16 Days of Activism Against GBV Blog Series| Holding Both Ends of the Line in the fight Against Digital Violence

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Prevailing responses to digital violence against women and girls remain overwhelmingly reactive. We demand justice only after revenge‑porn, doxxing, or cyber‑bullying has already shattered a woman’s livelihood, dignity, or sense of safety. The scale of the crisis is undeniable: globally, between 16-58% of women have experienced some form of online violence, and in Nigeria, 45% of women self‑report digital abuse. Yet our interventions continue to treat symptoms while leaving the systems that enables digital violence unchallenged.

We are holding only one end of the line.

In this blog, Emaediong Akpan argues for a dual approach that confronts both the structural and cultural roots of digital violence. First, we must hold tech platforms and legal systems accountable for the architectures that make abuse easy, anonymous, and viral. Second, we must rethink how we prepare and support the next generation, beginning with digital literacy from childhood. This is not about shifting responsibility to users; it is about building collective resilience against the weaponized shame that underpins digital abuse. When we meet survivors with belief, care, and solidarity, we disrupt the culture of silence and return shame to its rightful place — with abusers and the systems that protect them.

 

Photo Credit: UN Women


Beyond Reactions

Nearly half of the world’s women and girls, have no legal protection from digital violence. The uncomfortable truth in our fight for digital safety is that we are often act after the fact. There is an overwhelming number of safety nets: legal, social, psychological, designed to ‘protect’ women and girls after they have experienced harm in digital spaces. However, according to Amnesty International, 76% of women report altering their online behavior due to abuse. This statistic reveals the limitation of our reactionary approach. We are treating the consequences of digital violence but failing to confront the architecture that exposes women and girls to harm. Our reactionary approach, though vital, is a partial victory at best, it means holding one end of the line. My call is to extend our hands and hold both ends.

The reactionary approach operates after the fact, after the harm has been done. It fails to confront the underlying issue: a digital ecosystem that is engineered through its architecture, business model and algorithms to facilitate and profit from such harm. To address digital violence against women and girls, we must adopt a dual-approach. This approach requires us to hold the line of platform accountability on one hand while engaging in foundational prevention rooted in early digital literacy and communal care on the other.

Understanding the Impact of Digital Violence on Women’s Participation in Public Life

Globally, 16-58% of women have experience online violence. In Nigeria, 45% of women self-report experiencing digital violence, with girls aged 12-17 and young women up to 35 being targeted. 85% of women globally have witnessed digital violence such as cyberbullying, false and misleading smear campaigns, doxxing, image and text-based threats, and more. Although the forms of digital violence vary, the motive remains the same: to shame, silence, and exclude women and girls from public life. Below I explain the impact of two particularly insidious forms.

  • Cyber-Stalking: Research indicates that an estimated 7.5 million people have experienced cyberstalking, demonstrating that anyone with a smartphone, social-media or GPS-enabled device is vulnerable.  Data from domestic violence programs in multiple countries indicates that 71-85% of domestic violence perpetrators use technology from smartphones and GPS to spyware, to stalk, monitor and threaten survivors. The intimate violence of the physical world now follows women into every digital space, collapsing any boundary between public and private life.

 

What Do We Mean by ‘Digital Violence’?

Without a universal conceptualization, this phenomenon operates under a cluster of terms, each highlighting a different aspect of this menace.

I use “digital violence” throughout this blog because it is conceptually encompassing. It captures not only the act of violence (harassment, doxing) but also the structural nature of the harm. It points to a violent digital environment shaped by the algorithmic amplification of harm and the prioritization of engagement/virality over safety. Digital violence as a concept draws attention to the platform not as a neutral mirror of gender-based violence offline but as an active participant in these acts of violence.

Holding Platforms and Systems Accountable

Our response ought to begin with the platforms whose digital architectures are designed to maximize ‘engagement’ irrespective of whether these engagements are driven by joy, outrage or hatred. The algorithms reward inflammatory contents with increased visibility, providing a fertile ground for digital violence to thrive. In adopting this approach, we must move beyond reactive content moderation to safety-by-design principles that places the responsibility on these platforms to mitigate systemic risks, including gender-based violence.

Our laws should specifically criminalize forms of digital violence including but not limited to cyber-stalking, disinformation, revenge porn, and doxxing. Although the Nigerian Violence Against Persons Prohibition Act 2015 is a good starting point, its effective application to address digital violence requires both amendment and judicial activism. The Act currently lacks explicit provisions for image-based sexual abuse, cyber-stalking, and platform liability. Courts must be willing to interpret existing provisions broadly while legislators work to close these gaps. We need legal frameworks that recognize the unique harms of digital violence—its permanence, its viral spread, its capacity to follow victims across every platform and into every space.

Digital Literacy as a Complimentary Strategy

Preventive approaches have been critiqued —often rightly for placing the responsibility on potential victims while absolving platforms of responsibility. My suggested approach does not absolve platforms of their responsibility. Rather, I argue that building communal resilience is not a parallel response but a complimentary strategy in this fight against digital violence. Even in a utopia with perfectly regulated platforms, harm can exist. The goal is to change the social and psychological terrain on which these attacks land.

Fostering a child’s critical consciousness does not excuse a platforms toxic design; it can help mitigate the effect of that design. This is the inoculation I speak of, is not against infection, but against the shame that digital violence weaponizes. Where young girls and women have the nonjudgmental support of their community, it becomes harder to manipulate them into feeling shame and equips them to identify, and resist abusive dynamics.

Building Communal Resilience from the Cradle

Today’s children are digital natives in a profound sense. Globally, one in three internet users is a child. In high-income countries, 60% of children use the internet by age five. In Africa, with the world’s youngest population and smartphone adoption surpassing 50%, children are primary users of family devices, entering complex digital publics with little to no guidance. This strategy ought to begin with digital literacy.

Critical consciousness from early childhood: Teaching children to question what they see online, who benefits from this content? Who might be harmed? Why is this being shown to me? This is media literacy adapted for an algorithmic age.

Bodily autonomy and consent: Children need to understand they have the right to set boundaries online, to say no to requests for images or information, and that consent given under pressure is not consent at all. These conversations must happen before children encounter coercion, not after.

Trusted adult networks: Every child should be able to identify at least two adults they can turn to if something online makes them uncomfortable or afraid. This requires adults who respond without panic, judgment, or punishment, a significant cultural shift in many contexts.

Community response models: When digital violence occurs, the community’s response matters as much as the legal one. Schools, religious institutions, and community organizations must be prepared to support survivors with unwavering belief rather than interrogation, with resources rather than blame. In Nigeria, organizations like the International Federation of Women Lawyers, Feminist Coalition, and StandToEndRape have pioneered such models, but they need to become the norm, not the exception.

The evidence supports this approach. In Finland, where comprehensive digital literacy has been integrated into education since 2014, young people report higher confidence in identifying misinformation and manipulation online. In South Korea, where digital citizenship education is mandatory, rates of cyber-bullying have declined even as internet usage has increased. Nigeria has the capacity to develop contextually grounded approaches that respond to our specific realities of digital violence.

Conclusion: Holding Both Ends of the Line

The fight against digital violence is a struggle for the future of public space, discourse, and democracy itself. A singular focus on post-harm justice, while morally imperative, is strategically incomplete. It addresses the symptoms but does not prepare the next-generation for these realities. We must confront digital violence by contesting the exploitative architectures of platforms and by building a critically conscious population from the cradle. This dual-approach is critical in this moment.

We must confront digital violence by contesting the exploitative architectures of platforms while simultaneously building a critically conscious population from the cradle. We must demand that platforms redesign their systems for safety while teaching young people to navigate these systems with critical awareness. We must prosecute abusers while building communities that refuse to shame survivors. This dual approach is not a compromise, it is recognition that structural change and cultural transformation must advance together. One end of the line without the other leaves us perpetually playing catch-up, counting casualties, offering comfort after the fact.

It is time to hold both ends of the line. Our children are counting on it.

 

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

 

About the author:

Emaediong Akpan is a legal practitioner and an alumna of the International Institute of Social Studies. With extensive experience in the development sector, her work spans gender equity, social inclusion, and policy advocacy. She is also interested in exploring the intersections of law, technology, and feminist policy interventions to promote safer digital environments. Read her blogs here: 1, 2, 3, 4,5

Are you looking for more content about Global Development and Social Justice? Subscribe to Bliss, the official blog of the International Institute of Social Studies, and stay updated about interesting topics our researchers are working on.

 

 

16 Days Activism Against GBV Series| The Unseen Infrastructure of Care: Vicarious Trauma and the Systemic Failure in Sexual Violence Response

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Sexual violence response systems rely on a workforce of caregivers who bear witness to trauma daily. Yet, the vicarious trauma eroding these responders’ wellbeing is dangerously overlooked. Drawing on her personal frontline experience, Emaediong Akpan argues that caring for survivors is impossible without caring for those who serve them. 

Photo Credit: Unsplash

Bearing Witness in a Broken System

Drawing on my professional experience in sexual violence response, I have encountered two parallel realities. The first is the survivor’s journey marked by courage, fragmented by institutional demands, and too often complicated secondary victimization—the trauma inflicted by the very systems meant to provide justice. The second, less visible reality is that of the responders: the advocates, nurses, law enforcement officers, and counselors who absorb these narratives daily.

Across different roles, a common experience is a deep sense of professional and personal isolation. Many legal professionals, for instance, describe a deep conflict between the rigid demands of procedure and the human impulse to offer comfort, leaving them feeling like instruments of a process rather than agents of care. This profound alienation is not a personal failing; it is a structural byproduct of work that demands profound empathy while offering inadequate structural support.

During the 16 Days of Activism Against Gender-Based Violence, our discourse rightly centers survivor voices and systemic accountability. However, I argue that this discourse remains critically incomplete if it does not also address the vicarious trauma permeating the response workforce. This is not about shifting focus from survivors, but about recognizing a fundamental truth: a system that consumes its caregivers is a system destined to fail those it seeks to serve. Neglecting the responder’s wellbeing is a direct, measurable detriment to survivor care, addressing it becomes a non-negotiable pillar of gender justice.

Beyond Burnout, Toward Transformation

To understand the true nature of this crisis, we must move beyond everyday words like “stress” or “burnout.” The core psychological hazard for trauma workers is vicarious trauma (VT). Grounded in seminal work by McCann and Pearlman, VT is understood as a cumulative and transformative process. It is not simply about feeling tired or sad. Rather, it is the profound, often permanent, change in a helper’s own inner world, their beliefs, memories, and sense of self, that results from repeatedly and empathetically engaging with the traumatic material of those they serve.

The key mechanism is the disruption of what psychologists call cognitive schemas. These are our most basic psychological frameworks, our deep-seated beliefs about safety, trust, esteem, intimacy, and control. Vicarious trauma forces these frameworks to change. Repeated exposure to traumatic stories creates a confrontation that our existing worldview can’t absorb. To cope, the mind is forced to rebuild its understanding of reality, leading to a profound shift: the helper’s worldview itself can become more pessimistic, fearful, and fragile.

This is what makes VT different. It’s not the same as compassion fatigue (which is the wearing down of your empathy) or burnout (which is general exhaustion from work stress). While those conditions are about depletion, VT is about alteration. It does not just tire you out; it can fundamentally and lastingly change how you see the world and your place in it.

Crucially, and central to my professional observation, is that personal trauma history is not a prerequisite. While a personal history can intensify effects, VT is an occupational hazard for all trauma workers. The empathetic bond and, critically, shared demographic or social identities (gender, race, class) can serve as a powerful conduit for this trauma, a point underscored by research with female counselors working specifically with sexual violence survivors.

The Perfect Storm: How Sexual Violence Work Fuels Vicarious Trauma

The nature of sexual violence response doesn’t just risk vicarious trauma, it actively creates the ideal conditions for it to take root and thrive. It is defined by a double exposure that sets it apart.

First, there is the chronic, cumulative exposure to traumatic material. Survivors are often caught in a relentless “testimonial spiral,” required to narrate their assault repeatedly, to police, medical examiners, prosecutors, and multiple counselors. Each time they narrate their experiences even though procedurally necessary, it is psychologically costly, forcing the responder to bear witness to graphic, intimate details of violence not once, but over and over again.

Second, and just as negatively impactful, is the exposure to systemic and procedural betrayal. We are not just witnesses to the original trauma. We become firsthand observers of how institutions can fail survivors: through skeptical questioning informed by rape myths, invasive forensic exams with little psychosocial support, and the devastating attrition of cases through plea bargains or dismissal. This generates more than empathy; it creates moral injury, the profound distress that comes from witnessing actions that violate our core sense of justice and ethics. The helper is thus traumatized by both the client’s story and the system’s failure.

This ‘perfect storm’ is intensified by the composition of the workforce. The victim services sector is predominantly female, reflecting the broader gendered landscape of care work. Furthermore, it includes a significant number of survivors who enter the field through a validated ‘survivor-to-survivor’ model of advocacy,a testament to the movement’s grassroots origins that value lived experience as expertise. While this brings profound empathy and insight, scholars note it also layers personal vulnerability onto professional exposure, a combination that is too rarely met with the robust structural safeguards it demands.

The Architecture of Neglect: Systemic Drivers of Vicarious Trauma

It is important to note that VT is not an accidental outcome; it is manufactured by systemic failures across multiple levels.

a. The Political Economy of Care Work

Victim services are notoriously underfunded, relying on precarious grants and charitable funding. This translates into low salaries, high caseloads, and chronic understaffing, conditions directly correlated with VT severity. Workers, often women, are asked to perform emotionally extreme labour with economic precarity, a classic example of the gendered devaluation of care.

b. Institutional Illiteracy

Many criminal justice and healthcare institutions lack trauma-informed organizational practices. Supervision is often administrative, not clinical or reflective. There are rarely protocols for routine psychological debriefing, caseload management to prevent saturation, or mandated “cool-down” periods between intense cases. New, younger advocates, those most vulnerable to secondary traumatic stress, are frequently thrown into the deep end without adequate mentorship (as highlighted in my own training materials).

c. Cultural Stigma and the “Strong Helper”

Especially within masculinized domains like law enforcement, a culture of stoicism prevails. Help-seeking is stigmatized as weakness, with legitimate fears about confidentiality breaches and career repercussions. Studies indicate that a majority of first responders are reluctant to seek support due to perceived professional risks. The culture of stoicism, particularly in criminal justice roles, stigmatizes help-seeking. People fear being seen as weak or unfit, forcing distress underground and often leading to maladaptive coping mechanisms like substance use.

d. Professional Isolation and Erasure

Those in roles like victim advocacy, often situated uneasily between community and court, can experience “trauma hierarchy,” where their exposure is minimized compared to “first responders.” This lack of validation exacerbates feelings of isolation and invisibility, stripping away a protective sense of shared purpose.

e. The Inevitable Consequence: Compromised Survivor Care

My argument is that the systemic production of VT is not merely an occupational health issue. It actively degrades the quality and ethics of survivor services.

  1. Attrition of Expertise: Vicarious trauma is a primary driver of high turnover. When a skilled, trauma-informed advocate burns out and leaves, survivors lose continuity, a relationship of trust is severed, and institutional memory evaporates. This constant churn keeps organizations in a state of novice crisis, unable to develop deep expertise.

  2. The Erosion of Empathetic Capacity: Compassion fatigue, a precursor or companion to VT, manifests as detachment, cynicism, and emotional numbing. A responder struggling with these symptoms cannot provide the authentic, patient, and validating presence that trauma recovery requires. Interactions become transactional, potentially replicating the impersonal harm of secondary victimization.

  3. Impaired Judgment and Ethical Risk: VT’s cognitive disruptions, hypervigilance, pervasive pessimism, disrupted boundaries, can lead to clinical errors, inappropriate self-disclosure, or burnout-driven shortcuts in care. Pearlman & Saakvitne (1995) warn that unaddressed VT can lead to boundary violations, where the helper’s own unmet needs distort the therapeutic relationship.

  4. The Silencing of Advocacy: A responder drowning in unprocessed trauma loses the energy for systemic advocacy. The fight to change oppressive policies, challenge rape myths in court, or secure better resources requires a reserve of righteous anger and hope. VT depletes that reserve, creating a workforce that is too exhausted to challenge the very systems that harm both them and their clients.

In summary, a workforce without proper support becomes a fragile system designed to carry immense weight but lacks the reinforcement to do so safely or indefinitely. Because it cannot sustainably hold the weight of survivor trauma, and it will inevitably fracture, with survivors bearing the consequences of the collapse.

Toward a New Paradigm: From Individual Self-Care to Structural Accountability

The common prescription of “self-care” places the burden of resilience on the individual, obscuring the systemic origins of the harm. We must demand a shift toward “system-care” and structural accountability.

  1. Mandate and Fund Psychological Infrastructure: This must be a budget line, not a perk. Agencies need embedded, confidential mental health services specializing in trauma-exposed professions. Funding bodies must tie grants to the existence of realistic caseload limits, competitive salaries, and wellness protocols.

  • Implement Trauma-Informed Supervision: Replace purely administrative oversight with reflective, clinically-informed supervision that normalizes discussion of VT, provides strategies for cognitive integration, and safeguards boundaries. Models like that proposed by Harrison & Westwood (2009) have shown efficacy in reducing VT.

  • Dismantle Stigma Through Leadership: Institutional leaders must model vulnerability and help-seeking. Peer support programs, with rigorous confidentiality safeguards, can create culturally-competent spaces for processing within the workforce itself.

  • Integrate Resilience into Training: Education for responders must begin before first contact with survivors. Training should include psychoeducation on VT, grounding techniques, boundary-setting skills, and clear pathways to support, framing resilience as a core professional competency.

  • Center Equity in Solutions: Interventions must recognize the gendered, racialized, and classed dimensions of the work. Support must be culturally competent and address the unique stressors faced by advocates of colour working within systems they may rightly distrust.

Conclusion: My Call for an Unbreakable Chain of Justice

As we concluded the 16 Days of Activism , we must commit to a more holistic vision of justice. The fight against gender-based violence is fought on multiple fronts: in the courtroom, the hospital, the therapist’s office, and the advocate’s office desk. These fronts are connected by people. If the people on the front lines of care are being psychologically depleted by the very structure of that care, we have designed a self-defeating system.

Caring for survivors and ensuring the wellbeing of those who care for them are inseparable goals.They represent two halves of a single ethical imperative. We cannot build a survivor-centered response on the broken well-being of the workforce. Investing in the resilience of responders, through funding, institutional change, and cultural shift, is not a diversion from survivor justice. It is the most pragmatic investment we can make in its sustainability and quality.

The witness who is heard, the advocate who can stay present, the nurse who maintains compassion, the officer who conducts a trauma-informed interview, these are not just individuals doing a job. They are the living, breathing infrastructure of a just response. It is time we built that infrastructure to last.

This blog is dedicated to the women of the International Federation of Women Lawyers (FIDA), Akwa Ibom State, Nigeria, whose tireless advocacy I have witnessed firsthand while working alongside them. Their courage is the quiet engine of justice.

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

 

About the author:

Emaediong Akpan is a legal practitioner and an alumna of the International Institute of Social Studies. With extensive experience in the development sector, Emaediong Akpan’s work spans gender equity, social inclusion, and policy advocacy. She is also interested in exploring the intersections of law, technology, and feminist policy interventions to promote safer digital environments. Read her blogs here: 1, 2, 3, 4.

Are you looking for more content about Global Development and Social Justice? Subscribe to Bliss, the official blog of the International Institute of Social Studies, and stay updated about interesting topics our researchers are working on.

The USAID freeze and its dire consequences for women and girls: In conversation with Plan International

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The recent USAID funding freeze has left critical international development programmes in limbo, with devastating consequences for women and girls. The freeze is undoing decades of progress in gender-sensitive development work, putting at risk thousands of aid programmes that support women and thereby limiting the ability of frontline workers to serve their communities. The global development sector is now scrambling to find alternative funding and policy solutions to keep gender-focused initiatives alive.

In this interview, Plan International’s Director of Business Development Allison Shannon, and Vannette Tolbert, Senior Communications Manager, discussed the immediate and far-reaching impacts of this policy decision with Emaediong Akpan and Eno-Obong Etetim, recent MA graduates in Women and Gender Studies from the International Institute of Social Studies, both of whom were also impacted by the USAID stop work order. From disrupted education to increased vulnerability to child marriage, the freeze threatens essential services that protect and empower girls. Drawing on reflections from the interview, the authors explore the ongoing impact of the freeze and highlight the necessity for urgent action.

Source: Wikicommons

The recent USAID funding freeze has left critical international development programmes in limbo, with devastating consequences for women and girls. In this article, we explore the ongoing impact of the freeze while reflecting on our conversation with Plan International’s Director of Business Development, Allison Shannon, and Senior Communications Manager, Vannette Tolbert. As recent MA graduates in Women and Gender Studies from the International Institute of Social Studies.  we examine how this freeze is undoing decades of progress in gender-sensitive development work, putting at risk thousands of aid programmes that support women and limiting the ability of frontline workers to serve their communities. We discuss how the freeze is disrupting education, increasing vulnerability to child marriage and threatening essential services that protect and empower girls while highlighting the urgent need for immediate action.

Pause, when do we ‘press play’?

‘Until we are all equal’ is the guiding ethos behind Plan International’s work across the globe. Yet, like many other organizations, this mission is currently threatened due to the recent USAID funding freeze. The suspension of funds has halted 13 programmes across 12 countries, disrupting essential services that support girls’ education, child protection and economic empowerment. These countries include Nepal, Ethiopia, Nigeria, Niger, Burkina Faso, Bangladesh, Cambodia, Philippines, Malawi, Egypt, Jordan, Mexico and Honduras. Notably, immediate consequences of this decision include the discontinuation of maternal healthcare services, leaving women without access to essential prenatal and reproductive health services; the interruption of educational opportunities for girls, increasing their vulnerability to early marriage and long-term economic hardship; and the disruption of gender-based violence prevention programmes, putting millions of women and girls at greater risk of violence. The impact is particularly severe for marginalized communities which have relied on USAID-funded initiatives as a crucial lifeline. Senior Communications Manager Vannette Tolbert says, ‘The freeze is not just pausing development efforts; it is actively dismantling critical support systems for women and girls worldwide.’

Plan International relies significantly on funding from the US Agency for International Development (USAID), which accounts for one-third of its overall budget. USAID has provided over US$54 million to support Plan’s programmes, funding essential initiatives that promote gender equality, prevent child marriage and ensure access to education for girls around the globe. The rationale behind the freeze centres on a reassessment of US foreign aid spending, yet its immediate impact is felt by the world’s most vulnerable populations. To put this in perspective, Tolbert states that US$38 million in grant funding across 13 contracts in 12 countries has been affected, while US$19.5 million in unspent funds remains frozen.

The ripple effects: How the freeze endangers girls and women

1. Education interrupted: The risk of reversing gains: In Nepal, for instance, Plan International’s remedial classeshave become critical in providing vital academic support to young girls like Ganga, an ambitious eighth-grader with dreams of becoming a teacher. These classes not only help reinforce her academic skills but also boost her confidence in a society where education for girls often takes a backseat. Without this essential assistance, hundreds of girls like Ganga face the grim possibility of failing their exams, which could lead to early marriage – a common reality for many girls from economically strained households in Nepal where educational opportunities are limited.

Beyond Nepal, in Nigeria’s conflict-affected regions, Plan International-supported non-formal learning centres serve as a haven for children displaced by violence. These centres create nurturing environments where children can access not only literacy and numeracy training but also crucial psychosocial support to help them cope with conflict-induced trauma. With the funding freeze now in effect, these vital safe spaces have shut down, leaving thousands of children, especially girls, without viable options for continued education and emotional well-being.

In Kenya, Plan International’s community-driven approach has been essential in improving education for girls. Through their GirlEngage project, Plan listens to the specific needs of girls and their communities, ensuring that solutions are both relevant and sustainable. When high absenteeism rates were reported in schools, Plan engaged with communities and identified the need for menstrual products and safe hygiene spaces. In response, they constructed washrooms and latrines to address this gap. As a result, absenteeism rates dropped significantly and graduation rates skyrocketed. However, with the recent funding freeze, these vital initiatives are now at risk and threaten to reverse years of progress in education and gender equality, leaving long-lasting consequences for the affected communities

  1. Increase in child marriage

In numerous communities, girls are seen as ‘economic assets’, and financial hardship often leads to early marriages. As Tolbert notes, ‘…families can’t afford to support many children, so the girls are sent off at very young ages, often as a financial transaction’. Community-driven initiatives, supported by organizations like Plan International, have been crucial in delaying child marriages by educating families and fostering behavioural change. ‘These programmes not only fund services – they reshape mindsets, empower allies and drive lasting social change’. However, the funding freeze risks reversing this progress, as many families may turn back to traditional survival strategies, including marrying off their daughters to ease financial strain. Without timely intervention, the significant gains made in preventing child marriage could be undone.

This is evident in the case of community leaders, key opinion leaders and allies who were beginning to challenge harmful traditions but will now face reduced support, slowing progress toward gender equality. For instance, the role of fathers in challenging gender norms and advocating for their daughters’ well-being could experience significant setbacks. Many fathers, often referred to as Girl Dads, have been actively engaged in initiatives promoting girls’ education and ending child marriage. The case of Yusuf in Indonesia, who re-evaluated his decision to marry off his daughter after participating in a Plan International anti-child marriage and girls’ education awareness session, exemplifies the tangible influence of such efforts. With one in nine Indonesian girls still married before the age of 18, the withdrawal of funding may lead to a reduction in interventions and an increase in child marriages.

Similarly, in Uganda, where Plan International collaborates with activists like Peter, who combats child marriage in a context where 34% of girls marry before reaching adulthood, the potential loss of USAID funding could impede progress in altering detrimental cultural norms. The situation is further exacerbated by the fact that USAID represents Uganda’s largest single donor for health aid. The funding freeze jeopardizes essential health services, including maternal care and HIV/AIDS treatment, which are vital to the well-being of hundreds of thousands of Ugandans.

  1. Economic disempowerment and vulnerability

Economic empowerment programmes, particularly for women and girls, are another casualty of the funding freeze. Plan International has supported childcare centres at industrial parks in Ethiopia. The centres allow women to access to childcare at the site of their work, enabling them to gain income and skills through working while supporting Ethiopia’s industrial development. These initiatives have been instrumental in equipping women to make informed decisions about their futures. Now, with funding paused, the sustainability of these programmes is uncertain, leaving women without critical support systems and increasing their economic vulnerability.

4. Humanitarian assistance: From bad to worse

Perishable food and medical supplies for over 100,000 displaced families are stranded in warehouses, putting lives at risk. Plan International’s US$7.8 million Bureau of Humanitarian Assistance project in Ethiopia supports 58,000 displaced people with healthcare and 56,000 with food aid. The freeze has stranded supplies, endangering lives and preventing critical aid delivery.

Hana, a single mother working in an Ethiopian industrial park relied on USAID-funded childcare and mental health support to maintain employment. The freeze now leaves her struggling to find affordable childcare and manage work, threatening her family’s financial stability.

Mulu, a 28-year-old single mother working at Hawassa Industrial Park, relied on the USAID-funded Early Childhood Care and Development Centre for childcare while she worked. The sudden closure of the centre due to funding cuts left her struggling to keep her job while caring for her daughter. Missing work days to find alternative childcare has put her employment at risk, threatening her family’s financial stability and future.

This withdrawal has left communities, local partners and even governments questioning the reliability of international aid commitments, while organizations like Plan International, which have spent years cultivating relationships and fostering development through a bottom-up approach, now face the daunting task of re-establishing credibility.

 Beyond the freeze: The big picture

As USAID funding stalls, other global players are stepping in to fill the gap, leading to significant geopolitical shifts. This shift is not just about financial assistance, it signifies a broader change in global influence and the loss of USAID’s presence in these communities. As authors, we are inclined to question the impact of US soft power in these communities. While it has been seen as a tool for fostering influence and cooperation, it also prompts us to reconsider whether this form of aid truly benefits the communities it targets or whether it perpetuates dependency. The resulting shift in the international development landscape could have lasting effects, altering the dynamics of both aid distribution and global power structures.

In response to the crisis, organizations are seeking diversified funding sources. Corporate partnerships, such as Plan International’s collaboration with private partnerships to support menstrual hygiene education, upskill young people and amplify the voices of women, present potential alternatives. However, corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives are not a monolith, and many smaller NGOs lack the resources to pivot swiftly. Without immediate policy intervention, these organizations face closure, leaving gaps that private donors alone cannot fill.

Reflections on the aid freeze: Colonial legacies, Global South reactivity

As women from the Global South with extensive expertise in implementing USAID-funded initiatives in Nigeria, we have been actively engaged in research, policy advocacy and programme implementation focused on addressing gender inequality and systemic exclusion. Our work has encompassed gender-responsive legislative advocacy, stakeholder engagement and the design of intersectional health interventions alongside violence-prevention strategies. Through these initiatives, we have gained insights into how international development funding influences opportunities for women and girls in fragile contexts.

Our perspective is shaped by a critical lens that highlights the structural dependencies inherent in international aid systems. While USAID funding has historically facilitated advancements in health, education access, economic empowerment, and protective services, the recent abrupt suspension of these funds exposes the vulnerability of relying on external financing for sustainable gender justice initiatives. This new reality necessitates not only an analysis of the immediate ramifications but also a comprehensive reflection on the inherent drawbacks of donor-dependent funding models.

Our collaborations with local organizations and policymakers in Nigeria have illuminated the disproportionate impact of funding disruptions on grassroots movements, many of which lack alternative resources to sustain their advocacy efforts. The freeze not only impedes service delivery, it also undermines the authority of local actors, who navigate intricate socio-political landscapes to foster gender-transformative change. This erosion of trust in partnerships raises critical ethical considerations regarding the long-term viability of externally funded programmes and the need for decolonial approaches to global development.

As researchers and practitioners, we perceive the USAID funding freeze as a crisis that highlights the dissonance between global aid policies and localized strategies for achieving gender justice. Addressing this situation requires a shift from immediate funding appeals to a thorough interrogation of power dynamics within development frameworks, prioritizing the voices of marginalized communities in shaping funding agendas, and ensuring that gender-focused interventions are genuinely community-led and resilient to geopolitical shifts. However, we acknowledge that moving away from aid dependency and reframing funding mechanisms for aid-dependent countries is a complex process that must consider the enduring effects of colonization in these regions.

While international aid provides an immediate solution to problems that many governments are yet to resolve, this new reality serves as an urgent wake-up call for governments to reassess their approaches to addressing health and social inequalities domestically. An example is the Nigerian government’s recent commitment of US$1 billion towards health sector reforms and the allocation of an additional US$3.2 million for the procurement of HIV treatment packages over the next four months. However, these investments should not have been contingent upon the withdrawal of US funding in the first place.

As policymakers deliberate, the stakes for women and girls in vulnerable communities hang in the balance. Consequently, urgent advocacy is needed to push for resolutions that prioritize continuity in development efforts while rethinking our approaches to these initiatives. For those with decision-making influence, the message is unequivocal: restore funding, rebuild trust and reaffirm commitments to gender equality and global development. The costs of inaction are simply too significant to ignore.

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

About the authors:

Emaediong Akpan

Emaediong Akpan is a legal practitioner. She recently graduated from the Master’s in Development Studies program at the International Institute of Social Studies. With extensive experience in the development sector, Emaediong Akpan’s work spans gender equity, social inclusion, and policy advocacy. She is also interested in exploring the intersections of law, technology, and feminist policy interventions to promote safer online environments. Read her blogs here.

Eno-obong Etetim

Eno-Obong Etetim is a researcher and recent graduate of the Master’s in Development Studies program at the International Institute of Social Studies. She has several years of experience working on projects focused on gender, health equity, sexual and reproductive rights, and social norms. Her research interests also extend to sustainability and policy interventions that promote social justice.

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Pandemics such as Avian Influenza and COVID-19 show that we need to overcome human exceptionalism to prevent another ‘catastrophic moral failure’ by Dorien Braam

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[vc_row css=”.vc_custom_1592900783478{margin-right: 0px !important;margin-left: 0px !important;}”][vc_column css=”.vc_custom_1592900766479{margin-right: 10px !important;margin-left: -10px !important;}”][vc_column_text]After the COVID-19 pandemic, governing bodies, research institutes, and health organizations around the world reflected extensively on our (failed) responses to the pandemic, hoping to identify lessons that can be applied to the governance of future pandemics. As various bird flu strains are spreading across the world, Assistant Professor of Social Sciences at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine Dorien Braam reflects on gaps in the COVID-19 response and the need for a different approach to prevent mistakes from being repeated. Without understanding people’s behaviour and decision-making processes related to animals, it will be impossible to respond appropriately to the next pandemic, she writes.[/vc_column_text][vc_separator color=”custom” accent_color=”#a80000″ css=”.vc_custom_1594895181078{margin-top: -15px !important;margin-bottom: 10px !important;}”][vc_single_image image=”28825″ img_size=”full” add_caption=”yes” alignment=”center”][vc_separator color=”custom” accent_color=”#a80000″ css=”.vc_custom_1594895181078{margin-top: -15px !important;margin-bottom: 10px !important;}”][vc_column_text]Only four years ago, much of the world came out of its first lockdown after the COVID-19 pandemic swept across the globe. People hastily stocked up on essentials, found coping mechanisms to deal with isolation, and showed their appreciation for healthcare providers working on the frontline. Many people died; many more fell ill. At the time, the pandemic had a profound impact on us, changing our behaviour and views of the present, past, and future.

There has been much high–level reflection on the pandemic since then, for example about how we can prevent ourselves from making the same series of mistakes that led to the devastating pandemic and the significant loss of life, especially among marginalized populations lacking access to healthcare (something we wrote about in the Conversation in May 2020). The Director-General of the World Health Organization (WHO) in January 2021 similarly remarked how our way of handling the pandemic as a collective can be seen as a ‘catastrophic moral failure’ with a profound impact on the world’s poor. In making this claim, he highlighted the impact of unequal access to healthcare, vaccines, and livelihood support. And now, our collective response to the current avian influenza (‘bird flu’) pandemic shows that we risk making the same mistakes we did then.

Novel, much more deadly pandemics

While some lessons may have been learned, there is increasing disquiet among professionals that the world has not learned enough, in the best case scenario, or, in the worst case, has blatantly ignored warning signs of novel pandemic threats, of which Avian Influenza (the H5N1 virus or ‘bird flu’) is currently the most likely candidate.

There is good reason to take this virus seriously. Outbreaks have occurred sporadically throughout the past century; however, the current pandemic has arguably been ongoing since 1995, when it was recognized that the ‘epizootic’, or outbreak of animal disease, dwarfed the bird flu outbreaks until then. In the past months devastating images from Antarctica have shown that the disease has now affected virtually every ecosystem in the world. Besides the risk to humans, bird and other animal populations have been devastatingly affected by the disease, including some species which are already struggling for their existence.

At the end of April 2024, an article in the Washington Post sounded the alarm: after two human casualties in the United States, the risk of a new, much more deadly pandemic seems to be edging ever closer. The writers mention the frustration among officials and experts that not more is done in terms of testing and data sharing, drawing parallels with some of the failures that occurred at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.

These conclusions dangerously ignore the fact that the disease has already caused the death of millions of non-human animals, in addition to 463 human deaths out of 889 human cases across 23 countries. Besides highlighting the geographic health inequalities through expressing only concern for human health in the Global North, they also ignore the realities of the biological interconnectedness of animals and humans whereby the majority of emerging infectious diseases are transmissible between animal and human populations. The result of this messaging is that animals are routinely blamed for disease outbreaks and are considered a disease ‘risk’, which ignores the fact that zoonoses spread largely as a result of human behaviour, such as through industrial intensive farming systems and deforestation.

The COVID-19 pandemic initiated the global revisiting of existing approaches to the interlinkages of animal and human health, strengthening systems approaches such as Ecohealth, Planetary Health and One Health, the latter of which earned its very own high–level panel consisting of animal, human, and ecosystem health experts. The panel includes social scientists as well, as the importance of including social science to outbreak responses is increasingly acknowledged; now this needs to become more pronounced within One Health approaches.

Towards a more inclusive approach

What we can learn from reflections about the COVID-19 pandemic — a conclusion that should be guiding our response to Avian Influenza — is that no-one is safe until everyone is safe, including marginalized populations such as animals; understanding our relationship with the animal world is key to responding effectively, as well as to developing intersectoral and transdisciplinary responses.

The negative impacts of animal and human disease are greatest in poor populations depending on agriculture and livestock for their livelihood; therefore, poverty reduction needs to be part of disease prevention activities. Facilitating testing for animal disease requires providing insurance and compensation to animal owners, who otherwise may lose essential livelihoods through diseased livestock. Most importantly however, industrial farming needs to be rapidly scaled down, which requires large-scale, and potentially costly, sustainable solutions for farmers. This will simultaneously address a range of increasing health challenges beyond the risk of pandemics, including the existential risks of anti-microbial resistance, pollution, and biodiversity loss.

Without understanding people’s behaviour and decision-making processes related to animals, it will be impossible to respond appropriately to the next pandemic. And without more drastic measures to increase interspecies health equality, it is unlikely that we can prevent or respond effectively.[/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]Opinions expressed in Bliss posts reflect solely the views of the author of the post in question.[/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 css=”.vc_custom_1719387091156{margin-top: 0px !important;}”]

About the authors:

Dorien Braam, PhD, is Assistant Professor in Social Science at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, and member of the UK Health Security Agency Rapid Support Team, as well as Director of Praxis Labs, a global research collective. Her research focuses on interspecies inequalities in complex emergencies, and she has conducted fieldwork with communities in Jordan and Pakistan. Previously, she worked with the United Nations, Netherlands Government, IFRC and NGOs across Asia, Africa, Europe and the Middle East.

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Do we ever learn? Collective memory as a blind spot in KNAW report on pandemics

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In its latest advisory report ‘Met de kennis van straks’ (‘With the knowledge of later’), the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW) maps out what Dutch science and society need to do in order to be well prepared – and thus ready – for future pandemics. However, the report pays scant attention to macro(economic) issues, which doesn’t do justice to this societal-medical problem, writes Peter van Bergeijk.

Source: Syaibatul Hamdi, Pixabay.

Introduction

If we have learned anything from the COVID-19 pandemic in the Netherlands, it is that it is almost impossible for economists to make clear what our field is about. In fact, debates on economics all but stopped in my home country (Van Bergeijk 2022) [1]. Important insights from economics therefore did not sufficiently feed into other fields of science and policy.

From an economic point of view, the most important question is how to deal with the scarcity that arises during a pandemic. This requires insight into the effects and effectiveness of measures that have been considered and taken. I want to illustrate this with three topics that also provide concrete recommendations for improvement.

 

Be transparent about intended measures

A macroeconomic analysis is indispensable both because of the pandemic, which involves a simultaneous loss of a large part of the labour force, and because of measures including business closures and restrictions on gathering and movement. That up-to-date analyses of a flu pandemic were not ready in the Netherlands is an omission of the major policy institutions (CPB Netherlands Bureau of Economic Analysis and the Dutch Central Bank DNB), because the risk was known. On the eve of the COVID-19 outbreak, the ‘Geïntegreerde risicoanalyse Nationale Veiligheid’ (‘Integrated National Security Risk Analysis’ – ANV 2019) for example reported that a flu pandemic in the near future was both likely (5-50%) and a major threat for society with a significant impact on population and the economy at large.

However, the econometricians at CPB and DNB cannot be blamed for not foreseeing the lockdowns that were suddenly conjured out of the medical top hat in 2020. None of the national and international roadmaps anticipated lockdowns (van Bergeijk 2021a). As a result, not only policy analysts, but also scientists could not anticipate that lockdown instruments would be used. A first important conclusion is therefore that realistic roadmaps should be drawn up – and published – as early on as possible so that analyses of concretely considered (combinations of) instruments can be made in advance without the time pressure of an unfolding pandemic.

 

International comparative macro-research is needed

The KNAW report focuses mainly on improved accessibility of micro data (for example health status and socio-economic characteristics of large groups of individuals). This requires linking medical data files with data on socio-economic characteristics, either by means of long-term panels or through CBS Statistics Netherlands. At face value, this focus on micro and the Netherlands is understandable, but at the same time, one might argue that this focus is too narrow. After all, a pandemic is not a national problem, the micro-macro paradox can lead to bias, and a third relevant problem is whether the vulnerable are (or will be) adequately represented in the data. A very obvious problem with Internet panels, for example, is the under-representation of both the elderly and the disadvantaged and marginally poor, who are both more vulnerable and inherently more difficult to survey.

It is unfortunate that the KNAW focuses so much on the Dutch context. Every national context is unique and findings are therefore strongly determined by the conditions of time and place. ‘Met de kennis van straks’ uses these differences in context to justify an essentially national research strategy. Learning, however, actually requires making to make good use of differences in national contexts. Where regional policy in the Netherlands has proved to be impossible, researchers will have to look beyond national borders for differences in policies, institutions, and behaviour. National navel-gazing can be expected to lead to opportunities and threats being overlooked. It is important to start asking what the optimal design of our society would be from the perspective of pandemic resilience, lest the costs become too high. The second conclusion is therefore that building resilience in an evidence-based way requires extensive investments and structural change, which in turns requires research on the influence of differences between national contexts.

 

Final research findings do not exist

The economic view of the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic will continue to change significantly in coming years. After all, definitive research findings do not exist. Consider, for example, the estimate for the growth rate of world GDP in the year 2020 provided by the IMF in its World Economic Outlook [2]. Figure 1 shows that successive estimates for 2021 and 2022 became slightly less negative each time. 2020 will never be a good year, of course, but the adjustments made to the historical data are not insignificant. It amounts to 0.3 percentage points, or 10 percent of the first estimate. The adjustments themselves moreover come as no surprise at all (van Bergeijk 2021b).

 

Figure 1. Adjustments made in four instances by the IMF to the 2020 world production growth estimates provided in its World Economic Outlook.

Source: IMF website, accessed 11 October 2022.

 

The medical impact of the pandemic will also take time to become clear. We know the number of people that got COVID-19 and whether they recovered or died due to infection, but we know neither the impact on the long run of the lockdowns on the health status of the population, nor the long-term effects of COVID-19 itself. This uncertainty does not mean that no general policy recommendations can be made. Cost-benefit analyses, for example, have shown that while short lockdowns may make a rational and cost-effective contribution during pandemic outbreaks, the same cannot be said of long-term lockdown policies. This is basically because at its core, a human life can only be saved once, while longer lockdowns continuously increase economic costs. So, whether such an insight is valid for the next pandemic is not the question. However, what is ‘short’ cannot be answered in advance. The third conclusion is that economics can play an important role in helping design macro trade-off frameworks to best fill in and adjust the parameters in the event of a breakout as soon as new insights become available.

 

Conclusion

Science pretends to know a lot and to be able to contribute much. In this regard, it is probably too big for its boots. Vaccines have been important, but if we can actually put the COVID-19 crisis behind us, it will be mostly thanks to the gift Mother Nature gave us, namely a less severe, more infectious variant that makes COVID-19 better socially manageable. It is human nature to draw some lessons after a pandemic has died out and then to forget them. It is remarkable that all the issues that came up during the previous pandemic, the Mexican Flu pandemic, remained unresolved and came back again during the COVID-19 pandemic. Science could and should play a much more important role here, not so much in research, but in education. It is actually strange that the report does not pay attention to the core task of science. Providing the knowledge about the previous pandemic requires a better place in the curricula of all fields of science. If not, our students, who will probably experience four to five more pandemics in their lifetime, will be not be prepared for the next one.

Footnotes

[1] Dutch readers may want to consult van Bergeijk 2021b.

[2] Another example is the resurgence of research on the economic impact of the Spanish Flu.

 

References

ANV, 2019, Geïntegreerde risicoanalyse Nationale Veiligheid, ANV Netherlands Network of Safety and Security Analysts http://www.rivm.nl/sites/default/files/2019-10/Geintegreerde%20risicoanalyse%20Nationale%20Veiligheid%202019.pdfhttp://www.rivm.nl/sites/default/files/2019-10/Geintegreerde%20risicoanalyse%20Nationale%20Veiligheid%202019.pdf

Bergeijk, P.A.G. van, 2021a, Pandemic Economics, Edward Elgar 2021.

Bergeijk, P.A.G. van, 2021b, De volgende pandemie: een deltaplan voor overleving, Walburg, 2021.

Bergeijk, P.A.G. van, 2022, The Political Economy of the Next Pandemic, Review of Economic Analysis, 14 (1), 27-49

KNAW, 2022, Met de Kennis van straks: De wetenschap goed voorbereid op pandemieën.

This article was originally published on MeJudice and has been republished with permission of the author and editors.

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

About the author:

Peter van Bergeijk is Professor of International Economic Relations and Macroeconomics at the Hague-based Institute of Social Studies at Erasmus University (ISS); one of the leading educational and research institutes in the field of development cooperation in Europe.

 

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From sacred to clinical: how the lack of proper burials during the Covid-19 pandemic affected communities in Uganda

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When Covid-19 started spreading across the globe, the World Health Organization issued strict burial guidelines in a bid to curb the spread of the virus. In Uganda, the national health department took over the burial of Covid-19 victims, interring them quickly and without adhering to proper cultural and religious procedures. In a country where death rituals form a central part of the grieving process, the undignified burials that took place during the pandemic have had severe psychological consequences for bereaved families and communities.

In the Global South and in Africa particularly, most development studies research concentrates on survival issues; economic needs and death/loss are generally discussed in relation to poverty or AIDS, while the few available bereavement studies focus on the grieving experiences of individuals or groups.[1] However, injustices are also apparent in processes of grieving; unpacking the way in which grief is collectively and individually experienced is a necessary first step in addressing these injustices. Here, I show how the strict burial guidelines imposed during the Covid-19 pandemic were received in Uganda and why we should take note.

 

The many facets of death rituals

Death rituals, defined as “forms of expressions and connections performed by individuals, groups of people or communities in communication with the living-dead and the Supreme Being”[2], connect the dead and living in Africa. These rituals serve to mediate between the physical and spiritual worlds as the spirit of the deceased crosses between worlds. Many African families for example have a graveyard within the compound they live in because they believe that the dead remains part of the living family.[3]

During death rituals, the bereaved family plays a direct role in preparing the body, washing the body and shaving the deceased’s head; domestic animals are also slaughtered for ritual purposes. Slaughtering a sheep, for example, is meant to please the ancestors so that they do not demand another death.[4] And a death is communicated to the entire community as part of the ritual. A study of death rituals in Bugumba in Uganda shows how community members participate in death rituals once a large bonfire has been lit in the compound of the deceased to communicate bereavement to everyone in the community.[5]

Other death-related rites and beliefs include a belief among the Ethur of northeastern Uganda in life after death, with the spirit of the dead person travelling to the realm of ‘Obanga’, as well as the common belief that the dead are spirits that can send curses if disturbed.[6] Not performing death rituals would be considered one way of disturbing the dead. Similarly, in northern Uganda, a harmonious relationship between the living and dead is maintained to avoid ‘cen’, or vengeful spirits, by performing rituals.[7]

Death rituals are considered so important that in cases where a bereaved family lacks adequate resources to perform crucial rituals, community members may contribute the required resources – something that is reciprocal. In studying bereavement, the concept of Ubuntu[8] helps us to understand how cohesion and solidarity are maintained during and after burial through communal rituals and mourning. People travel from far away to participate in death rituals or attend funerals because death comes with misfortune for those who don’t participate in rituals. Paying close attention to the rituals while maintaining solidarity is a key healing factor from loss due to death.[9]

 

The inability to say goodbye properly

Limitations on death rituals during the Covid-19 pandemic and the interment of Covid-19 victims by health authorities thus caused great distress in Uganda and beyond. During the pandemic, following protocols issued by the World Health Organization (WHO) to curb the spread of the virus, strict guidelines for burials were issued by the government of Uganda under its Ministry of Health. They included limiting the handling of the deceased body to health/burial teams only, wrapping the body in waterproof plastic bags before handing it over for burial, and preventing the public from seeing the body. Family members and other mourners had to stay two meters away from the body.

Many district governments came up with further burial guidelines that included the time at which the burial was to take place, the prohibition of death announcements over radios to prevent the burials from attracting crowds, and ensuring a burial would take no more than two hours. The burial team, dressed in white wellington boots, full plastic protective suits, goggles, face shields, and gloves besides preparing the body secured the burial sites, dug the graves, and conducted the burials. They were nicknamed ‘Angels’ because they appeared mystical to the community members.

 

Indignation and defiance

Besides leading to personal suffering, these clinical burials also led to political dissatisfaction. The burial teams were heckled and some attacked for not following burial traditions. This is because in Uganda, a dead person is very special to the community and must be treated with full respect during the entire burial process. Burials were considered undignified because of the rough handling of the dead and the mourning of those close to the deceased in isolation, when this would usually take place as part of the burial process.[10] The departure from the traditional rituals led to psychosocial suffering (distress for bereaved families) that affecting healing, since no space was provided to express grief.

The community felt that the creation of distance between the deceased person and mourners, the wrapping of the body in artificial materials, and the handling of the body by seemingly alien entities did not ensure sufficient respect. The mystery and criticism was inspired by a deep distrust of the government during the pandemic, leading to allegations such as government’s burying of empty coffins and speculation that Covid-19 deaths concealed the trafficking of individuals.

“How could the spirit of the dead be reached and engaged when it is so trapped? Can the spirit be able to escape its ‘plastic prison’ and join the ancestors, or remain locked in captivity?” asks Brian Mukalazi in the Daily Monitor newspaper, describing how the burial of Covid-19 victims in a ‘scientific’ way angered the communities and led them to defying the burial guidelines by secretly exhuming the bodies to conduct decent burials. Communities such as the Budaka in eastern Uganda, the Buikwe, and the Palissa who resorted to this claimed they needed to ensure decent burials for their departed kin since their spirits had started disturbing their living relatives and some community members.

 

Conclusion

It is clear from the above that the suffering stemming from the loss of a loved one can be compounded by the lack of proper treatment of the deceased, in this case by the absence of proper burial rituals. However, these emotional impacts of injustices linked to bereavement processes on those close to the deceased and their communities are not yet sufficiently understood. It is crucial to address the psychosocial needs of those that lost loved ones to the pandemic. To prevent recurrence, and to help the bereaved find closure, academic research should focus more deliberately on cultural and psychological needs that arise during bereavement processes.

 

[1] McCarthy, J. R., Evans, R., Bowlby, S., & Wouango, J. (2020). Making sense of family deaths in urban Senegal: Diversities, contexts, and comparisons. OMEGA-Journal of Death and Dying, 82(2), 230-260.

[2] Baloyi, L., & Makobe-Rabothata, M. (2014). The African conception of death: A cultural implication.

[3] Umoh, D. S. (2012). Death is not natural: The African story.

[4] Haram, L. (2021). Bodily grief work meets Christian interiority: The Meru case. Death studies, 45(1), 51-60.

[5] Vokes, R. (2018). Before the call: Mobile phones, exchange relations, and social change in south-western Uganda. Ethnos, 83(2), 274-290.

[6] Wayland, E. J. (1931). Preliminary studies of the tribes of Karamoja. The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland, 61, 187-230.

[7] Kembel, A. S. (2015). When the Dead Are Not Silent: The Investigation of Cultural Perspectives Concerning Improper Burials in Northern Uganda.

[8] As a theoretical perspective, Ubuntu is expressed in many languages in African communities but with the same meaning (Mugumbate and Chereni, 2020). Ubuntu caring solidarity translates to Uganda’s context through a saying which literally means “today it’s me, tomorrow someone else”.

[9] Lee, R., & Vaughan, M. (2008). Death and dying in the history of Africa since 1800. The Journal of African History, 49(3), 341-359.

[10] Lubega, M., Nakamya, C. S., Namugumya, E., & Najjemba, J. (2022). The effect of COVID-19 public health guidelines on the funeral traditions and burial rituals among the Baganda, a tribe in Central Uganda. PAMJ-One Health, 7(7).

 

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

About the author:

Henry Okidi Okoth holds a MA Development Studies degree from the International Institute of Social Studies of Erasmus University Rotterdam. Currently, he is a researcher and consultant with Collaborative Social Change. His research interests are death and bereavement studies from a decolonial perspective, marginalization and poverty, gender, conflict, and human rights.

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

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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
Lee Pegler

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.

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COVID-19 and Conflict | Why virtual sex work hasn’t helped sex workers in India survive the COVID-19 lockdown

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Virtual sex work, although around for many years, has become an alternative to traditional sex work during the global COVID-19 pandemic. In India, like elsewhere, sex workers due to a strict lockdown and the limiting of their movements have turned to virtual sex work to earn a living. Yet it has not become a viable solution for many due to a number of challenges the workers face when resorting to this type of sex work, write Birendra Singh and Chitrakshi Vashisht.

“Sex workers” by mo’s is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

 

By the end of 2020, around ten million people in India had been infected with COVID-19. Only the United States has recorded a higher number of infections. To mitigate the crisis, the Government of India instituted a lockdown, forcing its over 1.4 billion residents to stay at home. Among the many affected by strict lockdown measures are sex workers, who became a high-risk group during the pandemic due to the nature of their work that requires physical interaction.

Conservative estimates suggest that there are around 38,000 sex workers in the city of Delhi alone, of whom many are residential sex workers working from their small and congested houses (also the case for brothels). This poses a twofold challenge for them during the pandemic: a heightened individual risk of contracting a COVID-19 infection and lack of any other source of income to support themselves and their families in a time when the economy came to a virtual halt.

In light of this precarious situation, and as part of the ISS’s concluding ‘When Disaster Meets Conflict’ (Discord) project, we conducted a small study with sex workers in Delhi, including with female sex workers (FSW – cisgender women), transgender (trans) women, and hijras (a socio-cultural group in India under the transgender umbrella which in 2014 was recognized as a third gender by the Supreme court of India). Interviews took place online in the summer of 2020, and we sought to understand the effects of the virus and the pandemic on their lives and the possibilities of new technological practices such as virtual sex for this group. We conducted six interviews: two with representatives of NGOs working with sex workers, two with representatives of the All India Network of Sex Workers, and two with representatives of the Mitr Trust. Of the respondents, three earn their living through sex work. Additionally, secondary data such as media reports, articles, and online interviews were consulted for the study.

Virtual sex work is emerging as a new typology of sex work whereby sex workers use electronic devices such as computers or (mobile) phones to provide sex services through text, audio, and video. Especially during the pandemic, a shift in sex-work practices from physical sex to virtual sex could be observed, while some claimed a potential transformation in sexuality in which virtual sex practices could have played a critical role. However, our study brings to light the critical factors associated with this practice itself that makes its feasibility as alternative livelihood for sex workers in Delhi questionable.

Challenges facing sex workers

The sex workers we spoke to belonged to the lower socio-economic tiers of society and were migrants. Most sex workers reside in congested, unauthorized housing clusters, slums, or small, rented rooms with their friends or families in Delhi. Often, men in families of FSWs suffer from alcoholism and drug abuse, while both FSWs and trans women face intimate partner violence. Due to the stigma attached to sex work and gender non-conformity (for trans women/and hijras), most are abandoned by their biological families. Amina’s story is no different. Now 19, she was thrown out by her parents when she was 16 years old. She particularly recalls: “My sister gave me 100 rupees (less than 2 euros) and asked me to buy poison and die.”

Many FSWs live dual/hidden lives, while some work as a domestic help, security guard, or in small manufacturing companies on outskirts of Delhi, using these additional jobs only as a ‘cover’ for their sex work. Trans women and/or hijras are marginalized even among FSWs since they are not considered ‘real’ women. Due to their gender/sexual expression, opportunities for decent work are often closed to them and they are forced to choose sex work, begging, and/or traditional hijra ways (singing and dancing at ritual functions) of living.

The use of virtual sex technology to keep working

A strict lockdown and fear of being infected halted sex work, with dire implications for sex workers. Some we spoke to stayed hungry for up to three days, while some FSWs lacked enough money to buy milk for their children. Hence, although not an entirely new option for some, virtual sex became the only option during the crisis. However, through it sex workers could earn only a small fraction of the income they could have earned through non-virtual sex work.

They faced many problems. To begin with, the lack of private space to interact when making audio or video calls was difficult for sex workers, as well as for their clients, because during the crisis everyone was staying at home. Especially poor and uneducated sex workers lacked the basic digital literacy to use the phone and/or the Internet, as well as the confidence and skills necessary to perform virtual sex work. Their socioeconomic background, precarious living conditions, and the stigmatization of sex work never allowed them to acquire these skills and pride in their work. Moreover, for some to meet the cost of an Internet connection or smartphone itself was impossible.

Safety in receiving payment by the clients was also among the big challenges that this community faced. Sharing phone numbers with strangers resulted in adverse consequences. Many men threatened sex workers, stating that if they did not provide them with a free service, they would ‘expose’ their identity to their neighbours and families. Additionally, many clients refused to pay in advance for the services. Many times, they would disconnect the call and block the sex worker’s account or phone number just after receiving the service virtually, while sometimes men would delay payment rather than denying it altogether and later block the number of the sex worker. Some clients also threatened to distribute their phone number to strangers who would make their life even more difficult. For most of the sex workers, the biggest problem with virtual sex was ‘no guarantee of payment’.

Not (yet) a viable alternative

Virtual sex as an innovative practice during the COVID-19 crisis didn’t work for the majority of the sex workers we interviewed because of the lack of digital literacy, access to good-quality phones or personal computers and Internet connections, privacy, and the empathy of society. Receiving safe and secure payment was also one of their biggest challenges. In the Indian context, virtual sex practices thus cannot be treated as a substitute for ‘regular’ sex work, although it has captured remarkable attention as a ‘new’ type of sex work.

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

About the authors

Birendra Singh is a Science Technology and Society (STS) studies researcher. He holds a Master of Technology (M.Tech) and a research Master (M.Phil) in the realm of science policy. His research interest includes, frugal and grassroots innovation emerging from marginalized spaces, politics of knowledge and social institutions. At ISS/EUR, his PhD project is aspiring to conceptualize knowledge and learning dynamics of the bottom-up frugal innovations. For more info click here.

Chitrakshi Vashisht has over eight years of work experience in development sector in the field of gender, sexuality, education, adult literacy, SRH (particularly in HIV/AIDS) in India where she worked with several grassroots level NGOs/CBOs strenuously working for the rights of women, men and transgender (including but not limited to hijra and kothi) persons. Her research interests are in the areas of policy, gender, sexuality, identity, culture, and intimate partner violence. She holds an M.Sc. in Gender and Development Studies from Asian Institute of Technology, Thailand, a Masters in Social Work from India and is presently pursuing her PhD from ISS.

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COVID-19 and Conflict | Economic downturn, precarity, and coping mechanisms in the Eastern DRC

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The Kivus in the Eastern DRC do not seem to be getting a break. Besides facing a protracted armed conflict, the COVID-19 pandemic has caused an economic downturn in the region as mining activities have been limited or shut down completely. In light of this intersection of crises, the region’s inhabitants have had to find ways to cope, defying lockdown measures in the process. Yet, the social ties of the region is what is keeping it alive, write Christo Gorpudolo and Claire Akello.

“TwangizaArticanalMiners” by USAID_IMAGES is licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0

The Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) has faced a long period of protracted conflict, situated in a part of Africa that at one point in time has faced multiple conflicts or genocides, making the region highly volatile (Buscher, 2018: 194). The Kivu provinces in the Eastern DRC are facing a protracted armed conflict that has been widely reported on and has also been discussed on Bliss (see this article, this one, and this one).

As part of a research project hosted at ISS called ‘When Disaster Meets Conflict‘(Discord), we conducted a brief study of COVID-19 responses in the DRC, trying to find out what the responses were and how these were viewed and experienced on the ground. We conducted desk research and interviews with Congolese living and working in the Eastern DRC and the Kivus. We found that the intersection of the ongoing conflict and the COVID-19 pandemic has given rise to great uncertainty in the region that people have sought to counter in their own ways.

Besides the prevailing economic situation as a result of violent conflict, the DRC has also experienced a new outbreak of communicable and highly infectious diseases, like its tenth Ebola outbreak in 2018, (see this WHO news article) as well as measles, yellow fever and, most recently, the outbreak of COVID-19, which occurred amidst the worst Ebola outbreak on the continent at the time (Mobula et al., 2020: 3). With the coinciding occurrence of COVID-19 and Ebola and an ongoing conflict, many Congolese families and miners feared the loss of their livelihoods and were at a greater risk of falling further into poverty due to dwindling incomes and severe health risks.

Following the recording of the first COVID-19 case (GARDAWORLD, 2020) on 10 March last year, on 24 March the DRC government announced a state of health emergency, declaring a nationwide lockdown to be observed in all of the country’s 11 provinces. Since then, the lockdown has been extended five times by the national assembly, with various forms of preventive measures introduced (Atlantic Council, 2020). The lockdown measures have immensely affected mining activities in the DRC (IPIS, 2020) a country where residents rely heavily on income from the mining sector. According to a report by the European Network for Central Africa (EurAc), insecurity in the mineral supply chain due to the outbreak of COVID-19 has had an impact on the Congolese economy in general, with the country preparing for a potential catastrophic economic downturn in the mining sector (Business and Human Rights Resource Center, 2020).

Mining activities in the Kivus and the Eastern DRC are conducted in person, with a strong reliance on human or person-to-person interaction. Thus, with the introduction of preventive measures, the livelihoods of miners and people living in Eastern DRC have been negatively impacted, as these preventive measures according to respondents run contrary to the somewhat informal practices in the DRC, particularly in the mining sector. Some prevention measures introduced by the government included the prevention of the movement of people, the closing of borders, and the limitation of legal mining activities, which forced small-scale miners to cease their operations that provided them with incomes necessary to survive.

One of the respondents participating in the research stated that with no definite time of earliest recovery in the mining sector, there is increasing anxiety and fear amongst miners and people living in the Kivus of little chance of a swift economic recovery as the situation moves from a short-term health crisis to a prolonged economic downturn.

In the Kivus, some areas such as Biholo, Nalucho and Kalehe have suspended mining activities, while in other sites artisanal miners continue to work amidst strict guidelines and awareness campaigns about the containment of COVID-19 by different civil society organizations. However, the situation is far from ideal. It was also highlighted by respondents that the closure of mining activities affects the wider population in the Kivus because many people rely on the income from the mines.

Defying lockdown measures to counter anxiety

These economic impacts have caused distress among families, miners, and people living in the Kivus. As a coping mechanism, the population in the Kivus find social gatherings important (although these gathering are not permitted) as a form of mental support. According to four of the six respondents interviewed for this study, families and residents living in Eastern DRC and the Kivus meet in what they referred to as ‘secret bars’ operating undercover. These bars usually appear closed or isolated from the outside, but are booming inside. Respondents also stated that most of the friends/or families meeting inside these ‘secret bars’ have a mutual agreement, as these gathering places remain secret to those outside the trust circles. These gatherings involve the sharing of drinks and friendly conversation. It is considered a way to handle anxiety that comes with uncertain times, including the current state of the Congolese economy.

A major risk factor posed by this form of coping mechanism is that it makes the population more vulnerable to COVID-19 and increases the risk of widespread COVID-19 transmission due to increased social interaction. Yet people felt that they had to defy lockdown measures to cope and were willing to take the risk. Consequently, social gatherings still take place, serving an important function in a time of economic precarity and great uncertainty. This form of coping may be the lifeline for many in the Eastern DRC and elsewhere, and its value should not go unrecognized.

References

Atlantic Council. 2020. “Shaping the global future together.” Accessed 25 July 2020 https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/about/

Büscher, K., 2018. “African cities and violent conflict: the urban dimension of conflict and post conflict dynamics in Central and Eastern Africa.” Journal of Eastern African Studies 12 (2): 193-210.

Business and Human Rights Resource Center. 2020. “Mining minister warns against the social and economic impact of mine closure during the COVID-19 pandemic.” https://www.business-humanrights.org/en/latest-news/drc-mining-minister-warns-against-the-social-and-economic-impact-of-mine-closures-during-the-covid-19-pandemic/

GARDAWORLD. 2020. “DRC: authorities declare state of emergency March 24/3.” https://www.garda.com/crisis24/news-alerts/326271/drc-authorities-declare-state-of-emergency-march-24-update-3

IPIS. 2020. “The impact of COVID-19 on the artisanal mining sector in Eastern DRC.” https://ipisresearch.be/publication/the-impact-of-covid-19-on-the-artisanal-mining-sector-in-eastern-drc/

World Bank. 2020. “World Population: DRC.” Accessed on 16 June 2020 https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.POP.TOTL?locations=CG-CD

Mobula, L. M., H. Samaha, M. Yao, A. S. Gueye, B. Diallo, C. Umutoni, J. Anoko, J. P. Lokonga, L. Minikulu, M. Mossoko, and E. Bruni, 2020. “Mobilizing the COVID-19 response in the DRC.” Accessed on 23 June 2020 https://www.path.org/articles/mobilizing-covid-19-response-drc/

About the authors:

Christo Gorpudolo is a development practitioner who has been working in the development sector since 2014. She is an early career researcher with an academic interest in topics including humanitarian aid, gender, peace, and conflict. She has a Master’s of Arts Degree in Development Studies from the ISS.

Claire Akello graduated from the ISS in 2019 with a major in Human Rights, Gender and Conflict studies. She has been engaged in both media and development work for local and international organizations for over five years, focusing on issues related to health, education, and access to justice.

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

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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.

 

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

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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.

 

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