cbliss%40iss.nl%7Cdfad3f9f62124c4b6ab008d89cf034c5%7C715902d6f63e4b8d929b4bb170bad492%7C0%7C0%7C637431902783559546%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C1000&sdata=WGB6vwEiIhYhoZD1FToyYjjfN18NWpL%2Ff%2F64mq%2B5dIE%3D&reserved=0

UN Women (2020) “COVID-19 and ending violence against women and girls”. In https://eur03.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.unwomen.org%2Fen%2Fdigital-library%2Fpublications%2F2020%2F04%2Fissue-brief-covid-19-and-ending-violence-against-women-and-girls&data=04%7C01%7Cbliss%40iss.nl%7Cdfad3f9f62124c4b6ab008d89cf034c5%7C715902d6f63e4b8d929b4bb170bad492%7C0%7C0%7C637431902783559546%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C1000&sdata=V5koQXaTqs9850PnQF%2Bty5gw%2FL7Btzrjsi357Dmw1ZE%3D&reserved=0

This blog article was first published in DevISSues and has been modified for publication on Bliss.

About the authors:

Agustina Solera is a researcher in Latin American Social Studies and a visiting researcher at ISS.

Brenda Rodríguez Cortés is a PhD candidate at ISS working on issues of gender and sexuality.

COVID-19 | The COVID-19 pandemic and oil spills in the Ecuadorian Amazon: the confluence of two crises

By ISS Blog Bliss 24 November 202019 January 2025 3609 views

How can we reframe the current planetary crisis to find ways for decisive and life-changing collective action? The Amazon region of Ecuador, at the center of two crises—COVID-19 and a major oil spill—but also home to a long history of indigenous resistance, offers some answers.

Navigating two crises

In Ecuador, the intensification of resource extraction and pollution, floods and weather disturbances have hit marginalized populations hardest. Indigenous peoples and people living in the Amazon have continuously suffered an enormous political and economic disadvantage when confronting extractive industries and allied state bodies. The vulnerability of the peoples and territory of the Ecuadorian Amazon region has been even more severely exposed during the COVID-19 lockdown period starting 16 March 2020.

On 7 April 2020, the Trans-Ecuadorian Oil Pipeline System and the Heavy Crude Oil Pipeline, which transport Ecuador’s oil, collapsed. The pipelines were built along the banks of the Coca River and the collapse resulted in the spillage of an enormous quantity of crude oil into its waters. The Coca river is a key artery in the regional Amazon system. It runs through three national parks that form one of the richest biodiverse areas on Earth, which has been historically preserved by the ways of life of the indigenous peoples who inhabit it.

The breakage of the pipelines impacted kilometers of rainforest riverways and tens of thousands of people. Indigenous populations living in surrounding areas are more at risk than non-indigenous populations because they rely on locally harvested food and water, which can become contaminated. Indigenous peoples find it difficult to comply with lockdown mobility restrictions since their subsistence depends on agriculture, hunting and fishing, which in turn have been severely impacted by the oil spills. The exposure to the virus due to the entry of technicians to repair the pipelines is another threat. These conditions have led the Confederation of indigenous nationalities of the Ecuadorian Amazon (CONFENIAE) warning of an impending genocide.

The Coca river valley before the erosion. Photo credit: Luisa Andrade

Despite the constitutional mandate to provide free and high-quality public healthcare for all citizens, the Ecuadorian national health system is fraught with problems. Health coverage in the Amazon region is precarious with a lack of medical facilities, doctors, and not enough COVID-19 tests and ventilators required to treat an outbreak. While elderly and people with comorbidities have been identified globally as most vulnerable to infection, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights identifies indigenous people as a risk group. Indeed, historically, pathogens have been one of the most powerful factors in decimating indigenous peoples in South America.

Depending on how an issue is framed, different responses can be expected, including why something is considered or not a problem, who is responsible, and what needs to be done about it. Environmental problems derived from the extraction of natural resources such as oil are mainly framed as localized problems. Thus, the burden is placed onto affected communities and local and national governments, while their global and systematic character is disowned. What we aim to say with this is that while there are companies and governmental entities that are directly responsible, their actions respond to a global system that is based and sustained on extractivism.

As the COVID-19 pandemic shows, it is only when a crisis is understood as part of a global web of relations derived from complex power dynamics that we can imagine possibilities of globally coordinated and integrated efforts required for effective resolution. We are now living under global restrictions, which were once unimaginable, politically and economically. The rapid adaptation of quarantine and travel restrictions reveals that when the message of ‘human life is in danger’ is embraced, societies as a whole are able to perform the collective drastic changes required in a short period of time.

For Ecuadorian grassroots organizations and scholars, the COVID-19 pandemic is a reminder of our interconnectedness, our collective vulnerability, and therefore our mutual obligations to our planet. The pandemic is just one aspect of the human-made planetary crisis along with biodiversity loss and climate change. We are interested in how to reframe the current planetary crisis that encompasses increasingly visible global diseases in order to find ways for decisive and life-changing collective action. We ask these questions by looking at the Amazon region of Ecuador, which is bearing the brunt of two crises: COVID-19 and environmental destruction through a major oil spill.

“In the name of development”

To understand the complexity of this human and ecological disaster, it is necessary to retrace some historical steps. On February 2, 2020, the San Rafael waterfall, the highest in Ecuador, collapsed. At that time, hydrologists warned that a phenomenon known as ‘regressive erosion’ could affect upstream infrastructure. On April 7, 2020 the Ministry of Energy and Non-Renewable Natural Resources announced that the pipelines broke due to landslides that occurred in the San Rafael sector. Hydrologists associate the landslides with the construction and operation of the Coca-Codo Sinclair hydroelectric dam (CCSHD).

Location of the most relevant events generated by the regressive erosion phenomenon of the Coca River. Infographic credit: Luisa Andrade

According to Carolina Bernal, PhD in Geomorphology and Hydrosedimentology, the CCSHD caused a serious imbalance in the transport of sediments and water through the river flow which produced a regressive erosion phenomenon which was responsible for causing sinkholes along the banks of the river. One of these sinkholes broke the oil pipelines. This risk had been mentioned in the earlier preliminary environmental impact study of the hydroelectric project.

CCSHD was inaugurated as part of Ecuador’s hydraulic mission during the presidency of Rafael Correa. The dam, like other hydroelectric projects carried out during his mandate, was politically legitimatized as “provider of clean energy and ‘good living’ for Ecuadorians and the world”. The rhetoric concerning the sustainable energy transition to renewable sources in the national energy matrix has been notably inconsistent with the dam’s high impacts on people and the environment.

The socio-environmental impacts associated with CCSHD and the oil spill were foreseen by the scientific community and civil society who were dismissed as “antidevelopmentalists” by Correa’s government. Some anticipated that the dam would a be major disruption of downstream sediment for the Napo River and would require extensive road-building and line construction in the primary forest. Others have questioned the true purpose of the dam, arguing that it was not about sustainable development for local people, but rather to provide electricity to the oil fields.

One of several sinkholes caused by the regressive erosion of the Coca River. The sinkhole captured in this picture is close to the town of San Luis. Photo credit: Carlos Sanchez (August 2020)

Going beyond business as usual

Even if the world is still embroiled in the COVID-19 pandemic, the responses to this crisis have revealed stark unequal, racial, and geopolitical differences. The indigenous populations affected by the spill and the pandemic have denounced the failure of the state to attend to these two emergencies. The many commentators on the current changes in the social and economic constellation of the world are urging for the re-evaluation of our way of life and the possibility of a radical change. For Ecuadorian indigenous organizations and the environmental justice movement, the pandemic and the environmental crises call for a radical rethinking of economic growth and our current model of development.

Scholars like Maurie Cohen see COVID-19 as “a public health emergency and a real-time experiment in downsizing the consumer economy”. Accordingly, the outbreak could potentially contribute to a sustainable consumption transition. For Phoebe Everingham and Natasha Chassagne the crisis is an opportunity to challenge the atomized individualism that underlies overconsumption. For them, Buen Vivir, a central concept to Ecuador’s development planning, drawn from the historical experience of indigenous communities that have lived in harmony with nature, is a post-pandemic alternative for moving away from capitalist growth and re-imagining a new form of traveling and tourism.

We cannot return to ‘a normal’ that ignores the global environmental crisis which led to the inequitable and polluted societies that enabled the spread of COVID-19. The extractive vision of the living world is endangering humanity’s very existence. Is there space for a greater appreciation of the complexity of these intertwined crises? When will we see, as Bayo Akomalafe states, “Earth’s interconnected geological and political processes”?.

The extractive environmental activities that underpin capitalist development and a planetary-mass consumption culture are jeopardizing the very existence of humanity. Though environmental disasters have decimated and violated the rights of indigenous peoples in the Ecuadorian Amazon for years, they continue to resist. Before the COVID-19 pandemic, groups of Amazonian indigenous organizations promoted a model of autonomous governance of the Amazon region of Ecuador and Peru through the “Sacred Basins Territories of Life” initiative.

The proposal has been developed by an alliance of indigenous peoples and nationalities of Ecuador and Peru to forge a new post-carbon, post-extractive model by leaving fossil fuels and mineral resources underground, retaining around 3.8 billion metric tons of carbon, to protect our planet and the well-being of future generations. The proposal would cover around 30 million hectares of land between Ecuador and Peru, home to almost 500,000 indigenous people of 20 different nationalities. Can these counter-hegemonic proposals which claim the interconnectivity of all species in this world be critically revisited in the times of the pandemic?

COVID-19 brought the world to a halt. This ‘portal to a new era’, as Arundhati Roy proclaimed, offers us a chance to question deeply our social and economic relations. Perhaps this could be the moment in history where we also can finally reframe localized environmental disasters as global concerns and act accordingly. This is the opportunity to politically and socially rethink how to transition to a different kind of development that acknowledges and changes the damaging way global lifestyles directly impact the indigenous peoples and natures of the world.

This blog article was first published on Undisciplined Environments.

About the authors:

Jacqueline Gaybor is a Research Associate at the International Institute of Social Studies of Erasmus University, in The Hague and lecturer at Erasmus University College in Rotterdam. Email: gaybortobar@iss.nl.

Wendy Harcourt is a Professor of Gender, Diversity and Sustainable Development at the International Institute of Social Studies of the Erasmus University, in The Hague. She is a member of the Editorial Collective of Undisciplined Environments. Email: harcourt@iss.nl.

How COVID-19 is tragically exposing systemic vulnerabilities in Peru

By ISS Blog Bliss 25 August 202019 January 2025 5578 views

Despite early assessments that Peru was faring well in the COVID-19 pandemic and that its preparedness was due to its strict application of austerity and reforms over the last 30 years, these quickly turned out to be tragically premature as the country emerged over the summer as one of the worst impacted globally in terms of confirmed deaths per capita. While much of the blame has been focused on people’s behaviour, the crisis ultimately points to deep overlapping structural inequalities within the social protection, employment, and health systems, which austerity and reform have not resolved and in some cases worsened.

Precocious optimism followed by demise

Peru was one of the first countries to adopt strict measures to cope with COVID-19 in Latin America. A week after the first COVID-19 case was reported on 6 March, the country closed its borders on 13 March and declared a mandatory immobilization, allowing the population to go out only for acquiring essential services. At the same time, it launched an economic plan equivalent to 12% of the GDP, considered by experts as unprecedented – the greatest economic stimulus in Latin America against COVID-19. The plan included cash transfers for the vulnerable population, subsidies for services and salaries, food provisioning, financial aid for companies, and a large budget allocation for the health system, among other measures.

The current Minister of Economy and Finance, Maria Antonieta Alva, argued that the last 30 years of good fiscal behaviour – as a result of the strict application of austerity measures – allowed the country to face this health and economic crisis. These statements and international news coverage created a positive narrative that seemed to vindicate the country’s economic and social policies in recent decades. Even as recently as 21 July, an article in the Financial Times presented Peru as better prepared for the crisis compared to other countries in the region that were in worse fiscal and macroeconomic positions, such as neighbouring Ecuador.

However, this congratulatory assessment was tragically premature, as has now become evident. As of 24 August, Peru has the highest number of confirmed COVID-19 deaths per capita in Latin America and second only to Belgium globally (and soon to overtake), at 842 per million people, versus 542 for Brazil or 468 for Mexico. It also has the sixth largest number of confirmed cases in the world, with 600,438 confirmed cases. Per capita, it has slightly more confirmed cases than Brazil and more than four times than Mexico.

After initially controlling a sharp spike in cases in late May, daily confirmed cases first plateaued at between 3,000 to 4,000 per day, and after removing the nationwide quarantine on 30 June, they again surged since the beginning of August to surpass the peak levels reported in May (see Figure 1). Confirmed deaths have been running at about 200 deaths a day since July after a peak of about 300 a day in June (see Figure 2).[efn_note]All data from https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/ (last accessed 24 August 2020).

Source of both figures: https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/peru/ (last accessed 24 August 2020).

The dire comparison with its neighbours is partly due to a much higher level of testing (besides Chile), which is also reflective of at least one aspect of greater capacity in the health system (and it also underscores the certain underestimation of the severity of the crisis in Mexico and Ecuador). However, this statistic is also problematic because the Peruvian numbers include both PCR as well as serology tests, with the large majority being serological, whereas other countries only include PCR tests. As a result, the numbers are not comparable, although this being said, Peru’s positivity rate is also one of the highest in the world, meaning that far more testing is needed relative to the current prevalence of infection.[efn_note]

The Peruvian numbers include both PCR as well as serology tests, with the large majority being serological. For instance, about three quarters of the total confirmed cases were detected through serology as of 16 August. In contrast, other countries in the region only count PCR tests, as recommended by the WHO. As a result, the numbers are not comparable.

This also results in some confusion. Our World in Data (OWID) does not even report testing numbers for Peru given the lack of up-to-date data on how much of the current testing involves PCR tests, whereas the positivity rate reported in the John Hopkins University site, at over 50%, is linked to the OWID data and appears outdated. The government itself reports a positivity rate of 19%, although given that this includes serology tests, the rate that is comparable to other countries would be much higher, giving Peru one of the highest positivity rates in the world. (Note that the WHO recommends a positivity rate of 5-12%).

The problem with serology tests is also that they have a high rate of false negatives and antibody responses typically only develop one or more weeks after the onset of symptoms. Hence, while they are more effective than PCR tests for studying population prevalence, they are of relatively little use for diagnostic purposes of detecting cases with sufficient time to stop contagion, or what is known as epidemiological vigilance. The political decision of using predominantly serology tests is considered as one of the biggest mistakes of the COVID-19 response of the government and the new Minister of Health changed the strategy by gradually replacing serology with PCR tests in the second week of August.[/efn_note]

Proximate explanations of failure: mobility and behaviour

The lack of success in controlling the pandemic was partially due to an inability to restrict peoples’ mobility despite the lockdown, which has been widely reported in media and noted by commentators. This became more evident following the initial 15-day quarantine period, even despite the extension of this initial period. As in many parts of the world, migrant workers in places such as the capital city of Lima began returning to their places of origin by foot. Specialists also noted that the lack of refrigerators in households and the habit of buying fresh products caused people to go out to markets frequently. Social protection measures to help vulnerable people ironically made this situation worse. For instance, a monetary grant of 760 soles (about 214 USD) was one of the measures intended to help people without a formal income and who lost their job because of COVID-19. However, the payment of the grant caused people to crowd in the banks. Indeed, markets and banks became the main hot spots of infection.

As a result, many experts claimed that people’s behaviour was the main factor that undermined the COVID-19 response, that lack of education about health care and respect for rules was aggravating the spread of the virus, especially among poor people. However, the discussion generally revolves around proximate reasons rather than highlighting fundamental structural inequalities that in fact point back to the legacy of social and economic policies over the last 30 years.

More fundamental structural reasons

Although the COVID-19 response at first seemed to be strong and promising, it actually quickly exposed the deep and overlapping structural problems within the social protection system, the employment structure, and the health system, which 30 years of reform did not resolve and in some cases worsened.

One crucial problem, as noted above, is the high degree of informality, which is estimated at 72.5% of the economically active population (16.511 million people), with no access to any formal social security. Poverty was estimated at about one-fifth of the national population in 2018, based on a money-metric poverty line of 344 soles (roughly 98 USD) per person per month (the extreme poverty line was 183 soles). This means that about half of employed people were informal but not considered poor by this metric, even though they might have been just above the poverty line.

Moreover, only a fraction of those deemed poor receive assistance. For instance, before the lockdown, only about 725,000 households were affiliated with the main cash transfer programme (Juntos), or less than 9% of households in the general household register that is used for poverty targeting. Those uncovered and working informally become part of the ‘missing middle’ given that they are also not covered by any social protection.

As noted above, the government has created different monetary subsidies and adapted the existing cash transfer programmes to address the vulnerability of these uncovered populations. As of 21 August, these have been extended in principle to more than 8.5 million households, with transfer values from 160 soles to 760 soles (it is unclear whether these are monthly or one-off payments). However, the government has not yet completed paying many of these households and for many it would amount to only one transfer within the six-month period from March to August. Beyond such limited support and facing unemployment with little or no savings, adhering to mobility restrictions were quite simply unrealistic or impossible for a large majority of the population.

In addition, although Peru is in a better fiscal or financial position compared to other Latin American countries, this position was achieved by austerity and reforms that have undermined the public health system. Health specialists have noted the lack of historical investment in this system, as well as fragmentation and inequality, all of which have hampered the COVID-19 response effectiveness.[efn_note]In effect, Peru has had one of the lowest levels of investment in health as percentage of GDP in Latin America (5% versus 6.6% on average) and this level increased only 0.27 percentage points between 2010 and 2016 despite rapid economic growth. It also has lower per capita spending on health ($679 USD), but with higher capital investment in health as percentage of GDP (0.32%), above the Latin American average (0.19%) – see pages 121, 127 and 139 here.[/efn_note]

Austerity clearly contributed to critical deficiencies in terms of infrastructure, human resources and medical supplies, and also constrained the composition of health spending, producing inefficient combinations of spending and thus impacting negatively on the implementation of services. For instance, Peru has a higher number of beds per capita compared with Ecuador and Mexico, but a lower number of doctors (see here). The distribution has also been historically uneven among the regions.[efn_note]For instance, in terms of the number of health professionals per 10,000 people, Lima (41.4), Callao (50.1), Arequipa (41.5), Tacna (44.3), Apurimac (48.9) have more than double to number of Piura (21.4), San Martin (21.8), Loreto (22.3), which have the lowest rates (see p.22 here).[/efn_note]

Acknowledging this situation, the lockdown helped the government to gain time to increase the supply of beds, intensive care units, personal protective equipment, health staff, and to improve the infrastructure and also allocate financial resources to the sector. It has also generated alliances between the different health subsystems (public and private) to improve the availability of beds and intensive care units.

Despite the efforts, the number of cases exceeds the capacity of hospitals, the number of health personnel is insufficient, and there is a scarcity of essential supplies. Health professionals and local authorities have recently reported the collapse of the health system in different regions including Loreto, Piura, Lambayeque, Ucayali, Ica, Lima, Huánuco and Arequipa due to lack of human resources and key medical supplies, including scarcity of medicinal oxygen.[efn_note]For some insights on this situation, see here, here, here, here, here, here and here.[/efn_note]

Realities exposed

In sum, COVID-19 has exposed a reality that is distant from what the government and the international news media celebrated at the beginning of the pandemic. In a short period of time, Peru went from being heralded as better prepared to having the world’s worst performance in coping with the crisis. This has been in large part because of deep structural inequalities in Peruvian society, exacerbated by the high cost of austere policy choices that, despite producing strong economic performance according to conventional measures, did not solve the most pressing social problems of the last decades and exacerbated the crisis.

COVID-19 exposed an illusion. A political commitment to redefine the last 30 years of policies is required, alongside an allocation and distribution of resources to make it happen.

About the authors:

Kattia Liz Talla Cornejo lives in Lima, Peru. She has been working as a consultant monitoring a health project aimed at strengthening the COVID-19 response in Ancash, one of the Peruvian regions most impacted by the pandemic. This allows her to observe the critical situation of the health system and the COVID-19 response from the inside. She holds an MA in Development Studies from ISS with a major in Social Policy, and degree in Economics and International Business. She has experience in public finance, policy advocacy and monitoring within the fields of social policy, health and childhood, and has worked in governmental and non-governmental organizations in Peru.

Andrew M. Fischer is Associate Professor of Social Policy and Development Studies at the ISS and the Scientific Director of CERES, The Dutch Research School for International Development. His latest book, Poverty as Ideology (Zed, 2018), was awarded the International Studies in Poverty Prize by the Comparative Research Programme on Poverty (CROP) and Zed Books and, as part of the award, is now fully open access (http://bora.uib.no/handle/1956/20614). Since 2015, he has been leading a European Research Council Starting Grant on the political economy of externally financing social policy in developing countries. He has been known to tweet @AndrewM_Fischer

COVID-19 | Remembering the ongoing assassination of human rights defenders in Colombia

By ISS Blog Bliss 6 July 202019 January 2025 3731 views

When a peace agreement was signed in 2016 in Colombia between the government and armed forces (FARC), citizens and activists seized the opportunity to make longstanding grievances heard and press for change. But between September 2016 and March 2020, 442 social leaders were assassinated. As death becomes part of the daily discourse, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic, we should look beyond these shocking numbers and understand that the massive killing of social leaders is not only a humanitarian crisis, but also a threat to the process of social transformation and local empowerment.

Hope for change

The peace agreement signed in 2016 in Colombia signaled change. Since the political exclusion of government dissidents and others critical of the political regime is considered to have been one of the root causes of the conflict, the agreement sought to create spaces to promote the organization and participation of diverse actors with diverse voices and included a series of provisions to strengthen the presence of the state in marginalized areas to address issues such as poverty, inequality, and unequal distribution of land. In this context, the signature of the peace agreement opened a window of opportunity for activists and citizens to present to the state their long overdue demands for changes related to such issues, which had taken the back seat during the conflict.

The persistence of violent repression

In the period shortly before the peace agreement was signed in 2016, a reduction in homicidal violence and conflict-related deaths following the de-escalation of violence seemed to signify the end of an era characterized by violence. This reduction in violent acts provided space for activists and citizens to present their demands to the state in a way that was not possible in the preceding years, when violence made mobilization riskier. However, sectors within the country not interested in peace talks started to exert violence on citizens, continuing a growing trend since 2016. Consequently, during the post-agreement period, Colombia has experienced a dramatic increase in the cases of murders and threats against social leaders. According to figures from the NGO Somos Defensores, between September 2016 and March 2020, 442 social leaders had been killed. According to a recent report of the U.N., which we analyzed in a previous article, these worrying figures situate Colombia as the country with most killings of human right defenders in Latin America.

Assassinated activists and human rights defenders were individuals linked to organizations attempting to mobilize society for the implementation of the peace accords and strengthening of statehood. Those maimed were peasant leaders, environmentalists, land defenders, women, indigenous leaders, and afro-descendants representing marginalised communities.

COVID-19: obscuring intensified killings

This trend has worsened in Colombia during the COVID-19 pandemic, as illustrated by a sharp increase in assassinations of social leaders by 53% between January and April this year[1]. However, as the attention of political leaders and citizens is focused on the response of the government to address the crisis of the COVID-19 pandemic, civil society groups fear that the assassination of community leaders will go unnoticed and unpunished. As the attention of political leaders and citizens is focused on the response of the government to protect and ensure the health of their citizens from COVID-19, groups often resorting to violence in Colombia (right-wing paramilitary groups, drug traffickers, dissident guerrilla members, and other armed organizations) are taking advantage of the pandemic to divert attention from violence that would otherwise be observed.

As people are getting used to seeing figures of death daily, it is critical to remember that we need to see beyond the numbers and understand that the massive killing of social leaders is a humanitarian crisis with different impacts. At the individual level, the right to life of the leader is violated, and at the social level, the assassinations affect the representation of collective interests, becoming a threat to the process of social change and local empowerment.

Social leaders are the voice of the communities that have been historically forgotten. Hence, when they are threatened, there is a further weakening in the social fabric of these groups. According to the testimonies of several social leaders who were interviewed in a recent study by CNC, CODHES and USAID, after an attack, the members of the community became afraid to participate, to organize, and the formation of new leaders was also obstructed. That is how the killing of social leaders has a long-term effect that impacts the deepening of democracy in Colombia, benefiting the interests of those who want to maintain the status quo and continue to use violence to do so.

The effect of the COVID-19 response on social organization

Whereas civil society has improved its capacity to hold the government accountable with regards to the assassination of social leaders, their capacity to pressure the government has been diminished due to the restrictions on gatherings due to the pandemic, and due to the focus of public opinion on the risk of COVID-19. This makes it more difficult for organizations to centre the defence of the lives of social activists in public discourse and increases the likelihood of the assassination of community leaders being obscured.

In this context, we want to contribute to an ongoing campaign started by civil society groups in Colombia to use opinion articles and other spaces of communication to raise awareness about the severity of this situation and to tell the stories of those who are at risk. As part of this initiative, the newspaper El Espectador on its front page of June 14^th 2020 published a list with the names of the 442 people who have been killed with the title “Let’s not forget them” (“No los olvidemos” in Spanish). Let this become the start of a movement to continue highlighting mass killings of social leaders and to problematize them. It is not okay, and we will not accept it. #NoLosOlviDemos.

[1] In comparison with the number of assassinations taking place between January and April 2019.

This article is part of a series about the coronavirus crisis. Read all articles of this series here.

About the authors:

Fabio Andres Diaz Pabon is a Colombian political scientist. He is a research associate at the Department of Political and International Studies at Rhodes University in South Africa and a researcher at the ISS. Fabio works at the intersection between theory and practice, and his research interests are related to state strength, civil war, conflict and protests in the midst of globalisation.

Ana María Arbeláez Trujillo is a lawyer, specialist in Environmental Law and holds an Erasmus Mundus Master in Public Policy. She works as a legal consultant in Climate Focus, where she focuses on climate change policies and forest governance. Her research interests are the political economy of extractivist industries, environmental conflicts, and rural development.

‘I cannot understand your question’: challenges and opportunities of including persons with disabilities in participatory evaluation

By ISS Blog Bliss 29 June 202030 June 2020 3294 views

Participatory evaluation has been praised for engaging vulnerable groups such as persons with disabilities (PwD). However, the inclusion of this group can be challenging and even self-defeating if carried out incorrectly. Despite the challenges, evaluators and researchers can follow some strategies to make the evaluation process with PwD as inclusive as possible.

Disability and participatory methods

For a long time, persons with disabilities (PwDs) were socially ostracized and confined to special schools and health centers. Growing pressure from disability rights organizations made possible a shift from an individual and biological view of disability towards a social and inclusive model that focuses on the interaction between individual impairments and social and environmental barriers (Shakespeare, 2006). Since then, international progress has been made to recognize the right of PwDs as full and contributing members of society; the formation of the 2006 UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities is an example of a step in the right direction on this front.

In previous decades there has been a shift in research and evaluation methodologies in academia as well. Criticism of the ineffectiveness of the positivist paradigm to include vulnerable groups in research has led to the rise of participatory approaches in which PwDs and other marginalized groups play an important role in shaping research agendas and outcomes (Parry et al., 2001). The alternative bottom-up methodologies became known for challenging power relations and giving voice to marginalized groups, including PwDs (Chambers, 1994).

As a result, participatory methods have been crucial for engaging PwDs in more active roles in the processes of monitoring and evaluation (M&E) and not only as simple research subjects. For instance, many evaluations now involve PwDs organizations in the role of advisers where they can choose data collection instruments (Robinson et al., 2014) and use their expertise to interpret results and provide feedback (Olshanska et al., 2016). Increased participation has been praised for improving the validity and general outcomes of the evaluations (Brandon, 1998).

The challenges of inclusion

Despite recent achievements, many challenges lie ahead for greater inclusive participation of PwDs in program evaluations. One of the most overlooked aspects is the design of inclusive evaluation instruments (surveys, focus groups): evaluators tend to regard PwDs as a homogeneous group. Therefore, the instruments fail to take into consideration the diversity of disability, especially in terms of communication styles.

This creates an under-representation of the least advantaged within the target group. A study of 31 peer-reviewed articles in ten top-ranking evaluation journals shows that people with intellectual and development disabilities were less likely to participate in evaluation processes than people with any other type of disability (Jacobson et al., 2012). Even if they do participate, their answers in most of the cases might be biased or incomplete (Ware, 2004) since they communicate differently than their peers or experience psychological barriers such as low self-esteem.

Conducting evaluation activities in venues with physical barriers or far from the beneficiaries’ houses can hinder the participation of people with a physical disability. Therefore, ineffective M&E planning and instruments could not only bias the results, but also could end up creating negative unintended consequences such as exclusion and disempowerment. However, even if considering the linguistic and cognitive heterogeneity, what are the best alternatives to engage PwDs in participatory evaluation processes? Is inclusive participatory evaluation more time consuming?

Lessons learned: How to overcome the obstacles?

From my experience working with women with disabilities in Nicaragua[1], when it comes to disability, there are no one-size-fits-all solutions. Nonetheless, there are low-cost alternatives that can improve the overall level of participation. Here are some things to keep in mind:

Learn about your target group. An overview of the type of disability and some social variables is crucial to balance participants in focus groups, disaggregate data by categories, and prepare in advance for special requirements (e.g. the use of a sign interpreter, ramps for wheelchairs). It is also key to better understand power dynamics within the group. For instance, women face more discrimination than men, even if they have the same disability.

Be flexible. PwDs have different limitations, but also different sets of skills. Take advantage of the preferred method of communication and be open about the methodology. For instance, photographs have proven to be effective to communicate with participants with physical, hearing or development disabilities (Jurkowski, 2008). This is an example of an alternative that requires small adjustments and can be easily triangulated with other methods.

Listen. When in doubt, ask the participants what methodology makes them feel more comfortable. Participation is also about listening and learning from others, and PwDs hold the key to understanding what suits them best.

Create capacities. Strengthen the M&E capacity of disability organizations. This will help to develop the organizations and build and share bi-directional knowledge. As a development practitioner, also invest some time educating yourself more about disability. For instance, learn some basic sign language to integrate yourself with people with hearing disabilities.

Be aware of trade-offs. Programs face time constraints, and full participation is not always feasible. Identify the phase of the evaluation that can be participatory and that can also have the most benefits for the participants. In the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, it is important to consider that digital tools might not be accessible to some PwDs. Therefore, outcome should be interpreted taking into account the selection bias.

PwDs are one of the most vulnerable groups according to the World Report on Disability; they experience higher rates of poverty and are more likely to be unemployed (World Health Organization, 2011). Thus, PwDs should have the opportunity to have a voice in the evaluation of programs and policies that impact their lives and communities.

References:

Brandon, P. R. (1998). Stakeholder participation for the purpose of helping ensure evaluation validity: Bridging the gap between collaborative and non-collaborative evaluations. American Journal of Evaluation, 19, 325–337.

Chambers, R. (1994). Participatory rural appraisal (PRA): Challenges, potentials and paradigm. World development, 22(10), 1437-1454.

Jacobson, M. R., Azzam, T., & Baez, J. G. (2013). The nature and frequency of inclusion of people with disabilities in program evaluation. American Journal of Evaluation, 34(1), 23-44.

Jurkowski, J. M. (2008). Photovoice as participatory action research tool for engaging people with intellectual disabilities in research and program development. Intellectual and developmental disabilities, 46(1), 1-11.

Olshanska, Z., van Doorn, J., & van Veen, S. C. (2016). My Story My Rights: how individual stories of people with disabilities can contribute to knowledge development for UNCRPD monitoring. Knowledge Management for Development Journal, 11(2), 43-62.

Parry, O., Gnich, W., & Platt, S. (2001). Principles in practice: reflections on a ‘postpositivist’ approach to evaluation research. Health Education Research, 16(2), 215-226.

Robinson, S., Fisher, K. R., & Strike, R. (2014). Participatory and inclusive approaches to disability program evaluation. Australian Social Work, 67(4), 495-508.

Shakespeare, T. (2006). The social model of disability. In L. J. Davis (Ed.), The disability studies reader (2nd ed., pp. 197–204). New York: Routledge.

Ware, J. (2004). Ascertaining the views of people with profound and multiple learning developmental disabilities. British Journal of Learning Disabilities, 32, 175–179.

World Health Organization. (2011). World report on disability. Malta: World Health Organization.

[1] The author worked as M&E officer in a project of empowerment of women with disability in Nicaragua from 2018 to 2019.

About the author:

Gersán Vásquez Gutiérrez is an economist and holds a master’s degree in governance and development. He works as an M&E officer in a regional irregular migration prevention program in Nicaragua. His main areas of interest are impact evaluation, migration, and local development.

Contesting the Amazon as an ‘Open Space for Development’ by Lee Pegler and Julienne Andrade Widmarck

By ISS Blog Bliss 5 May 202016 May 2020 4566 views

The use of land for soya cultivation in the Brazilian Amazon has led to compelling debates on the sustainability of the movement of products globally through global value chains (GVC) and the democratic processes surrounding these. All of us, in the Global North and Global South alike, have played a role in stimulating the expansion of GVCs in the Amazon that has led to an increase in the precarity of livelihoods, landlessness, and health/environmental problems. Without sustained and imaginative strategies by local and transnational social movements, this disjuncture between the market, sustainable futures, and democratic processes may simply widen.

The Amazon does not leave the news. Fires of unprecedented scale have devastated the area and are still occurring at a fast pace[1]. The latest wave of fires in the Brazilian Amazon appears to be not just an ecological warning, but also part of a cyclical strategy for land recovery and sale and/or alternating use of soya and cows by farmers[2]. The lungs and waters of our collective ecological future are at stake[3]. Nevertheless, those of us in other parts of the world are not without responsibility for this. At the same time, we are open to the assertion that the fate of the Amazon is none of our business.

What happens in the Amazon is our business, however. For example, energy- and protein-inefficient soya for animal feed produced in the Amazon is promoted as a low-cost input for sale to European farmers from a value chain supported by Dutch capital and the Dutch state[4]. Whilst Dutch farmers react to EU directives to curb emissions[5], Dutch and European consumers continue to purchase meat and dairy products, produced thanks to soya supplied as bulk feed for cattle and pigs from unsustainable and conflictual locations such as the Brazilian Amazon[6].

Amazon squeezed from all sides—can it cope?

The soya Global Value Chain (GVC) emerging from the Brazilian Amazon is threatening local populations’ security, livelihoods, and health as widespread deforestation continues to make room for soya plantations[7]. Various national and multinational companies financing land, sourcing output, and providing infrastructure for this chain (e.g. for local ports) are reacting to an increased demand for soya, thus “doing what the market tells them to do”.

The Dutch government, one of the countries with the greatest demand for soya is, on one side of the chain, emphasizing their country’s sustainable policies, initiatives, and institutions[8]. On the other side of this chain (in Brazil), we have a national regime that sees the Amazon as an “open space” for commerce (for cows, soya, minerals, and tourism) and a civil society that is fighting to raise the voices of indigenous communities and small-scale farmers threatened by these developments[9]. Thus, while there is a push for more responsible soya production practices from outside and from within, this is countered by the Brazilian government’s aim to commercialize the Amazon further[10]. The Amazon is being squeezed from all sides—can it cope?

This particular debate on the soya GVC is being studied within the ISS/EUR Governance of Labour and Logistics for Sustainability (GOLLS) programme[11]. In a project about commodity traders and social movements, we are exploring the link between firms at a global level and their activities in this region/sector. What is evolving is called the Ferrogrão[12] (logistical train/road grain chain) and a waterway silo-platform-barge system (strongly supported by Dutch firms and government) for the more efficient movement of soya along the Tapajos river, up the Amazon River, and then onto Europe/the Netherlands/Rotterdam[13] (Figure 1 below).

Figure 1 – Logistic Plan of Soya GVC in Amazon. Credit: Portal of the Company of Planning and Logistics S.A. (EPL)

Ongoing resistance to land use changes

A key mechanism for resisting these plans, used by local communities, small-scale farmers, indigenous groups, and their social movement supporters, has been a process of participation and rights recognition through ILO Regulation 169[14] (ratified by Brazil in 2003). Along with campaigns urging farmers not to sell their land, this participation protocol process has been one of the flags of resistance of affected parties and their supporters[15]. This reliance on institutional regulation and push for greater transparency on land rights[16] has helped boost the morale of many and put some local players in a position of influence, but also greater precarity[17].

Experiences locally and in other contexts note how such struggles consume many resources and will be met by counteraction by firms and, at times, by the state[18]. This is also happening here. For example, the current Brazilian federal regime is further undermining this rights process via proposals[19] for land area freezes for the indigenous, increased rights to mining in protected territories, and in amended participation rights—groups may still have their say, but no veto over “development” proposals[20].

At a local level, NGOs have been asked to explain their activities to public representatives[21]. Indeed, the ambient surrounding our case studies (one where land has been appropriated and soya grown, the other a mainly mining community where soya from other regions is being stored) reflects these local political economy dynamics. In one location, capital accumulation is dominated by “the laws of small-scale mining,” whereas, in the soya production case study, even the more accepted model of concertation (“accumulation by legislation” – i.e. by rules) is under pressure[22].

This situation clearly requires more concerted public awareness and broader level (international) collective responses. This ISS-EUR/Brazilian research programme seeks to widen the scope of awareness and societal action on these themes. We plan to move beyond our present case studies to other logistical points and to carry out further participative studies of local (displaced) communities.

It is essential to take these issues up to centers of decision making in the Global North (much as is being done by indigenous leader gatherings across Europe and by action groups like the “Amsterdam Coalition for Democracy in Brazil”). Local and transnational social movements are under severe pressure to make their cases heard[23]. Without sustained and imaginative strategies by them and others, this disjuncture between the market, sustainable futures, and democratic processes may simply widen.

About the authors:

Julienne de Jesus Andrade Widmarck has been a PhD researcher at the ISS since 2018 and a PhD student in Applied Economics at the Federal University of Uberlândia from 2019. She was a substitute professor at the Federal University of Viçosa from 2017 to 2019. Currently, she is a consultant in Territorial Development, Agroindustry, and Business Planning. She has experience in the field of agricultural economics, with an emphasis on commodities exportation, econometric methods, and family farming. Outside the academic field, she develops financial empowerment activities and participates in the National Human Rights Movement in Brazil.

Lee Pegler spent his early career working as an economist with the Australian Labour Movement. More recent times have seen him researching the labour implications of “new” management strategies of TNCs in Brazil/ Latin America. This interest expanded to a focus on the implications of value chain insertion on labour, both for formal and informal workers. Trained as an economist and sociologist (PhD – LSE), he currently works as Assistant Professor (Work, Organisation and Labour Rights) at the ISS.

Title Image Credit: Vinícius Mendonça/Ibama from FotosPublicas

References:

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Arsenault, C. Mendes, K. ( 2017, June 6). Amazon protectors: Brazil’s indigenous people struggle to stave off loggers, Reuters. Retrieved from: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-brazil-landrights-indigenous/amazon-protectors-brazils-indigenous-people-struggle-to-stave-off-loggers-idUSKBN18X1MX

van Beek, S. (2018, November 15). All Eyes on the Amazon: the future of protecting forests in Brazil, Both Ends. Retrieved from:https://www.bothends.org/en/Whats-new/News/All-Eyes-on-the-Amazon-the-future-of-protecting-forests-in-Brazil/

Brum, E. (2019, August 13) In Bolsonaro’s burning Brazilian Amazon, all our futures are being consumed, The Guardian. Retrieved from:https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/aug/23/amazon-rainforest-fires-deforestation-jair-bolsonaro

CAMPELO, L.; VECCHIONE GONCALVES, Marcela. Terras na Região do Cerrado Viram Alvo de Especuladores. Brasil de Fato, 06 fev. 2017.Retrieved from: https://www.farmlandgrab.org/post/view/26898-brasil-terras-na-regiao-do-cerrado-viram-alvo-de-especuladores

CAMPELO, L.; VECCHIONE GONCALVES, Marcela . Pará atende agronegócio e ignora comunidades as construir ferrovia, dizem lideranças. Brasil de Fato, Belém, 22 ago. 2017. Retrieved from: https://www.brasildefato.com.br/2017/08/22/para-atende-agronegocio-e-ignora-comunidades-ao-construir-ferrovia-dizem-liderancas

FERN25 (2019, August 29). NGOS CALL FOR NEW LAWS TO END THE EU’S COMPLICITY IN AMAZON FIRES. Viewed: 23 April 2020. <https://www.fern.org/pt/noticias-e-recursos/ngos-call-for-new-laws-to-end-the-eus-complicity-in-amazon-fires-2008/>

Fonseca, A., Cardoso, D., Ribeiro, J., Salomão, R., Souza Jr., C., & Veríssimo, A. 2019. Boletim do desmatamento da Amazônia Legal (setembro 2019) SAD (p. 1). Belém: Imazon. Retrieved from: https://imazon.org.br/publicacoes/boletim-do-desmatamento-da-amazonia-legal-setembro-2019-sad/

Friedman, A. ( 2016, October 16). RELEASE: Secure Land Rights in Amazon Brings Billions in Economic and Climate Benefits, Says New WRI Report, World Resources Institute. Retrieved from: https://www.wri.org/news/2016/10/release-secure-land-rights-amazon-brings-billions-economic-and-climate-benefits-says

Global Forest Atlas, Cattle Ranching in the Amazon Region, Yale University, viewed 22 April 2020, <https://globalforestatlas.yale.edu/amazon/land-use/cattle-ranching>.

Government of the Netherlands. Aid for Trade offers possibilities for economic diversification. Viewed: 30 April 2020. < https://www.government.nl/topics/business-for-development/weblogs/2019/aid-for-trade-offers-possibilities-for-economic-diversification>

Grossman, D. ( 2016, June 13). Q&A: How a Soybean Boom Threatens the Amazon, Pulitzer Center. Retrieved from : https://pulitzercenter.org/reporting/how-soybean-boom-threatens-amazon

Harari, I. (2018, March 06).Xinguanos insistem em consulta antes da concessão da Ferrogrão, Intituto Socioambiental. Retrieved from: http://amazonia.org.br/2018/11/justica-paralisa-concessao-da-ferrograo-por-insuficiencia-de-estudos-socioambientais

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James, C.H. (2019, August 30). As the Amazon burns, cattle ranchers are blamed. But it’s complicated. Retrieved from: https://www.nationalgeographic.com/culture/2019/08/amazon-burns-cattle-ranchers-blamed-complicated-relationship/

Krauss, C. Yaffe-Bellany, D.and Simões M. (2019, October 10). Why Amazon Fires Keep Raging 10 Years After a Deal to End Them. Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/10/world/americas/amazon-fires-brazil-cattle.html

Kuijpers, K. (2018, March 18). THE NETHERLANDS INVOLVED IN DEFORESTATION AND LAND GRABBING IN BRAZIL, Investico. Retrieved from: https://www.platform-investico.nl/artikel/nederland-werkt-mee-aan-ontbossing-en-landroof-in-brazilie/

Kuijpers, K. (2018, April 25). Investigation Dirty hands in Brazil ‘Sustainability is just a story’, De Groene Amsterdammer. Retrieved from: https://www.groene.nl/artikel/duurzaamheid-is-slechts-een-verhaaltje

Londoño, E. Casado, L. ( 2020, April 19). As Bolsonaro Keeps Amazon Vows, Brazil’s Indigenous Fear ‘Ethnocide’, The New York Times. Retrieved from: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/19/world/americas/bolsonaro-brazil-amazon-indigenous.html

Passos, R. ( 2018, December 17). New Brazilian government to back rail freight development, International Railroad Journal. Retrieved from: https://www.railjournal.com/in_depth/new-government-set-to-back-rail-freight-network-development/

Phillips, D. ( 2018, December 10). Illegal mining in Amazon rainforest has become an ‘epidemic’, The Guardian. Retrieved from: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/dec/10/illegal-mining-in-brazils-rainforests-has-become-an-epidemic

Phillips, D. ( 2020, March 10). ‘Project of death’: alarm at Bolsonaro’s plan for Amazon-spanning bridge, The Guardian. Retrieved from: https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2020/mar/10/brazil-amazon-bridge-project-bolsonaro

Relatório Reservado, As próximas rotas do Farallon no Brasil, viewed 22 April 2020, <https://relatorioreservado.com.br/noticias/as-proximas-rotas-do-farallon-no-brasil/>.

Schaart, E. (2019, October 16). Angry Dutch farmers swarm The Hague to protest green rules. Retrieved from :https://www.politico.eu/article/angry-dutch-farmers-swarm-the-hague-to-protest-green-rules/

Smith, K. (2020, Feb 20) Forest Fire: An update on the Amazon wildfires. Georgia State University. Retrieved from: https://news.gsu .edu/files/2020/02/fire-4429478_800.jpg

Terra de Direitos. Filme sobre a experiência de protocolos de consulta no Tapajós será exibido em Instituto na Holanda, viewed 28 April 2020. <https://terradedireitos.org.br/noticias/noticias/filme-sobre-a-experiencia-de-protocolos-de-consulta-no-tapajos-sera-exibido-em-instituto-na-holanda/23193>

The Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights. Indigenous and environmental rights under attack in Brazil, UN and Inter-American experts warn. Viewed: 23 April 2020, <https://www.ohchr.org/EN/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?NewsID=21704&LangID=E>.

Urzedo, D. I. (2019, August 24). Amazon, the ‘lungs of the planet’, is on fire – here are 5 things you need to know. The Print. Retrieved from: https://theprint.in/science/amazon-the-lungs-of-the-planet-is-on-fire-here-are-5-things-you-need-to-know/281055/

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/10/world/americas/amazon-fires-brazil-cattle.html

[2] https://www.nationalgeographic.com/culture/2019/08/amazon-burns-cattle-ranchers-blamed-complicated-relationship/.

[3] https://imazon.org.br/publicacoes/boletim-do-desmatamento-da-amazonia-legal-setembro-2019-sad/

[4] https://globalforestatlas.yale.edu/amazon/land-use/cattle-ranching

[5] https://www.politico.eu/article/angry-dutch-farmers-swarm-the-hague-to-protest-green-rules/

[6] https://www.bothends.org/en/Whats-new/News/All-Eyes-on-the-Amazon-the-future-of-protecting-forests-in-Brazil/

[7] https://pulitzercenter.org/reporting/how-soybean-boom-threatens-amazon

[8] https://www.government.nl/topics/business-for-development/weblogs/2019/aid-for-trade-offers-possibilities-for-economic-diversification

[9] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-51489961

[10] https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/aug/23/amazon-rainforest-fires-deforestation-jair-bolsonaro

[11] https://www.iss.nl/en/research/research-projects/governance-labour-and-logistics-sustainability

[12] https://www.railjournal.com/in_depth/new-government-set-to-back-rail-freight-network-development/

[13] https://www.platform-investico.nl/artikel/dutch-support-soy-transport-mega-project-posing-major-risk-amazon/

[14] https://www.ohchr.org/EN/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?NewsID=21704&LangID=E

[15] https://terradedireitos.org.br/noticias/noticias/filme-sobre-a-experiencia-de-protocolos-de-consulta-no-tapajos-sera-exibido-em-instituto-na-holanda/23193

[16] https://www.wri.org/news/2016/10/release-secure-land-rights-amazon-brings-billions-economic-and-climate-benefits-says

[17] https://www.brasildefato.com.br/2017/08/22/para-atende-agronegocio-e-ignora-comunidades-ao-construir-ferrovia-dizem-liderancas

[18] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-brazil-landrights-indigenous/amazon-protectors-brazils-indigenous-people-struggle-to-stave-off-loggers-idUSKBN18X1MX

[19] https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2020/mar/10/brazil-amazon-bridge-project-bolsonaro

[20] https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/19/world/americas/bolsonaro-brazil-amazon-indigenous.html

[21] https://www.fern.org/pt/noticias-e-recursos/ngos-call-for-new-laws-to-end-the-eus-complicity-in-amazon-fires-2008/. Also noted in author interviews with social actors in Santarem, October/November, 2019.

[22] https://www.farmlandgrab.org/post/view/26898-brasil-terras-na-regiao-do-cerrado-viram-alvo-de-especuladores

COVID-19 | Ecuador, COVID-19 and the IMF: how austerity exacerbated the crisis by Ana Lucía Badillo Salgado and Andrew M. Fischer

By ISS Blog Bliss 9 April 202016 May 2020 10983 views

Ecuador is currently (as of 8 April) the South American country worst affected by COVID-19 in terms of the number of confirmed cases and fatalities per capita. While even the universal health systems of Northern European countries are becoming severely frayed by the nature of this pandemic, Ecuador serves as a powerful example of how much worse the situation is for many low- and middle-income countries, particularly those whose public health systems have already been undermined by financial assistance programmes with international financial institutions (IFIs). The IMF and other IFIs such as the World Bank must acknowledge the role they have played and continue to play in undermining public health systems in ways that exacerbate the effects of the pandemic in many developing countries.

The recent IMF Extended Fund Facility (EFF) Arrangement, signed in March 2019 with the Government of Ecuador, was already the subject of massive protests in October 2019 given the austerity and ‘structural reforms’ imposed on the country (aka structural adjustment). It has also directly contributed to the severity of the pandemic in this country given that health and social security systems were among the first casualties of the austerity and reforms. In particular, the government’s COVID-19 response has been severely hindered by dramatic reductions of public health investment and by large layoffs of public health workers preceding the outbreak of the virus.

From this perspective, even though the IMF has recently moved to offer finance and debt relief to developing countries hit by the COVID-19 pandemic, a much more serious change of course is needed. For this, it is vital to understand its own role – and that of other IFIs such as the World Bank – in undermining health systems before the emergence of the pandemic in various developing countries, lest similar policy recipes are again repeated.

The baseline

It is clear that the pre-existing national healthcare system in Ecuador has been replete with problems even in ‘normal’ times. As in most of Latin America, the weaknesses of the healthcare system in Ecuador stem from its segmented and stratified character, with a distinct segregation between three main subsectors – the public, social security, and private sectors. The Ecuadorian Ministry of Health has a weak coordinating and regulatory role over these three subsectors, each of which caters to different beneficiary populations and with clearly distinct quality of services. The public system is the lowest quality and the one accessed by most poor people. Despite claims of universal health, the national system is a far cry from anything approaching genuine universalism.

Moreover, there has been a progressive privatization and commodification of healthcare since 2008. For instance, the building of capacity within the social security system has been undermined by the channelling of health funding via contracts to the private sector, where pricing is also mostly unregulated [1]. More generally, Ecuador has consistently exhibited one the highest out-of-pocket (OOP) health expenditure shares in South America, despite a government discourse and constitutional mandate to deliver free, high quality, public healthcare for all citizens. OOP payments – or direct payments by users at the point of service – reached 41.4% per total health spending in 2016 [2]. They include, for instance, payments for medicine or medical supplies by poor people in public hospitals, as well as payments by middle- and upper-class people for consultations and surgeries. The COVID-19 crisis puts pressure on precisely these aspects of healthcare provisioning, rendering the system prone to systemic failure for the majority of the population, especially in times of economic crisis when the ability of users to pay is severely curtailed.

Crisis and IFIs

These problems in the healthcare system have been exacerbated by the austerity measures of the current government of Lenín Moreno. The measures were introduced in the context of the protracted economic crisis that started in 2014 and have been endorsed by the IMF and other IFIs. Public health expenditure plateaued at 2.7% of GDP in 2017 and 2018, and then fell slightly to 2.6% in 2019, when GDP also slightly contracted (see figure). This was despite the constitutional goal that established an increase of at least 0.5% of GDP per year until 4% was to be reached, which is still far below the 6% of GDP recommended by the Pan American Health Organization [3].

Source: elaborated from the Fiscal Policy Observatory data (last accessed 7 April 2020 at https://www.observatoriofiscal.org/publicaciones/transparencia-fiscal/file/221-transparencia-fiscal-no-163-marzo-2020.html)

* The main component of this expenditure is on non-contributory social protection (social cash transfers).

** It excludes health expenditure of the social security system.

However, the collapse in public investment in the health sector has been far more dramatic, falling by 64% from 2017 to 2019, or from USD 306 million in 2017 to USD 110 million in 2019 [4]. Such reductions would have been largely borne by the public health system and constitute expenditures that are vital for a COVID-19 response, such as the construction of hospitals and the purchase of medical equipment.

It was in this context that the IMF Extended Fund Facility (EFF) was agreed and signed in March 2019. Within the framework of this programme, the government implemented a large layoff of public healthcare workers (including doctors, nurses, auxiliary nurses, stretcher-bearers, social workers, and other healthcare workers). The layoffs continued throughout 2019, despite protests by the National Syndicate of Healthcare Workers of the Ministry of Health [5], [6], [7]. It is difficult to know the exact number of layoffs because of the fragmented functioning of the health system, although within the Ministry of Public Health alone, 3,680 public health workers were laid off in 2019, representing 4.5% of total employment in this Ministry and 29% of total central government layoffs in that year [calculated from 8]. Similar reductions in the social security sector were announced in 2019 for 2020, although we have not yet been able to find any data on these reductions.

Thus, it is not a surprise that Ecuador is currently doing so poorly in handling the COVID 19 crisis. The retrenchment of the public health system together with an already weak and retrenched social protection system coupled for the perfect storm. But even more worrying is that, in the face of the pandemic, the government paid 324 million USD on the capital and interest of its sovereign ‘2020 bonds’ on 24 March instead of prioritizing the management of the health crisis. This decision was taken despite a petition on 22 March by the Ecuadorean assembly to suspend such payments, along with a chorus of civil society organizations lobbying for the same [9] [10]. The government nonetheless justified the payment as a trigger for further loans from the IMF, World Bank, Inter-American Development Bank, and Andean Financial Corporation [11]. This is especially problematic given that Ecuador has been hard hit by the collapse of oil prices and, as a dollarized economy, its only control over money supply and hence hope for economic stimulus rests on preventing monetary outflows from the economy (and encouraging inflows).

The payment is also paradoxical given that the IMF and the World Bank are currently calling for the prioritization of health expenditure and social protection and for a standstill of debt service, and have announced initiatives for debt relief and emergency financing [12] [13]. Nonetheless, despite such noble rhetoric, it appears that the precondition for such measures continues to be the protection of private creditors over urgent health financing needs.

Atoning for past and present sins on the path to universalism

The COVID-19 pandemic undoubtedly exposes the inadequacies of existing social policy systems in developing countries and the urgent need of moving towards more genuinely universalistic systems. Ecuador is exemplary given that it has until recently been celebrated as a New Left social model even while its national health system has remained deeply segregated and increasingly commodified.

However, while the IMF and other IFIs have emphasised the importance of placing health expenditures in developing countries at the top of the priority list in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic [12], they have not acknowledged their own continuing roles in undermining these priorities. Indeed, their messaging is often contradictory, given that both the IMF and the World Bank have also repeatedly insisted that developing countries must persist with ‘structural reforms’ during and after the pandemic [13] [14]. In other words, there is no evidence that the course has been reset. As one way to induce a reset, it is important that they acknowledge the roles they have played and continue to play in undermining public health systems and universalistic social policy more generally, lest they continue to repeat them despite the switch to more noble rhetoric.

Sources:

[1] http://cdes.org.ec/web/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/privatizaci%C3%B3n-salud.pdf

[2] https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(19)30841-4/fulltext

[3] https://www.cepal.org/es/publicaciones/45337-america-latina-caribe-la-pandemia-covid-19-efectos-economicos-sociales

[4] https://coyunturaisip.wordpress.com/2020/03/28/los-recortes-cobran-factura-al-ecuador-la-inversion-en-salud-se-redujo-un-36-en-2019/

[5] https://www.eluniverso.com/noticias/2019/03/06/nota/7219694/trabajadores-publicos-salud-denuncian-despidos-masivos

[6] https://www.elcomercio.com/actualidad/recorte-personal-contratos-ocasionales-ecuador.html

[7] https://www.elcomercio.com/actualidad/despidos-trabajadores-ministerio-salud-evaluacion.html

[8] https://www.observatoriofiscal.org/publicaciones/estudios-y-an%C3%A1lisis/file/220-n%C3%BAmero-de-servidores-p%C3%BAblicos-del-presupuesto-2018-2019.html

[9] https://www.elcomercio.com/actualidad/asamblea-suspender-pago-deuda-coronavirus.html

[10] https://ww2.elmercurio.com.ec/2020/03/24/la-conaie-pide-al-gobierno-suspender-el-pago-de-la-deuda-externa/

[11] https://www.bourse.lu/issuer/Ecuador/34619 (first link under the notices section)

[12] https://www.imf.org/en/News/Articles/2020/04/03/vs-some-say-there-is-a-trade-off-save-lives-or-save-jobs-this-is-a-false-dilemma

[13] https://www.worldbank.org/en/news/speech/2020/03/04/joint-press-conference-on-covid-19-by-imf-managing-director-and-world-bank-group-president

[14] https://www.worldbank.org/en/news/speech/2020/03/23/remarks-by-world-bank-group-president-david-malpass-on-g20-finance-ministers-conference-call-on-covid-19

This article is part of a series about the coronavirus crisis. Read all articles of this series here.

About the authors:

Ana Lucía Badillo Salgado is a PhD researcher at the ISS focusing on the political economy of social protection reforms in Ecuador and Paraguay, in particular the role of external actors in influencing social policymaking. She is also a Lecturer at Leiden University College.

Andrew M. Fischer is Associate Professor of Social Policy and Development Studies at the ISS and the Scientific Director of CERES, The Dutch Research School for International Development. His latest book, Poverty as Ideology (Zed, 2018), was awarded the International Studies in Poverty Prize by the Comparative Research Programme on Poverty (CROP) and Zed Books and, as part of the award, is now fully open access (http://bora.uib.no/handle/1956/20614). Since 2015, he has been leading a European Research Council Starting Grant on the political economy of externally financing social policy in developing countries. He has been known to tweet @AndrewM_Fischer

EADI/ISS Series | Resource Grabbing in a Changing Environment

By ISS Blog Bliss 16 March 202016 May 2020 2346 views

By Adwoa Yeboah Gyapong, Amod Shah, Corinne Lamain, Elyse Mills, Natacha Bruna, Sergio Coronado and Yukari Sekine

We are living in an era where people’s daily lives are deeply intertwined with the impacts of global markets and the threats of climate change. Even good intentions for mitigating and adapting to climate change can jeopardise natural resources and rural livelihoods. These seemingly abstract issues are becoming increasingly clear through both research and the role of the media, sparking questions such as: How do attempts to address climate change prevent farmers from working their lands, or negatively affect the livelihoods of forest users? Why are fishers organising themselves to resist interventions intended to protect marine areas? How do human rights groups and indigenous communities resist the state and powerful companies despite civil society space being increasingly limited?

The rapid rise in the scale and scope of the commodification and exploitation of natural resources can be linked to four broad, interlinked drivers: the expansion of the industrial food system; increasing privatisation of the commons; changes in governance mechanisms; and the growing prominence of climate mitigation and adaptation responses. Both local and global issues shape and complicate the dynamics of contemporary resource grabbing, many of which are still not fully understood – and will be explored further in our workshop on “Resource grabbing: impacts and responses in an era of climate change” at the EADI/ISS General Conference 2020.

The social and environmental impacts of resource grabbing

Resource grabbing impacts can include limited access to resources, insecure livelihoods, diminishing ecological sustainability, and restricted participation and political incorporation, all of which are embedded in broader power dynamics. In some cases, governance instruments (e.g. labour laws) can further exacerbate the impacts of resource grabbing. Four examples illustrate these diverse impacts.

Conservation in global fisheries

Small-scale fishers globally are facing an overlap of existing and newer processes of exclusion. Existing forms of exclusion caused by industrialisation and privatisation in fisheries have more recently overlapped with exclusionary processes stemming from climate change mitigation and adaptation initiatives. Prominent examples include the increasing establishment of Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) and blue carbon initiatives, which are presented as approaches to conserve and protect marine ecosystems. Such initiatives are often established close to the shallow coastal domains of small-scale fishers and involve the banning of fishing activities, leaving them with limited access to fisheries resources, territories and markets to sustain their livelihoods.

Climate funds in Mozambique

With 25% of its territory designated as conservation areas, Mozambique is the third-largest recipient of climate funds in Sub-Saharan Africa, having received approximately US$ 147.3 million in 2016. Most of these funds are directed to land-based conservation and climate change mitigation and adaptation projects. The Gilé National Reserve, a decade-old REDD+ project, combines such policies with the implementation of Climate-Smart Agriculture (CSA) in the reserve’s buffer zone. This has limited rural livelihood strategies and local people’s control over land and decision-making processes, due to restrictions placed on fishing, hunting, cattle rearing and gathering forest resources (e.g. charcoal, medicinal plants).

Mining in Colombia

Since the 2008 commodity-boom, open-pit coal mining in the Colombian Caribbean region of La Guajira has expanded rapidly, leading to intensified land and environmental conflicts between mining companies, the state, and the affected communities. Land previously used for agriculture and grazing livestock is no longer accessible. Both the landscape and the local economy are now dominated by mining, which has consumed more than 12,000 hectares of land and displaced 16 local villages.

Hydropower dams in the Eastern Himalayas

In the Eastern Himalayas (North-East India and Nepal), numerous hydropower dams are being planned or are already being constructed. Many of these are funded through the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM), an internationally developed climate finance initiative aiming to stimulate the development of renewable energies. However, evidence suggests that dams contribute significantly to greenhouse gas emissions through the creation of reservoirs and changes in land-use. Large dams particularly disturb ecological systems, upstream and downstream river flows, and limit people’s access to riverside lands.

Political responses generated by resource grabs

Local people and communities affected by resource grabbing engage in both overt and covert responses against dispossession and exploitation. Overt responses include formal, organised actions, often by social movements. In contrast, covert responses may include everyday acts of resistance and adaptation through different livelihood strategies, such as migration or incorporation into projects. The dynamics of such political responses have implications for solidarity with and building alliances between affected groups, particularly those seeking social and environmental justice. Three examples illustrate these diverse responses.

Using legal tools in India and Colombia

Indigenous communities facing displacement stemming from hydropower and mining in India have effectively stalled land acquisition processes through court action. These rulings have enforced existing laws mandating their prior consultation and consent. Similarly, in Colombia, more than ten popular consultation processes have been carried out at the provincial level since 2010. In each of them, large numbers of local people voted against the installation and expansion of mining or oil extraction projects. Legal battles have also taken place between companies, the state, and human rights defenders over the implementation of consultation results.

Scaling-up ‘agrarian climate justice’ struggles in Myanmar

The recent re-emergence of overt, organised resistance related to land, environment and climate mitigation issues in Myanmar has ranged from advocacy aiming to influence national-level land laws and policies that facilitate privatisation and concentration, to more localised resistance against large-scale oil palm concessions, mines and forest conservation initiatives that exclude small-scale farmers and forest users. Scaling up across struggles for agrarian climate justice has become imperative to counter elite power at national and regional levels. However, it sometimes triggers external threats, like repression, and ‘divide-and-rule’ strategies from above. Fault-lines within movements may also emerge, particularly due to competing political tendencies and legacies of ethnic conflicts.

Everyday strategies in Ghana

Farmworkers on an oil palm plantation in Ghana have engaged in covert strategies such as absenteeism, non-compliance to rules, and continuous production to resist exploitation. Workers on farms near the plantation occasionally use company vehicles on their own farms, while they absent themselves from plantation work. Casual workers use various tactics to obtain paid medical leave, while others do shoddy work, knowing there are few monitoring supervisors. Through these everyday individual responses, workers can maintain a small supply of staple foods (e.g. corn and cassava), earn extra income, and rest. However, their everyday actions also restrict their upward workplace mobility, such as moving from casual to permanent contracts, and productive autonomy on their own farms in terms of scale and crop choices.

This article is part of a series launched by the EADI (European Association of Development Research and Training Institutes) and the ISS in preparation for the 2020 EADI/ISS General Conference “Solidarity, Peace and Social Justice”. It was also published on the EADI blog.

About the authors:

Adwoa Yeboah Gyapong, Amod Shah, Corinne Lamain, Elyse Mills, Natacha Bruna, Sergio Coronado and Yukari Sekine are all PhD researchers in the Political Ecology research group at the International Institute of Social Studies (ISS).

Image Credit: Maarten van den Heuvel on Unsplash

Countering attempts to undermine the rule of law through lawfare in Suriname by Jeff Handmaker

By Jeff Handmaker 13 January 202016 May 2020 3469 views

In November 2019, an all-women panel of judges presiding over a decade-long court martial in Suriname convicted Desiré Delano Bouterse, the country’s current president, for international crimes that include torture and extra-judicial executions. While legal mobilisation can legitimately be used to bring about justice, Bouterse and his supporters have used lawfare to try to prevent his trial from proceeding. The trial eventually took place and Bouterse was sentenced to 20 years in prison, while some of his co-accused were acquitted. Bouterse remains in office following the judgement, and it now remains to be seen whether legal mobilisation will triumph over ongoing attempts to use lawfare to undermine the rule of law.

The December Murders

Apart from its historic significance, the case against Bouterse and his co-accused for international crimes is a vivid illustration of the use of lawfare and legal mobilisation, both of which I have been following closely as an independent trial observer and as a researcher generally. The case concerns events that took place in December 1982, referred to by many as the so-called December Murders, at the time when Bouterse served as a commander in the Suriname army after having participated in a military coup. Various accounts of the events reported that 16 men, a combination of civilians and soldiers, all of whom were openly critical of Bouterse, were arrested in the middle of the night, brought to a military base at Fort Zeelandia (dating back to the colonial era), lined up against a wall, and shot. The bodies were brought to a local hospital for investigation, where it became evident that the men who perished had not only been executed without a trial, but had also been tortured.

A trade unionist who managed to survive the incident, Fred Derby, later filed an official statement about what had happened in 1982, which became a crucial part of the evidence presented once the court martial was established in 2007. Three years later, in 2010, despite the ongoing trial, Bouterse was elected president, a position he subsequently used to hinder the trial’s development.

At the time the court handed down its judgement in November 2019, which had been twelve years in the making, Bouterse was abroad on a trade mission in China. He returned to Suriname a few days later, perhaps after obtaining confirmation that a warrant for his arrest had not been issued, receiving a large and enthusiastic welcome at the airport from his supporters. Statements made through his lawyer questioning the legitimacy of the court’s judgement, and which undermine the rule of law, have been published in the local media.

Using lawfare to bend the law in one’s favour

As head of a trial observation mission appointed by the International Commission of Jurists (ICJ) in Geneva, I have been following this trial closely since May 2012. The case has revealed several examples of lawfare, whereby numerous law-based manoeuvres on the part of Bouterse himself, as well as his legal representative, his appointed officials, and members of his political party in the legislature have sought to undermine the rule of law in Suriname, and, more specifically, to stop the trial from taking place.

The court martial took over a decade to issue its judgement, during which period there was extensive use of lawfare to either delay or completely shut down the trial. These included legislating an Act of Amnesty (later declared by the court to be unconstitutional), ordering the prosecutor to suspend the trial, and otherwise seeking to interfere with the prosecution process through replacing the Minister of Justice. Neither of these lawfare efforts were successful and the court’s judgement stands.

The case has also revealed many examples of legal mobilisation, whereby various actors have played different roles to counter the use of lawfare and uphold the rule of law. The families of those who were murdered have continually campaigned to have Bouterse and his accomplices brought before an independent criminal tribunal. During the trial itself, international organisations such as the ICJ have called for the respect of international fair trial standards, and journalists (mostly local) have consistently sought to ensure that the case was correctly reported. In all instances, rigorous attention to the correctness of law-based arguments were a prominent feature during the trial that spanned several years; this proved to be an effective strategy, aimed at preserving the fair and equal application of justice and the rule of law in Suriname, values that are widely shared in the country following hundreds of years of colonial rule.

Reactions to the trial

While several prominent news outlets, including several in the Netherlands, as well as the Associated Press, Al Jazeera, the New York Times, and the BBC briefly reported on the judgement, the trial itself has not enjoyed much attention outside of Suriname. Inside Suriname, however, there have been extensive reactions from various actors who have been closely involved in the case, either seeking to uphold or undermine the rule of law.

Betty de Goede, a leader/founder of the Organisation for Justice and Peace (OJP) in Suriname, which represents many families of those who were killed in December 1982, observed at an inter-denominational service organised by the OJP that the rule of law held much value to the people of Suriname, and hence “the judgement (against Bouterse) cannot be ignored”. At the same service, Soeshila Baldew-Malhoe, a prominent Hindu theologian in Suriname, was more strident, declaring that while “Bouterse had no respect for the rule of law” he was warned that

… people must know that every action has consequences. Mr. Bouterse should have known then that the truth would one day come to light … it gives a good feeling to know that the rule of law is alive… everything depends on the rule of law, and when justice is given, everyone must adhere to it, regardless of the person’s social position.

Ignoring potential repercussions against them, the legal community in Suriname has been active and outspoken, including attorney Gerold Sewcharan, who represented Edgar Ritfield, one of Bouterse’s co-accused. Ritfield was one of those acquitted by the court, and characterised Bouterse as a “convicted felon”.

However, a warrant for Bouterse’s arrest has yet to be issued, and in the meantime, there have been efforts to politicise the judgement and undermine the judiciary. One of the main opposition parties, the “Democratic Alternative” (DA), published an Open Letter to the president, calling on him to resign. This has, however, not caused Bouterse to reconsider his decision to remain in power, nor has he lost credibility within the political party he chairs, the NDP, which has condemned the judgement as being “politically motivated”. Whatever happens next, it is certain that many more people, both in Suriname and abroad, will be following the outcome with considerable interest and anticipation.

Image Credit: sunsju on Flickr

About the author:

Jeff Handmaker is a senior researcher at the International Institute of Social Studies (ISS) and focuses on legal mobilisation.

He is a regular author for Bliss. Read all his posts here.

Marie Antoinette rules in Colombia as the masses protest against inequality

By ISS Blog Bliss 19 December 201916 May 2020 1764 views

By Fabio Andrés Díaz Pabón and María Gabriela Palacio

Since late November, Colombia has seen unprecedented mass protests, the longest since 1977. These protests illustrate the awakening of a muffled civil society. Protests in Colombia are part of a Latin American “spring”. Demonstrations have, since September, swept across Haiti, Mexico, Nicaragua, Venezuela, Panama, Uruguay, Peru, Ecuador, Bolivia and Chile. But Colombia’s protests are not merely following a regional trend, nor can they be attributed to a single ideological leaning.

Who is protesting and why

Colombians are protesting against inequality, because the country has the most unequal society among the 36 Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries. In addition, recent government measures, such as cuts in taxes to wealthy investors and an increase in taxes for the middle classes, have generated a significant backlash in a failed attempt to implement “trickle-down economics”.

Though the Colombian economy has experienced resilient economic growth despite the fall in commodity prices, there is little to no redistribution taking place. The richest 1% of the population captures more than 20% of the total labour income.

Because measures recently adopted by the government probably exacerbate inequalities, peasants, student, urbanites, labour unions and indigenous groups have taken to the streets. Their grievances might differ but the persistence of inequality has led to a reduction of their tolerance to measures that maintain the status quo.

Protesters are demanding the implementation of the provisions signed in the 2016 by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia — People’s Army Colombian peace agreement. For some factions in the government, demanding the fulfilment of the promises of the Constitution and demanding peace is seen as a subversive act. Yet Colombians are not demanding a revolution; they are demanding the right to a dignifying life and the fulfilment of the promises made by the government.

In a country that is in an armed conflict and is home to one of the highest shares of internally displaced populations in the world, the dismissal of protesters’ grievances constitutes a threat to civil society and democracy. The number of assassinated social and indigenous leaders and activists illustrate these risks.

The motivation for protests relates to the deepening of inequalities and levels of precarity in terms of access to education, health and social protection and the weariness of armed conflict. The strength of the protests can be explained as the result of the transition of the Colombia society towards peace — the peace accords with paramilitaries in 2006 and guerrillas in 2016 opened different venues for political participation — and the strengthening of social movements.

Government’s response

The response from the government of Iván Duque has been one of denials, accusations and failed attempts to regain control over public discourse.

He took office thanks to the political backing of politicians and sectors in society who opposed the peace negotiations with guerrillas and the state reforms taking place since 2010. Once in power, Duque found himself having to comply with state policies his support base did not agree with.

But these groups do not represent the majority of the population. Because of this, Duque faces a 70% disapproval rate and only 24% approval rate, according to a recent Gallup poll. This also means he has no control over the congress, posing a dilemma to his government. Either Duque tries to clear his policies to receive the broader support of society and face the alienation of his core supporters or he loses the capacity to lead the country. Because of this, media such as The Economist have depicted Duque as a president without direction.

Given this limited political space, the government attempted a propaganda campaign that tried to cast protesters as not contributing to the development of the country and drove Duque to plan the first meeting after the national strike with the industrials and business people rather than with the protestors.

This illustrates that the government cannot see that the protests span across race, location and class. Protests have brought together diverse actors that have found in the streets a space of encounter. Social groups are refusing government measures concerning social security, pensions and labour reforms, because they would have a pervasive effect on the livelihoods of the majority of the population. This explains why protests are supported by 74% of the population.

The disconnection between self-interested elites and the rest of society is evident. The proposal for a tax break, such as allowing consumption without value-added tax for three days a year and an extended “Black Friday” as a solution to the protests illustrate how little the government understands its citizens. Initiatives such as these reflect the aloofness of Maria Antoinette; a “let them eat cake” response.

Economists have opposed other proposals tabled by the government as lacking any technical basis. Populist economic measures aim to increase the acceptability of Duque’s government but can drive inequality and further grievances. The elimination of a 2% tax for buying houses worth more than $260 000 shows that the government is not undertaking reforms to improve the livelihood of the majority of Colombians, neither are improving state revenues.

Policy challenges

The debate can be framed about the availability of public resources and how to spend these, but data shows that the country is growing faster than any other OECD country. Nevertheless, the gains of growth are not evenly distributed, because the cost of living for the middle class is growing faster than their incomes.

The state is facing a long-standing problem of export-dependent economies. As the global economy cools down, the demand for Colombian exports has declined. In response to an imminent trade deficit, the state must increase its revenues but is afraid of taxing the wealthy — its remaining support base. This scenario takes place in a country in which informal employment is rising, and the size of industrial production is declining. The country is also going through a demographic transition, with an ageing population adding pressure to the pension system. As the population grows older, fewer contributors can sustain the social security system, and the costs for public health and pension fees increase.

One of the government proposals was to reduce employment costs and make youth employment flexible. Driving the most significant segment of the population into precariousness cannot be sound politics or economics, especially if the government is thinking about financing the pension system for future generations. Duque’s government praises the discourse of innovation and entrepreneurship, but it should consider that people in insecure employment are less likely to take risks and innovate.

Policies need to tackle the sources of inequality in Colombia and work to the benefit of the growing youth and middle class. The policy dilemma the government has is either to increase taxes to the bulk of the population, or reduce exemptions to wealthy citizens. Given the little political capital that the government has, increasing taxes for the wealthy might mean the government could run out of support. But failing to create the fiscal space that could sustain the economy and redistribute income might exacerbate inequalities in the future.

Moving towards an equal society is not only an ethical response to the grievances of diverse social groups but also a necessary condition for accelerating economic growth. Structural changes should be considered. The government should shift its attention towards innovation and industrial policies that can internalise and disseminate technological gains while driving domestic demand towards the local industry. Redistributive reforms are a prerequisite for progress because they help to close structural gaps and lead to higher levels of productivity, full use of capacities and resources, a fairer distribution of income and wealth and provide all citizens with the right to embark on the plans that they consider worthwhile.

Transition from violence

Protests remain spaces of uncertainty and crisis, but they also are spaces of representation, democracy and opportunity. Protesters bypass the structures of representation and send signals to institutions when they do not work. Furthermore, they allow governments to hear different voices and provide valuable feedback on the workings of the economy. Yet privileged actors invest energy and resources in preventing positive dissent and protecting the status quo.

Inequality and precariousness hinder economic growth and social cohesion. The mass protests, in the Colombian case, not only demonstrate how public voice emerges when violence is declining, but also how inequalities can be exposed once violence decreases, because people demand basic rights for the losers of development processes. As the country tries to leave violence behind, the nature of the conversations changed from armed conflict to citizens’ rights. Nevertheless, Colombia is a country that remains in fear of violence, the legacy of a 70-year war. The leadership of the government or its lack thereof remains central in blocking the transition away from violence.

Picture credit: Roboting on Wikimedia Commons

This article was originally published by Mail and Guardian.

About the authors:

Fabio Andrés Díaz Pabón is a researcher at the African Centre of Excellence for Inequalities Research, a research associate in the department of political and international studies at Rhodes University and a researcher at the International Institute of Social Studies in the Netherlands.

María Gabriela Palacio is an Ecuadorian political economist interested in social policy, inequality and exclusion, who works as an Assistant Professor at the Faculty of Humanities of Leiden University. She holds a PhD in Development Studies by the International Institute of Social Studies (ISS).