From Hands-On to High-Tech: How Dutch Care Workers Navigate Digitalization and Robotization

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Whether we embrace it or not, digital technologies and AI are here to stay, and they are fundamentally changing the human world of labour. As new technologies revolutionize the healthcare landscape, these changes are reshaping the lives and work of care workers. In this blog, Sreerekha Sathi shares insights from her research, which explores important questions about how digital technologies are reshaping care work in the Netherlands specifically: how these innovations are affecting care workers and how care homes are adapting to digital solutions and AI-assisted robotics. What specific forms of AI-assisted robotics are currently being utilized in Dutch care homes and how can we evaluate the benefits, challenges and risks associated with their implementation?

Source: Unsplash

Digitalization, robotization and the care worker

The Dutch healthcare sector faces increasing inequality in access to care, staff shortages, increasing workloads and a high percentage of aging populations. Around two thousand government-funded care homes serve the elderly, those with dementia, disabilities and other care needs.

Like other countries in Europe, the Netherlands has been experimenting with digitization and robotization in health care. Over the past two decades, AI-assisted digital tools and Socially Assistive Robots (SARS) have become more common in surgeries, patient monitoring, consultations, diagnostics, rehabilitation, telemedicine, cognitive and emotional care, especially in the post-pandemic period (Getson, C., & Nejat, G. 2021, Kang et al. 2023). Beyond Europe, countries like China and Japan lead these developments, with Sweden and the Netherlands close behind.

The use of digital solutions and AI-assisted robotics have moved beyond the experimental phase into early adoption. Current discussion focuses on opportunities for collaboration between private companies, academic institutions and healthcare providers. This pilot study involved conversations with few care workers in the care homes, innovation managers, company officials and academic scholars in the Netherlands.

Conversations with care workers show that most technologies in use are still relatively simple – medication dispensers, sensor systems and communication tablets – selected for their affordability and ease. Once prescribed, digital care tools like Compaan, Freestyle Libre, MelioTherm, Medido, Sansara or Mono Medical are introduced to clients by neighbourhood digital teams, usually via smartphone apps connected through WIFI as part of online digital care.

The introduction of robots is slowly gaining ground. Many universities, including Erasmus University, are collaborating with private companies on new projects in robotization and digitalization in health care. Some of the robots which are popular in use currently in Europe include TinyBots (Tessa), Zorabots (NAO), Pepper, Paro and other robotic pets, and SARA, which supports dementia patients. Some care workers believe that the robots promote social contact and enhance patients’ independence, while others appreciate that robots taking over peripheral tasks can make their own work easier.

Care workers are required to learn and engage with new technologies, which directly affect their everyday lives. Although they are relatively well paid by normal standards, their workload and stress often exceed what their pay reflects. Larger, well-funded care homes have support staff who assist care workers for indirect or non-medical support at lower pay. When new technologies are introduced without sufficient involvement and inputs from the workers, they can lead to more burden on workers in terms of time and labour costs. For them, new technologies are often ‘thrown over the fence’, with insufficient training or involvement of care workers in design or decision-making, leading to frustration, resistance and underuse even when the tools are effective. They argue, ‘we don’t need fancy tools – just the right tools used in the right way.’

Many workers feel that if a robot can take on physical tasks, the workers can give clients more time and attention. When the purpose of a tool is clearly explained, and workers remain present in critical moments, clients and families are more accepting of new technology.

Gender and labour in new technologies

Feminist Science and Technology Studies (FSTS) has long shown how technologies carry gendered biases. Feminist histories of computing have highlighted women’s contribution to the invention and introduction of computers and software (Browne, Stephen & McInerney, 2023). A relevant question to explore today is would new technologies using AI assisted robotics replicate the same biases. Although new technologies are often presented as objective, they are built upon datasets and assumptions that can reproduce biases and stereotypes, based on the foundations of the feeds and accesses in-built into it (1). Robots, for instance, often reflect the idealized gendered traits. Nurse robots are designed with feminine or childlike features – extroverted and friendly – versus ‘techno-police’ styled introvert security robots as stoic and masculine.

Care work remains a heavily gendered profession, though more men are joining the field. While some men care workers face occasional client push back, they are increasingly welcomed amid shortages. Many care workers worry about being replaced by robots, yet most agree that emotional presence of caregivers – especially in elderly and dementia care – remains essential and robots may support but cannot substitute the human connection that defines good care work.

Further, workers also stress that technology must be context-sensitive: its success depends on the socio-economic profile of the area, staff availability and the lived preferences of the people receiving care. They advocate for flexible, context-based implementation rather than top-down standardization of new machines. Core to the debates on digitalization and robotization in care are ethical issues often narrowly framed as privacy concerns but extending to autonomy, emotional dignity and growing surveillance and inequality.

Insights into the future

The study observe that many attempts to introduce digital technologies or robotics in care homes stall in the pilot phase, often disliked or abandoned by care professionals or clients. Care workers need time and training to trust these devices, especially regarding the risks and uncertainties involved. They emphasize early involvement through co-design as essential for building trust, transparency and accountability. For sustainable implementation, the focus should shift from what is ‘new’ to what is ‘useful’.

Future debates will likely centre around prioritizing digitization in health care versus SARs in physical care. Persistent challenges include time constraints to software failures (Huisman & Kort 2019). As efforts to create ‘smart homes’ and support independent living continue (Allaban, Wang & Padir 2020), environmental sustainability and climate resilience must become priorities.

Another important step for exploration is to critically analyze the growing corporatization and monopolization in digitization and robotization (Zuboff, 2019; Hao, 2025). Rather than leaving healthcare innovations to monopolies or private capital, public or community-based state welfare support must retain agency in how digital and robotic tools are implemented. Finally, pushing back from military robotics towards socially beneficial technologies – such as health care or waste management – needs to be prioritized.

As a work in progress, this research is significant for understanding the social impacts of digitalization and robotization. In the next step of this study, these conversations will further bring together care workers, academics and innovative managers between the global south and the global north to foster dialogue about how these changes are reshaping the healthcare economy, care homes and the future of care workers.

 

End Note:

  1. A focus on changing forms of labour, along with the concerns around gender stereotypes and gendered knowledges attributed to social robots, is important for further exploration in the fields of AI-assisted occupations. The introduction of new machines involves the invisible human labour behind them, which is mostly the ‘ghost workers’ from the global south, whether with data work, coding or mining. What is inherent to existing social contexts, including gender, class, and racial stereotypes, are already heavily compromising the digital world.

Acknowledgements: This research was supported by a small grant from Erasmus Trustfonds for 2024-2025, I embarked on this short study to explore these questions. Although the grant period concluded in June 2025, the research continues. I would like to thank Ms. Julia van Stenis for her invaluable support in making this study possible.

 

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

 

About the author:

Sreerekha Sathi

Sreerekha Sathi works on issues of gender, political economy, and critical development studies. Her current research explores the intersections of gender, care, and labour with digitalization, AI, and the future of work, and engages with critical debates in decolonial thought. She is a member of the editorial board of Development and Change.

 

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To address recurring crises, we must attempt global development policy reforms

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Global Governance and Policy Analyst Chimwemwe Salie Hara looks into the road towards achieving the Sustainable Development Goals by 2030 in this blog, arguing that reform of financing and governance must be made in the face of significant geopolitical tensions if we are to achieve better outcomes for countries across the world that ‘leaves no one behind’.  

Photo by John Cameron on Unsplash

The world is experiencing an escalation of geopolitical tensions that have impacted development trends in various regions. These tensions have led to uncertainties as various shocks require responses from global development policies that are coordinated and cooperative between the countries in the ‘Global North’ and the ‘Global South’. Currently, the global value chain has been disrupted and high inflation rates have led to increased poverty for many people in both developed and developing countries. In addition, challenges such as wars, climate change which has exacerbated inequalities and immigration, and the rise of populism have made global cooperation more difficult as actors from the Global North and South have failed to tackle these important issues together. At a time when global governance institutions such as the United Nations are focused on achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by 2030, ongoing conflicts in regions such as Africa, Europe and Middle East are jeopardizing SDG 16, which emphasises the promotion of peace and SDG 17 of promoting partnerships to achieve all goals.

Nationalist turns in the ‘Global North’ hit development financing

The challenge of financing these global goals is exacerbated by a shift in priorities in relation to multiple armed conflicts. Much of the effort and attention is now focused on buying arms rather than investing in development cooperation programs that could help people affected by geopolitical crises, many of whom are currently living in dire poverty. Unfortunately, as a result of these geopolitical upheavals, some regions, particularly in Europe and America, have changed their development policies and prioritised security over global development cooperation. Recently, the ‘Dutch government’ announced to cut development cooperation and the British Prime Minister also announced to cut development aid and allocate more funds to defence security. And the USAID was disbanded with President Trump’s second term. This shows that most countries that had pledged 0.7% of their gross national income (GNI) to the United Nations are reducing their spending on official development assistance (ODA)/development cooperation. This puts progress towards achieving some of the SDGs at risk around the world, particularly on poverty, hunger, education and health.

This shift can largely be attributed to the rise of nationalist governments and populism, reminiscent of the situation in the United Kingdom (UK) during Brexit. Although, there are some efforts at engagement, such as the European Union’s (EU) Global Gateway Initiative (launched in 2021), which aims to strengthen relations with African countries, significant changes in their approach are still needed.

The focus should not only be on humanitarian aid, but also on investments in the energy sector development and trade that focuses on improving the value chain and governance as these remain major challenges for most African governments. For example, Malawi has an energy sector problem and poor road infrastructure development that affects industrialisation and trade for economic transformation. With allies like the EU through the Global Gateway Initiative, the country could improve its socio-economic development indicators. This approach would help achieve some development initiatives despite the geopolitical challenges.

Global governance has struggled with difficulties in development cooperation, especially in climate finance, even after the heads of state and government endorsed the Paris Climate Agreement in 2015. The situation worsened when the United States withdrew from the climate agreement during Donald Trump’s first term, and then again now in his second term as part of an inward-looking development policy and significant funding cuts under the nationalist slogans of ‘America First’ and ‘Make America Great Again’. This highlights the challenges facing global cooperation, leading to a decline in development efforts rather than strengthening solutions to tackle climate change. This call for radical reforms to international financial planning draws some lessons from the Bridgetown Initiative, which campaigned and advocating for reforming global financing in 2023 Paris Summit, France.

Reducing geopolitical tensions is key for better outcomes for all

With only five years left until the 2030 deadline for the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), significant efforts must be made, especially by global leadership with negotiating experience, to reach common agreements that reduce geopolitical tensions. This focus is critical to advancing global development cooperation, especially in times of crisis. The geopolitical tensions on trade between China and the United States must be resolved amicably as no country can sustain itself in a globalized world with its own resources. This requires the intervention of institutions such as the World Trade Organisation (WTO) to protect global trade partnerships. Therefore, considerable efforts should be made to review trade agreements between the two countries on the basis of rules, not power. If these tensions escalate, they will disproportionately affect countries in the Global South, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa and others, as President Trump has already announced tariffs around the world, even on poor countries like Malawi.

Once geopolitical tensions subside, world leaders must find common ground to address the major challenges by organizing global development cooperation in a way that takes into account the interests of all stakeholders from the Global North and the Global South. Efforts should also be made to develop mechanisms that support long-term global sustainability goals. A global governance institution such as the United Nations should lead the reform process and ensure that global development cooperation adapts to current realities rather than relying on the development models of the 1940’s when most institutions were established. It is important to remember that the world is currently facing several geopolitical crises. Financing should also be a priority, as financial challenges are hampering achieving global goals. There is an urgent need to develop clear standards that apply more equitable and inclusive methodologies. This will help define future collective, complementary, and cooperative activities and responses.

The world needs a leader that can influence and set an example in this regard. The countries of the Global South, especially sub-Saharan Africa, should advocate innovative investment approaches such as the exchange of technical knowledge and value creation capacities with a liable partner. This would promote trade within the framework of the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) established in 2018. In the long term, the continent will move away from dependence on the global economic system by promoting economic trade for socio-economic development instead of relying solely on aid. Financing opportunities for domestic revenue mobilization in the Global South should be promoted through the development of a strategy aligned with the 2015 Addis Ababa Action Agenda (AAAA). This approach can help finance the Sustainable Development Goals and close some of the gaps created by donor fatigue

In this way, voices from the Global South would have much to say about their development pathways, strategies, and tactics to combat poverty, food insecurity and cross-border challenges through collaborative and coordinated global development policies. In that way, SDGs ‘Leave no one behind’ by 2030 will be achieved.  Currently, the system is still dictated by the countries of the Global North, be it in trade or in the financing of global goals thus why radical reforms are needed.

Therefore, to effectively address today’s polycrisis and global social issues, changing global development policy will require a consensus that prioritizes fairness, economic stability for all, and collaboration.

 

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

About the Author:

Chimwemwe Salie Hara

Chimwemwe Salie Hara is a Global Governance and Policy Analyst and Programmes Adviser for Sustainable Livelihood Development at Opdracht (Mission) in Africa (AiO), The Netherlands. He holds an MSc in International Public Administration from Erasmus University Rotterdam, with a focus on governance, management, and policy. His work centers on globalisation, development cooperation, public policy, social protection, and humanitarian governance.

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Humanitarian Observatories Series | USAID suspension is a wake-up call to address fragility of Humanitarian Actions in Ethiopia

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On the first day in office of his second presidential term, Donald Trump signed an executive order freezing the USAID for 90 days, reportedly to assess the programme’s ‘effectiveness and alignment with US foreign policy’. On 10 March 2025, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio ended the world’s most vulnerable communities’ slight hope by announcing the permanent suspension of the USAID’s 83% programme. This aggressive measure is the harshest blow to the organization’s operation since its establishment in 1961. The UK and Netherlands are also making similar moves, significantly diminishing their overseas development and humanitarian funding. The measure has a significant adverse impact in Ethiopia, where humanitarian aid is the only thread of hope, at least currently, for many affected communities, including millions of internally displaced persons (IDPs). In this blog, Alemayehu B. Hordofa and Marga F. Angerasa contend that humanitarian actors and donors have not achieved the necessary strengthening of local capacities to respond to the ongoing crisis in Ethiopia, and that they should redouble their efforts to take targeted normative and practical measures to enhance local resilience to counterbalance, in the long-term, the adverse impacts of policy changes in donor countries.
This photo was taken in April 2024 by the first author in Seba Care Internally Displaced Persons camp. Volunteers are giving medical support to IDPs as a part of the BilalAid health outreach programme in Seba Care IDP shelter in Mekele, Ethiopia. BilalAid was established in 2024 by local youths who were previously volunteering informally in their communities to respond to humanitarian causes.
Humanitarian funding in Ethiopia Ethiopia is one of the biggest recipients of humanitarian aid in Africa. According to the 2024 Ethiopian Humanitarian Response Plan, over 21.4 million people in Ethiopia needed humanitarian assistance due to complex humanitarian crises such as climate change-induced disasters, armed conflicts, political violence, epidemic outbreaks and landslides. The conflict in Northern Ethiopia (2020-2022), the ongoing armed conflict in the Oromia and Amhara regions and climate change-induced food insecurity in south and south-west parts of the country displaced millions of individuals from their homes and have made them dependent on humanitarian aid. In some parts of the country, conflict(s) have coincided with drought, exacerbating the crisis and worsening the vulnerability of the affected communities. In 2024, the humanitarian community in Ethiopia appealed for 3.24  billion USD to reach 15.5 million people. This appeal raised only 1.79 billion USD, with the US government contributing 405.3 million USD. Beyond responding to the crisis as the primary duty-bearer, the Government of Ethiopia (GoE) also contributed 264.5 million USD to the 2024 Ethiopian Humanitarian Fund (EHF). This year, the EHF has anticipated a requirement of 2 billion USD to respond to multiple crises in various parts of the country. Given the need for humanitarian support, the humanitarian fund in the country is visibly inadequate, and various humanitarian interventions in Ethiopia are being challenged by, among other things, inadequate funding and unfulfilled promises of localization. The USAID suspension is another recent significant blow to the country’s dwindling and inadequate humanitarian funding. The USAID aid suspension has placed the lives of vulnerable communities at risk The USAID funding cut has placed the lives of millions of people in need of humanitarian assistance in peril. The aid was stopped without any back-up, thus exposing vulnerable communities to exceptionally dangerous risks. Beyond the impact on people receiving aid, the decision has resulted in many aid workers being made unemployed. The Ethiopian Ministry of Health terminated 5000 employment contracts due to the USAID aid suspension. These health workers were supporting clinics on HIV-related programmes in various parts of the country. Likewise, even though a significant portion of Ethiopia’s development aid funding now comes from international development banks (World Bank, AfDB, IMF), which come with both punitive interest rates and market reforms, the suspension of USAID affects the country’s foreign currency reserve and flow – further minimizing the agency of Ethiopian policymakers and local organizations. In addition, the suspension of aid affects accountability relations in the humanitarian sector and beyond. Following the announcement of the funding suspension, over 85 percent of Civil Society Organizations suspended their programmes in Ethiopia. These CSOs were implementing programmes ranging from ensuring the right to access justice for displaced communities, advocating for accountability in the humanitarian sector and durable solutions and socio-economic recovery for conflict-affected peoples. The suspension decapitated CSOs operating in complex operational spaces and exacerbated the murky Ethiopian civil society environment. According to one humanitarian worker that we interviewed in Addis Ababa, ‘the suspension suppresses independent voices and shrinks the civic space as it inhibits vibrant CSOs from implementing programmes’. The CSOs that advance diverse perspectives are affected by the USAID suspension and only those that are supported by government will continue to operate in the country. This perspective was also shared by other participants during the interviews conducted by the first author for his PhD research on humanitarian governance in Ethiopia. The devastating impact that the USAID aid cut caused in the first few weeks of the announcement unveiled the fragmentation and fragility of Ethiopian formal humanitarian governance, its excessive reliance on foreign aid and its under-investment in supporting local humanitarian initiatives. Conversely, it allowed the government and the humanitarian actors to revisit and critically reflect on their practices around accountability and localization, as well as build the resilience of local actors to make humanitarian actors more predictable, effective and accountable. The role of local actors in responding to crises Ethiopia’s humanitarian action is noted for its plurality of actors. There are diverse humanitarian actors with their own practices and policies. However, the actors’ interventions vary in mandate, capacity and ability to respond to and cope with emergencies. They possess completely unequal power, leverage and authority, which are dependent on several factors including location, association and who they represent. Beyond targeted and institutionalized humanitarian interventions, humanitarianism by the ordinary citizenry, or vernacular humanitarianism, is a defining feature of Ethiopia’s humanitarian action. Millions of internally displaced persons are living with and supported by the host communities with no meaningful support from international or national formal humanitarian organizations. Ordinary citizens often organize themselves around social media such as TikTok, Facebook and Instagram and were able to mobilize millions in support of victims of disasters. For example, ordinary Ethiopians informally organized on social media and did commendable work in averting the devastating consequences of drought in Borena in 2023, supported IDPs displaced from their homes due to political violence around Oromia-Somali borders in 2018 and supported millions of IDPs in Horro Guduru and East Wallagga zones while the institutionalized humanitarians were unable to intervene (during the first phase of the crisis) due to access difficulties. Ethiopian diasporas and business communities also participate in humanitarian action in the country. Apart from these few examples, ordinary Ethiopians are the backbone of the country’s humanitarian efforts and first responders to crises. However, the contributions of local actors remain invisible, are not nurtured and there has been inadequate effort to genuinely strengthen their capacity. The dominant discourse has wrongly portrayed humanitarianism in Ethiopia as a monopoly field of international humanitarian actors belittling the local community’s effort to address their problems. The visibility of localized humanitarianism in Ethiopia has been overshadowed by the increased visibility of the ‘international humanitarian community’s’ response to crises. Likewise, despite the global movement and advocacy for accountability to affected communities, humanitarian practitioners we spoke to in Addis Ababa largely believed that the promises of localization have largely remained unfulfilled. The interviews that we conducted with humanitarian workers and independent observers revealed that humanitarian organizations were primarily preoccupied with service delivery rather than strengthening local capacity to transition to recovery and reconstruction. Thus, to make humanitarian efforts more predictable and effective, humanitarian actors should prioritize local initiatives to make the sector sustainable and least affected by external decisions. The recent policy changes in donor countries, spearheaded by the USAID suspension of foreign assistance, are a wake-up call for the country to strengthen its local humanitarian initiatives and advance and implement the humanitarian reform agenda in national and local contexts. Mobilizing local actors and domestic resources Mobilizing domestic resources can reduce the dependency on foreign countries overseas development and humanitarian aid policies. Local actors play a crucial role in filling the gaps created due to changes in the priorities and policies of donor countries. However, as local initiatives still lack targeted support, external donors finance a significant portion of formal humanitarian action, USAID being the major partner. Yet Ethiopia has recently started some venerable initiatives that could contribute to the country’s self-reliance in the long run. The country started a food sovereignty endeavour, dubbed by the Government of Ethiopia (GoE) as a ‘decisive path toward food self-sufficiency’. The initiative prioritizes investing in local innovations in agriculture and technology. The government planned to address food insecurity through funding by state-owned enterprises and large-scale farming coordinated by its national disaster risk management office, the Ministry of Agriculture and relevant regional offices. The country has also been implementing the Green Legacy Initiative to avert the negative impact of climate change. Similarly, the government has commenced other national initiatives, such as the Bounty of the Basket, which have a significant potential to strengthen local resilience and preparedness. The transitional justice and national dialogue mechanisms have also the potential to end or significantly reduce the humanitarian needs emanating from the devastating impacts of conflict or political violence. However, even though these initiatives have the potential, if appropriately implemented and subjected to rigorous accountability mechanisms, to minimize the impacts of climate change and end the need caused by conflict, they may not counterbalance the adverse impacts of the policy change in donor countries in the short term. Conclusion and the way forward Given the high level of need, it is tremendously challenging to respond to the current humanitarian crisis without support from the international community in general and USAID in particular. The theoretical rhetoric that regarded local actors as genuine partners with a meaningful role in leading and funding humanitarian responses has not yet been translated into practice. Affected communities are still considered passive recipients of aid by the majority of international humanitarian actors working in Ethiopia. The current initiatives by the GoE to satisfy humanitarian needs with local capacity are commendable and can change this narrative in the long run. Such initiatives need to show tangible progress on the ground. Ending conflicts with agreements and finding durable solutions for millions of IDPs currently stranded in various IDP shelters are some of the immediate measures that the government can take to relieve the pressure on humanitarian action in the country. Ensuring government efficiency and addressing rampant corruption that divert critical resources from the public are other measures that the government may immediately take to avert further crisis. Furthermore, local CSOs need to reassess their excessive reliance on international funding and devise innovative means to mobilize domestic resources, strengthen local giving and prioritize local innovations. The promises of localization remained unfulfilled. Donors and the INGOs currently operating in the country need to revisit their commitments to localization and hold themselves accountable for failing to honour the grand bargain’s promises. Opinions expressed in Bliss posts reflect solely the views of the author of the post in question.

About the Authors:

Alemayehu B. Hordofa
Alemayehu B. Hordofa is a Ph.D. researcher at the International Institute of Social Studies (ISS), Erasmus University Rotterdam (EUR). He obtained his LLM in International Human Rights Law from the Irish Center for Human Rights (ICHR), University of Galway, Ireland. He is currently working on humanitarian governance in Ethiopia focusing on the role of Civil Society Organizations and Crisis-affected People to shape humanitarian governance ‘from below’. His research interests lie in forced displacement, accountability in humanitarian context, localization of humanitarian aid, transitional justice, and the development of CSOs in Ethiopia.
Marga Fekadu Angerasa
Marga Fekadu Angerasa is a law lecturer at Wolkite University (Wolkite, Ethiopia) with research interest and specialty on human rights, forced displacement and transitional justice. He has an LLM in human rights law from Addis Ababa University (2021). Marga is a member of Ethiopia Humanitarian Observatory and advocates for the advancement of human rights and works with CSOs on human rights issues.    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.

This blog is part of the  Humanitarian Governance: Accountability, Advocacy, Alternatives’ project. This project has received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No. 884139

Mobilizing against patriarchy and caste on Twitter: How women in India use digital spaces to speak up against gender-based violence

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Digital spaces can amplify marginalized voices, but for many women, especially Dalit women in India, they often become sites of abuse. Navigating the intersection of gender, caste, and religion, Dalit women face systemic exclusion and violence, reinforced by both offline and online structures. While technology does not oppress all women equally, movements like #MeToo have helped Dalit women spotlight caste-based and patriarchal violence. In this blog, recent ISS MA graduates, Sri Lakshmi, and Emaediong Akpan explore how digital platforms both challenge and reinforce structural inequalities, revealing that technology is never neutral.

Image Credit: DALL-E

Dalit women in India

The Indian Hindu religious caste system (more than 3000 years old) has stratified Indian society into castes based on bloodline, occupation, and economic resources. The Brahman caste and other ‘upper’ castes have capitalized on their social position to exercise superiority and control over the ‘lower castes’ and therefore sustains an exploitative system. At the other end of the scale, the Dalit caste is deemed to have been rejected by God and is therefore ‘outside’ the caste system. While India has made progress in several social aspects, the sturdy caste system continues to prevail based on religious authorization. The Brahman caste has subjugated women from their own caste as well as ‘lower’ castes to maintain ‘caste purity’. This modus operandi is manifested in intense oppression and gender-based violence towards the Dalit women. ‘In every sphere of life, they (Dalit women) are in a pitiable position, worse off than the upper caste women’ due to the triple oppression exerted by men from their own caste and ‘upper castes’. The triple oppression here refers to casteism, patriarchy,and economic injustices that are manifested as gender-based violence, caste-based discrimination, and being limited to low-grade jobs that are poorly paid.

The Janus-faced nature of digital spaces in India: Reflections on the non-neutral nature of digital spaces

Digital technology has expanded communication, breaking traditional media barriers and enabling collective action. Today,people are leveraging digital spaces like Twitter (now X),and FaceBook to organize, draw attention to their struggles, and demand change.

In India, the dawn of digital spaces transformed social interactions, providing avenues for citizens to engage politically, communicate their demands. These spaces are considered revolutionary tools that promote global inclusion and equality. 

These spaces also act as a window into the broader Indian society, where norms and power interact to control individual actions. In navigating societal norms, digital spaces have been useful in helping Dalit women find community and access resources for mobilization. For example, Pallical, a Dalit rights activist, noted that ‘online space is refreshing and a space we never had earlier. There used to be limited regional media spaces, but we are now visible, and much of our anti-caste conversations are now happening on social media platforms’. For example, stories of how Dalit women were flogged and assaulted in public in the small city of Una led to government intervention only after it went viral on Twitter.

In this example, Twitter (and other digital spaces) served as a powerful public space for minorities and marginalized voices to circumvent traditional media; online, these actors could express opinions and opposition in a succinct format, as well as unite and organize swiftly in their capacity as ‘new social movements’. However, this is not the full picture. In these spaces, these marginalized groups are still unable to escape society and have been re-victimized in the spaces that also hold a ‘liberating’ potential’. This inability to ‘escape’ reality is why Wacjman states that technologies are not neutral; they do not exist outside of society but are a part of society. Within digital spaces, interactions are understood as performing gender roles that are deeply ingrained in society.

Digital spaces are a replication of gendered societal values and norms. One such replication is the backlash that followed the posting of an image showing a poster held by Jack Dorsey (former Twitter CEO) and Dalit Activists that read ‘Smash Brahminical Patriarchy’.

Image
Former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey and Activists holding a Poster: Source Nalina

This sparked controversy and threats of boycotts on Twitter, ultimately emboldening casteism by forcing an apology for the poster and image. Despite knowing the impact of the caste system, Twitter conformed to the social norms in Indian society by stating that the poster ‘did not represent Twitter’s official position’. Twitter also apologized for speaking out against marginalization and social injustice in order to avert the risk of losing the Indian market which boasts about 8 million Twitter users. This singular act amongst many others reflects how technology is both a source and consequence of marginalization; first because of how it relates with society and second as a consequence of marginalization by reinforcing it through ‘mindless apologies’.

Twitter’s Denial of Siding with Dalits; Source: Bapuji and Chrispa

Gendered access and use of technology in India: The #MeToo case study in India

The #MeToo movement was a viral online movement of raising voices against the sexual harassment of women. Many women came forward to share their experiences using the hashtag #MeToo on Twitter and other digital spaces.

The Indian #MeToo movement leaves the original ‘Me’ behind

The Indian #MeToo movement was started in 2017 by Raya Sarkar, a woman from the Dalit caste. She used the digital space of Facebook to expose sexual harassment as a form of gender-based violence by male professors in Indian universities by curating a List of Sexual Harassers in Academia (LoSHA). Sarkar was berated for posting such a ‘name and shame list’ in an attempt to re-enact the historical silencing and disregard for the testimonies of sexual violence against Dalit women in India. After this, the movement was taken over by mainstream activists, especially on Twitter and this diffused any remnant attention on the marginalization of women from the Dalit caste. While there were several personal testimonies on Twitter in which Indian women shared their experiences of sexual harassment, the testimonies of Dalit women were absent and scarcely featured in the debates that ensued. Hence, Twitter became a tool used to exclude the voices of the most oppressed who suffer on account of their class, race, and gender. In this way, Twitter reinforced the marginalization of Dalit women.

Technology as a source and consequence of gendered relations: Exclusion and discrediting of marginalized voices

As stated earlier, digital spaces have been instrumental in helping marginalized groups draw attention to social injustices. However, platforms like Twitter are generally unsupportive and even hostile toward women from the Dalit caste. Their marginalization on Twitter reflects these women’s reality by mirroring the existing caste network. It is unsettling to witness the casual and rarely-questioned oppression on Twitter faced by Dalit women. The oppression includes casteist slurs, disparaging comments on darker skin tones, and implicit insults on how women who are academically, professionally, and financially successful, or who have a fairer skin tone, are told that they don’t ‘look’ Dalit. Twitter has also provided the space for misogynists to target Dalit women without any consequences. This shows how technology (digital spaces) embolden and exacerbate existing gender inequalities and caste-based marginalization’ . Gender- and caste-based social dynamics and technology therefore connive to leave women from the Dalit caste behind on Twitter.

Conclusion

While there are numerous accounts of the benefits of social movements that have been organized in digital spaces, the realities are not the same for all, especially for marginalized groups. This lends credence to Whelan’s position that technology does not oppress all in the same way, nor does it necessarily oppress all women. In India, Dalit women, despite having gained access to digital spaces to draw attention to the injustice they face, are often faced with violence based on their gender and caste. Thus, although Twitter helped to break the culture of silence around sexual violence and draw attention to the injustices faced by Dalit women, it did not influence social relations to address the root causes. Rather, it emboldened these root causes and became a space where Dalit women continue to experience violence. People who wield more power (upper caste and those with more access) decide and shape technology by deciding what information is important or true.

Digital spaces are double-edged – they expose women and marginalized groups to harm, yet remain vital for organizing social movements. Recognizing the lack of neutrality of these spaces remains crucial, as offline systems of oppression are often mirrored and reinforced online. While legal frameworks can play a role in addressing digital harms, they alone cannot dismantle deeply entrenched caste and gender hierarchies. Instead, the focus must shift to challenging the power structures that shape technology itself. The experiences of Dalit women show that technology can be both a tool of oppression and resistance. Ensuring that digital platforms do not further marginalize vulnerable communities requires holding innovators and policymakers to higher ethical standards while amplifying the voices of those fighting for justice.

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

About the authors:

Sri Lakshmi

Sri Lakshmi is a recent graduate of the Master’s in Development Studies program at the International Institute of Social Studies. With nine years of experience working with students, caregivers, educators, disability inclusion organizations, and government officials. Sri is passionate about fostering inclusive spaces, bridging the gap between education and social impact.

Emaediong Akpan

Emaediong Akpan is a recent graduate of 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 1,2, 3

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Bodies Designed for Profit

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Gender inequality and the discrimination of sexual and gender minorities in Nigeria are often attributed to sociocultural norms and unfavourable state policies. However, reflecting on body politics reveals a deeper entanglement with state control, colonial legacies, and capitalism. Our bodies are not just personal, they are sites of regulation, commodification, and profit. From the exploitation of women in the corporate sector, often referred to as ‘corporate prostitution’, to the policing of gender nonconforming and the sexualisation of bodies in the creative industry, capitalism thrives on controlling and monetising bodies. In this blog, Eno-Obong Etetim reflects on these dynamics and highlights body politics activism in Nigeria, arguing that a decolonial lens is crucial for reclaiming bodily autonomy. 

Photo Credit: Unsplash

Gender inequality and the discrimination of sexual and gender minorities in Nigeria are often attributed to sociocultural norms and unfavourable state policies. However, my reflection on body politics reveals a deeper entanglement with state control, colonial legacies, and capitalism. Our bodies are not just personal, they are sites of regulation, commodification, and profit. From the regulation of the body by the state to the utilisation of certain bodies to drive profits, the body is a canvas for the expression of capitalism and state power. This commodification and socio-political regulation of human bodies encompasses what is termed ‘body politics’ and has birthed the need for activism to reclaim bodily autonomy.

I reflect on my evolving understanding of body politics and its intersection with capitalism through three illustrative examples:  The commodification of women within the Nigerian banking sector – often referred to as ‘corporate prostitution’; The state’s regulation of sexual minorities and gender non-conforming individuals, and; The sexualisation of bodies within the creative industry. With these examples, I explore instances of body politics activism in Nigeria, ultimately concluding with how decoloniality serves as a relevant framework for conceptualising and fostering resistance.

Examples of Body Politics at Work

‘Corporate Prostitution’

The Nigerian banking sector has faced criticism for its gender-specific hiring practices, particularly in marketing roles. For these roles, women are often recruited based on certain physical characteristics, like height, slimness, and lighter skin tone. These traits are frequently perceived as advantageous for attracting high-net-worth clients, mostly men, to the bank’s customer base. This recruitment approach is grounded in the belief that female marketers can use their appearance to boost customer engagement and grow the bank’s clientele. Many financial institutions have been alleged to impose unrealistic sales targets on these marketers, with monthly quotas sometimes reaching millions of Naira. Reports suggest that management may advocate for morally ambiguous practices, evidenced by phrases like “do what you must [to bring in customers],” which could pressure women to utilise their physical appeal in questionable ways to meet these benchmarks. In turn, this trend of sexualising women in the workplace has led some male clients to expect sexual favors in exchange for financial services, such as opening accounts or depositing funds. The systemic focus on profit generation has shifted attention away from ethical considerations, linking career advancement directly to the ability to meet these aggressive targets. Employees who fail to meet these expectations face job insecurity or dismissal.

In response to this commodification of women’s bodies and the pressing need for reform, the Nigerian Senate introduced proposals for an anti-corporate prostitution and exploitation bill in 2010 and again in 2016. These legislative efforts aimed to address the intersection of gender, employment practices, and corporate responsibility within the financial sector.

 

LGBTIQ+ and State Control

Another significant aspect of body politics lies in how the state regulates sexuality. Harcourt, in her work, connects the discourse on body politics to Foucault’s idea of Biopolitics, which pertains to the socio-political control and regulation of life, often leading to the reinforcement of gendered identities. A closely related concept is Mbembe’s necropolitics, which discusses the sovereignty of the body, often manifesting as state threats to life and death. For instance, in Nigeria, the government enforces discrimination and threatens the lives of LGBTIQ+ individuals through the same-sex prohibition act, which criminalises all forms of same-sex relationships. This law serves as a clear illustration of body politics since it dictates how bodies must exist. The systematic control of bodies as a means to uphold state order has been the subject of academic discourses.  According to  Alexander the state normalises heterosexuality while condemning any sexual orientation that does not contribute to the reproduction of the nation. In this way, the state views bodies merely as sites for reproduction. By placing LGBTIQ+ rights within the context of capitalism and body politics, we can better understand that state regulation of sexuality is also tied to the need to maintain a future labor force. Historically, states have opposed non-traditional family structures because women’s bodies have been seen as essential for population growth. Furthermore, capitalism thrives on hierarchies and a gendered division of labor, but gender non-conforming individuals challenge these established roles and responsibilities. By reinforcing heterosexuality, the state seeks to secure future populations and, ultimately, the labour workforce.

 

Body Politics and the Creative Industry

The creative industry thrives on the sexualisation of women’s bodies. ‘Sex sells’ is a capitalist phrase utilised in the marketing and entertainment industry as a rationale to portray women’s bodies in an overtly sexualised manner under the guise of sexual liberation. Female talent and capacity for career advancement in the creative industry are measured not by artistic merit, but by whatever erotic heights the body can achieve.
Female artists are subjected to systemic pressures where their physical appearance significantly influences their career opportunities; for instance, actresses are overlooked for roles due to insufficient sexual appeal, and music videos often feature scantily dressed women as vixens, reinforcing a narrative that prioritises hyper-sexualised imagery. This trend reflects a capitalist agenda aimed at profit maximisation, where increased viewership translates into increased financial returns for both the artist and their management. One example is the music video for Cardi B and Megan Thee Stallion’s WAP song – that featured five minutes of ‘twerking’ – which gained 26 million views, within 24 hours of its release, establishing the record for the most views in a day. This is no attempt to condemn the artists themselves but rather to buttress societal response to the hyper-sexualisation of women in contemporary media. The societal pressure to adhere to these narrowly defined body standards has consequently fostered a global market for cosmetic surgeries, with many women opting for surgical interventions to meet these expectations.

Body Politics Activism in Nigeria

Anti-corporate Prostitution and Exploitation Bill

In 2010 and 2016, members of the Nigerian Senate attempted to address the troubling commodification of female workers in commercial banks by proposing the Anti-Corporate Prostitution and Exploitation Bill. This legislation aimed to prevent employers from taking advantage of employees and compelling them to engage in ‘iniquitous’ acts that undermine their integrity for profit. While many hailed this bill as a positive step, it faced significant pushback from the banking sector and ultimately was not passed by the Senate.
Activism may often fail but ‘succeed’ in creating the needed effort to spark public interest in certain issues and catalyse new forms of activism. Although the Anti-Corporate Prostitution Bill has yet to become law, it succeeded in raising awareness and inspired female-led organisations to push for anti-harassment legislation in workplaces and educational institutions within the Senate. One notable example is the anti-harassment bill in tertiary institutions.

Queer Activism

Same-sex unions [and relationships] are illegal in Nigeria, punishable with up to 14 years of imprisonment. This law not only targets same-sex relationships but also criminalises any support offered to individuals within this community. Despite these harsh restrictions, many individuals and organisations are actively fighting for the basic rights to life, health, and social services for queer individuals. Anti-capitalist queer activism in Nigeria has taken on various forms, including campaigns for reproductive justice and opposition to healthcare systems that prioritise profit over essential, life-saving medical care for gender non-conforming individuals, all while facing considerable state resistance. Additionally, efforts to promote inclusion in the workforce for queer individuals, improve representation in organisations and institutions, and advocate against workplace exploitation are all crucial components of body politics activism in the region.

Decoloniality as a Lens for Body Polities Activism

The categories in which we define ourselves – including our understanding of gender and sexuality – are rooted in Universalist perspectives and the “colonial matrix of power”. In her groundbreaking work, The Invention of Woman, Nigerian decolonial feminist scholar Oyéronké Oyewùmí explores how Western discourses have shifted the local socio-cultural understandings of pre-colonial Nigerian societies. She argues that the ongoing debate surrounding the gender binary is, in fact, an imported issue. Oyewùmí highlights how Western privileges tied to the visual perception of bodies created a gendered gaze that systematically categorised certain bodies, perpetuating a narrative of inferiority in comparison to the so-called ‘ideal’ of the white, civilised male. Similarly, Latin American feminist decolonial writer Maria Lugones elaborates on how colonialism has reproduced gendered identities. She contends that binary concepts of gender were used as tools of colonial control, undermining and invalidating the existing understandings of identity. These binaries have played a significant role in sustaining not only capitalism but also patriarchy, effectively serving the Eurocentric agenda aimed at population growth for labour reproduction. Positioning decoloniality in body politics activism requires delinking from Western ideologies of gender and humanness. Activists can benefit from situating their resistance in narratives that do not encourage or conform to Eurocentric and colonial dominant narratives. For instance, recent queer activism by Nigerians has been rooted in re-telling the stories of old Yoruba cosmology by relating its gender complexities and gender-fluid nature through anthropological research and modern art.

Conclusion

Body politics is the commodification and control of human bodies and experiences often through hegemonic power relations, and body politics resistance aims to challenge capitalist, colonial, and socio-political discourses that have shaped hegemonic perceptions of the body. If our bodies are sites that are transformed by hegemonic social relations and “hetero-patriarchal capitalism” we must sever from those ties and learn alternative ways of being, doing, and thinking. Body politics activism provides an opportunity to dispel colonial and hegemonic gendered behaviour that has resulted in the categorisation of women and gender non-conforming persons in the lower global pyramid of power.

This blog was first published as part of the Exercise In World Making 2023-2024.

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

About the author:

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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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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Humanitarian Action amid Prolonged Political Crisis and Conflict: Experiences of the Daughters of Charity Tigray

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In this blog, Sr. Medhin Tesfay, Director of Social and Development programmes at the Daughters of Charity Tigray (DoC-T), shares her experiences alongside that of her organization in providing solidarity-based locally embedded humanitarian assistance throughout the course of the most intense period of the conflict in Tigray from 2020-2022. During this period DoC-T had to adopt many of its approaches and services, providing programmes including emergency relief aid, psycho-social support for victims of gender-based violence in the conflict, and more besides. Sr. Tesfay is a member of the Humanitarian Observatory Ethiopia, which is hosted by the University of Addis Ababa in collaboration with ISS as part of the Humanitarian Governance: Accountability, Advocacy, Alternatives (HUM-GOV) project.

Sr. Medhin Tesfay, helping elderly and disabled individuals reach the emergency cash distribution desk during the conflict.

Amidst the prolonged humanitarian crisis and huge internal displacement in Tigray, the DoC-T adopted a community-centered approach to humanitarian aid. With the solid believe that affected population needs both hardware (in terms of food and non-food provision of assistance) and software (in terms of empowerment) supports, DOC-T has been providing impactful and innovative mental health support to empower vulnerable communities to heal, rebuild, and claim their rights. This journey demonstrates the strength of resilience, dignity, and local leadership in overcoming adversity.

Since 1973, the DoC-T have been committed to supporting vulnerable communities, particularly during the catastrophic famine of 1984-1985 and the intense conflict between 2020 and 2022. Our focus has always been on delivering targeted assistance to women, children, the elderly, and persons with disabilities. Throughout these critical periods, the DoC-T have consistently provided essential services, especially during the two years of the conflict in Tigray. DoC-T has worked relentlessly to deliver emergency cash assistance, life-saving food, vital non-food items, and necessary psychosocial support to the traumatized individuals in our communities. We have done this with a strong sense of purpose, humility, love, and empathy. This blog underscores our significant contributions during these trying times and reaffirms our steadfast dedication to creating a lasting positive impact.

From 2020 to 2022, Tigray region faced significant consequences from a prolonged conflict, compounded by one of the longest humanitarian crisis in recorded history. During this tumultuous period, DoC-T played a crucial role in delivering life-saving assistance, especially in the early days of the crisis when Mekelle (the capital of Tigray) became a refuge for many internally displaced persons (IDPs). This demonstrate the resilience of locally rooted and embedded organizations to provide vital supports to the vulnerable segments of the society when the humanitarian space is filled with insecurities and uncertainties.

While other humanitarian organizations were still arriving, DoC-T provided daily emergency support across 27 IDP camps, feeding over 34,000 IDPs for nearly eight months, often risking the safety of its employees. The organization also helped in remote and hard-to-reach areas of Tigray inaccessible to major international humanitarian agencies. The organization confronted dire conditions caused by disruptions in essential services and identified public schools that had been converted into makeshift shelters, mobilizing resources to address critical shortages of food, water, and clothing effectively. All the while DOC-T was also stuck providing all what it could, which was not even close to how much was needed. At times when there was no food, sisters and staff even went on foot on journeys that took 4 hours daily (visiting two times a day) to just to be with the community and console them.

Despite the closure of borders amid a devastating two-year conflict, the DoC-T, led by Sister Medhin Tesfay, made the decision to remain in the region with the community. This religious order was believed to be the only one operating in the area during the early days of the war.

Moving from emergency relief to offering psychosocial support

In response to the difficulties faced by women during the conflict, the Daughters of Charity offered not only emergency food assistance but also psychosocial support for those traumatized by the conflict’s horrific consequences. This psychosocial support was delivered through Women-to-Women Listening Circles, which included a nurse, a social worker, a medical student, an aid worker, and a leader from the Daughters of Charity. We drew inspiration from the Helpful Active Listening (HAL) circles, a grassroots initiative that effectively supported survivors of the Rwandan genocide. This straightforward and cost-efficient approach trains resilient women within the community to provide basic psychosocial support to their peers, enabling quick outreach to those in need. The method has successfully empowered and healed hundreds while also addressing the stigma surrounding sexual violence and fostering solidarity among victims. This impact is captured in the phrase: “breaking down the stigma and taboo surrounding sexual violence and promoting the creation of new links of solidarity between victims.”

The service has enabled survivors of gender-based violence (GBV), who once experienced deep shame and found it difficult to communicate with their children, parents, or spouses, to overcome shame and become advocates for marginalized individuals facing stigma. In the Bora district, these survivors have formed their own group and gained recognition and vital support from the local authorities. Haftu Gebru, head of the Bora District Education and Health Office, emphasized their transformation from passive victims to proactive advocates tackling the root causes of GBV showcasing the agency of the victims to advocate for solutions.

In these difficult times, the DoC-T achieved remarkable progress, but we were not in this endeavor alone. We were fortunate to receive essential assistance from numerous donors, particularly CARITAS Germany, which has dedicated considerable resources to enhance the lives of individuals in Tigray, especially in the Abergele district, which has been severely impacted by conflict and disasters.

As a valued long-term partner, CARITAS Germany has played a crucial role in the rehabilitation of specific schools and health centers, as well as repair of water points severely damaged by conflict. These initiatives have significantly reduced student dropouts, improved access to education, and ensured the availability of clean water, thereby safeguarding the community against waterborne diseases.

Lessons Learned and the Necessity to Support Local and Contextualized Intervention

The biggest lesson we learned was that with a bit more effort, it is possible to create formidable advocates in every intervention effort that can help to ensure the sustainability of the intervention by creating lasting community ties that can pass down experiences and create a structure for others to follow.

The DoC-T have been aimed to be a symbol of hope in Tigray during challenging times. We hope that our initiatives in healthcare, food security, education, and community support have positively impacted lives and fostered resilience. However, the ongoing violence and the situation faced by internally displaced persons (IDPs) have created a dire need for urgent, coordinated emergency and development responses. We urge a collaborative effort to tackle the humanitarian crisis in Tigray, leveraging our extensive experience in assisting marginalized communities in challenging circumstances.

The HUM-GOV Project is supported by a European Research Council (ERC) advanced grant, under project number: 884139

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

About the Author

Sr. Medhin Tesfay

Sr. Medhin Tesfay is a Director of Social and Development programmes of DoC Tigray, Ethiopia. She is committed to empowering marginalized communitiess by improving access to essential services and fostering sustainable development which earned her the 2023 Romero International Award offered by Trocaire during their 50th anniversary for her courageous advocacy for justice.

Contact email; medhintesfay@yahoo.com

 

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Rain or shine, the gig must go on – Platform workers navigate climate extremes

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                                     Image by Unsplash

Precariousness is an underlying factor in the gig economy. When combined with the climate crisis, this becomes an even bigger burden on gig workers. These ‘flexible workers’ are often not equipped to be flexible to the changing environment. They face the dilemma of navigating between algorithms and climate extremes, often forced to choose earnings over health. In this blog, Anna Elias explores how the vulnerabilities of the workers are amplified in the context of climate crisis. 

‘Our economic system and our planetary system are now at war. Or, more accurately, our economy is at war with many forms of life on earth, including human life. What the climate needs to avoid collapse is a contraction in humanity’s use of resources; what our economic model demands to avoid collapse is unfettered expansion. Only one of these sets of rules can be changed, and it’s not the laws of nature.’ Naomi Klein (This changes everything: Capitalism vs. the climate).

Most parts of India suffered from extreme weather conditions this year. While the temperatures soared up to 50℃ in some cities, the monsoons that followed caused extreme havoc in others. The United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (UNESCAP) report  predicts that India will lose 5.8 per cent of its working hours by 2030 due to extreme heat. What does this mean for a gig worker, for most of whom the city is their workspace, and for whom navigating the city constitutes a substantial part of their everyday life?

App based platforms have revolutionized the way urban dwellers travel, eat and purchase. While the gig economy has created numerous flexible jobs, it is also criticised for not effectively dealing with various issues such as workers’ wellbeing and social protection.

Flexible workers are not equipped to be flexible to the changing environment. In current research and policy discourses on gig work, the impact of climate change on the worker is often overlooked. While climate change has significant consequences to both their lives and livelihoods, it is only one among the many vulnerabilities they face. Gig workers already suffer from casualised, low-paid working conditions without access to long-term security, formal social protections and welfare. The pressure caused by these precarious conditions is further exemplified by extreme weather events. Beyond the immediate physical dangers posed by heatwaves or flash floods, these conditions increase the susceptibility of road accidents, thereby heightening the risk of traffic-related injuries.

As research has shown, in the gig economy, climate change is poised to act as a ‘wicked multiplier’ intensifying the vulnerabilities experienced by workers in developing countries. Gig workers in these countries are exposed to extreme weather conditions and endure long hours while navigating hazardous roads and traffic during heatwaves, storms, and floods. Those using two-wheelers to get around face additional challenges such as dust inhalation, impaired vision due to harsh sunlight, heatstroke, and the lack of shade on the roads. These conditions, along with algorithmic management and the promise of ‘lightning fast’ services, make gig workers vulnerable to exhaustion, dehydration, and severe health risks. That their earnings are dependent on the satisfactory execution of the gig exacerbates the precariousness of their situation.

Amidst this crisis, the responses from app-based companies are noteworthy. A prominent Indian food delivery platform issued the following statement: ‘please avoid ordering during peak afternoon unless absolutely necessary’. Yet in the platform economy, lower order volumes correspondingly diminish workers’ earnings. So, this seemingly well-intentioned request to customers aimed at reducing the delivery workers’ exposure to the intense afternoon heat, neglects the dilemma the workers face between making viable earnings and risking their immediate and long-term health. Another example is of a ride-hailing platform that introduced a ‘weather fee’ in Vietnam, which imposed an extra charge on an order whenever the local temperature hit 35℃. This was counter-intuitive, as it incentivized the already precarious worker to work extra hours regardless of the weather conditions, thus putting their lives at risk.

A common misconception is that extreme environmental situations affect only two -wheel drivers. Beyond the physical discomfort to themselves, even auto and taxi drivers face additional challenges of managing customer expectations and interactions on topics that are related to climate change.  For example, a common conflict between drivers and customers, especially during warm day-time hours is the driver’s reluctance to switch on the air conditioning, fearing higher fuel consumption. An Uber driver in Mumbai shares his experiences and strategy in coping with climate change:

”I don’t want to turn on the air conditioner in my car throughout the day. All the money I make goes on fuel charges. Over time, I realised that during the summer the best I can do is drive only during the night. The customers usually don’t insist on travelling with the AC on at night. Of course, I lose sleep and it affects my health. But I don’t have any other choice”. (Fieldnotes, Mumbai 2023).

Apart from highlighting the precarious nature of the work, these cases illustrate the importance of engaging all key stakeholders when developing solutions. Specifically, they emphasize the need to recognise the gig worker as an important stakeholder in the gig economy. They make clear that addressing climate challenges in the platform economy requires a collaborative effort from companies, workers, and the government.

App based platforms were once considered part of the sharing economy and hailed as harbingers of sustainability and collaborative consumption. However, with rapid expansion, they are now criticized for their significant environmental and social costs and for increasing road congestion and intensity.

Conversely, emerging research highlights the potential of platforms to be part of the solution, positioning them as essential stakeholders in sustainability efforts, emphasizing the need for collaborative approaches that integrate labour rights and climate justice. Platform companies have the best of technology and resources at their disposal to craft solutions that benefit their customers, workers and investors alike. For this, they need to view all stakeholders as equally important, create avenues for dialogue between them and work with them to incrementally build equitable solutions for both people and the planet.

Bibliography

  1. Economic survey of Asia. (1991). Economic and Social Survey of Asia and the Pacific. Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific. https://www.unescap.org/kp/2024/survey2024
  2. Vu, A. N., & Nguyen, D. L. (2024). The gig economy: The precariat in a climate precarious world. World Development Perspectives, 34, 100596. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S245229292400033X
  3. https://x.com/zomato/status/1797179156528005204
  4. Dwivedi, Y. K., Hughes, L., Kar, A. K., Baabdullah, A. M., Grover, P., Abbas, R., … & Wade, M. (2022). Climate change and COP26: Are digital technologies and information management part of the problem or the solution? An editorial reflection and call to action. International Journal of Information Management, 63, 102456. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0268401221001493

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

                       About the Author:
                                Anna Elias

Anna Elias is a PhD researcher at International Institute of Social Studies (ISS), Erasmus University Rotterdam. Her research explores socio economic transitions brought about by digitisation, particularly its effect on livelihoods in the informal economy. With a strong professional background in the social impact sector, her expertise lies at the intersection of evidence-based research and evaluation, digital innovation, and sustainability.

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Is Liberia’s illiteracy problem linked to absent fathers?

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School Reading Corner: Image by Author

The prolonged civil war that brought life in Liberia to a standstill for over a decade has left deep wounds that the country is still working to heal more than twenty years after the conflict ended. While significant interventions have been made in the country’s education sector, low literacy rates persist — but the war and its aftermath may not be the only reasons, writes ISS MA graduate Christo Gorpudolo.

Liberia has one of the highest illiteracy rates in the world, with an adult literacy rate of 48.3% in 2017 (the global average is 84.7%) and a youth literacy rate of 77.46% (the global average is 91.68%). The country scored 177 out of 193 countries and territories on the 2022 Human Development Index (HDI), a composite statistic used to measure and rank countries’ levels of social and economic development according to the level of education, life expectancy, and standard of living.

But while the country’s low adult literacy rate has been linked to civil war and resulting poverty, a lack of infrastructure, and inadequate teacher training, recent research I conducted in central Liberia revealed another possible explanation: absent fathers. This observation is important because it is a factor that is not directly attributable to the civil war but that may have a potentially significant impact on efforts to address the persistent low adult literacy rate.

Understandings of Liberia’s low literacy rates

Much of Liberia’s education-related backlogs have been attributed to the civil war that ravaged this low-income country between 1989 and 2003. The long-standing impact of the war, including the destruction of much of the country’s trained workforce, has led to a struggling educational system still recovering from many challenges, including those related to access to education, the quality of instruction, and a lack of human and financial resources.

The absence of fathers hitherto has not been cited as a factor contributing to illiteracy, although it has been marked by scholars as an important factor positively affecting the growth of school–going children in Liberia. A report by the 2024 World Education network on Liberia’s education system moreover states that fathers’ involvement in children’s education means a lot to children, who eventually tend to perform better.

Conversely, non-profit organization All For Kids states that children who grow up without fathers are more likely to experience unemployment as adults, have low incomes, remain on social assistance, and experience homelessness. The organization also states that absent fathers is a factor consistently co-occurring with a wide range of mental health disorders and related problems, particularly anxiety, depression, and increased suicide risk.

An unexpected observation

My observation that the absence of fathers could be linked to low literacy levels among children came as I was conducting research on another topic. In March this year, I was hired by the CERATH Development Organization to research how young Liberian adolescents view the Liberian food system. This research is intended to help CERATH understand Liberia’s food security and what children’s visions are for a food secure Liberia. I spoke to 50 young adolescents between the ages of 9 and 17; of these children,19 were not attending school and the remaining 31 children were attending school.

During the research, while interviewing the children who were not attending school, I made an unexpected observation: all the children I spoke to who were not in school faced absent fathers at home or in their lives. Some of them live with mothers, aunts, or grandmothers who work to some extent; others live with mothers, aunts and grandmothers who are physically able to but do not engage in economic activities.

One of the children (aged 16) stated that his father died in 2020 in Monrovia, Liberia’s capital. Because of his father’s death, he and his mother had to move back to Bong County in central Liberia; he has not been enrolled in school since 2020. Another participant aged 16, also without a father, has never been to school. Yet another participant aged 9, also without a father, has also never been to school.

Thinking outside the box

Given their ages, all of these children were born after the Liberian civil war and were not actively involved in the war. Most of them also live close to schools and don’t necessarily have to walk miles to school. The country moreover has a free and compulsory primary education policy, which was introduced in 2003. Yet, despite these factors that may facilitate (or at least do not hinder) school attendance, these young adolescents are not currently in school. Could absent fathers be a reason for this and, thus, for Liberia’s low literacy rate?

Speaking with these young children, I observed that they are increasingly concerned about possibly never going to school. Others hope that their mothers and guardians would secure funding to send them to school. It is clear that the children I interviewed do want to attend school, but do not foresee the possibility of doing so. This is why it is important to examine all possible reasons for children’s failure to attend school.

The World Literacy Foundation states that in developing and emerging countries, the number of children and youth with no basic foundational and literacy skills is continuing to rise by an estimated 20% per year. Without any effective intervention, these young people face a lifetime of poverty and unemployment. Thus, further investigation is needed to ensure that children can attain quality education. Investigating the possible link between school attendance and the absence of fathers is an important place to start.

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

About the author:

Christo Z. Gorpudolo is a development practitioner with over 9 years of work experience in the development sector. She is particularly interested in research  areas that cover peace and conflict, children rights, humanitarian aid and gender. She has a Masters of Arts degree in Development studies, Social Justice Perspective from the International Institute of Social Studies.

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How the United States’s legacy of slavery influences unequal credit scores and what we can do about it

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The credit scoring system in the United States, particularly the FICO score, significantly impacts individuals’ access to affordable financing, housing, and employment opportunities. In this blog article, recent ISS MA graduate Conor Farrell shows that though deemed “colour-blind,” the model inadvertently perpetuates racial disparities rooted in historical injustices, particularly slavery. Reforms, including AI-enabled credit scoring and policy changes like excluding medical debt from credit considerations, are essential to address these inequities and break the cycle of intergenerational poverty and racial inequality, he writes.

Acting as the economic gatekeeper in the United States, the credit score, most commonly known in its FICO form and that which is referenced throughout this blog article, scores individuals on a range from 300 to 850, with lower scores representing greater risk of default or missing payments, and higher scores the opposite. Within the FICO form, an individual’s score is primarily calculated across five components, each with an approximate weight (1):

  • Payment history (35%):an analysis of timely payments on outstanding debts and the severity of late payments (i.e., 30 or 60+ days late).
  • Amounts owed (30%):calculated as a percentage of total credit available and amount currently employed with a rule of thumb to keep this percentage lower than 10%.
  • Length of credit (15%):calculated as the amount of time an individual has accessed credit.
  • New credit (10%):how recently the individual opened a new account.
  • Type of credit(10%): considers the different revolving and installment loans you have active.

Poor credit scores almost always mean far fewer lending options and far more expensive options when available. Putting this into hard numbers, according to data from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, a change from a “subprime” 640 credit score to a 740 credit score in one example might allow a potential home buyer to access a mortgage interest rate as low as 5.75% instead of 7.625%, resulting in almost $90,000 in lower interest costs over the life of a thirty-year loan for the same house (2).

The five factors determining the level of risk are claimed not to consider demographic characteristics. However, the map of average percentages of county populations with subprime credit scores in the United States (Figure 1) shows the stark differences between the American south and north.

Figure 1: Subprime Credit Score Populations by County

The percentage of people per county with subprime credit scores in the United States. Orange indicates counties with fewer subprime credit scores and blue counties with more subprime credit scores. The red line on the map is the Mason-Dixon line and Ohio River extension, the traditional division between northern and southern states. Source: (Equifax and Federal Reserve Bank of New York, 2024).

In particular, given that over 60% of the total African American population resides in the American south, as we further break out the average credit score by race, it is therefore unsurprising to find a mirrored divergence in subprime credit scores, particularly between Black and White Americans (Figure 2).

Figure 2: Average Credit Scores by Race in 2021

Seen across race, there is a significant divergence between the average credit scores of White Americans (734) and Black Americans (677) with the average score for Black Americans averaging near the subprime threshold. Source: (Dual Payments, 2020)

This brings into question whether these differences can be explained by other factors not accounted for by the model. Given that credit scores play such a significant factor in one’s ability to obtain affordable finance and in certain cases may impact where one can live or rent or inhibit one’s ability to obtain employment opportunities, how is it then that such a “colour-blind” model appears to be disproportionately impacting Black Americans? In this blog article, I show that a historical institution fundamental to economic development of the United States and the racial and geographic divisions still present in the present — the institution of slavery — can provide an alternative explanation for injustices in the credit score system.

A quick history lesson

While present for the initial two centuries of colonial expansion in North America, slavery rapidly grew in the early 1800s as the United States solidified into a nation-state (Figure 3). Ultimately abolished after a bloody civil war, the history of the United States since slavery’s abolition in 1865 has been characterized by a various forms of institutionalized and explicit forms of race-based discrimination and exclusion, including the sharecropping system, housing discrimination in the form of redlining, and segregation in the education system. While each of these systems and institutions can each be understood to be extensions of the historically unequal forms of development in the United States with their own unique impact of the historical inequalities in their respective period of development, my research as part of my MA thesis set out to determine how is it that the Figure 3 and that of Figure 1 bear strikingly similarities to one another.

Figure 3: Relative Slave Populations by County (1860)

Figure 3 presents the relative slave population as a share of the total population in 1860. Counties with dark yellow shades have the largest slave population relative to the total county population, while light blue are the counties with lower slave populations. Counties in dark blue are either unreported or have zero slave population according to the census. It is important to note that this data may not be fully reflective of the actual slave population, but it is the best official data that is available. Source: (United States Census Bureau, 1864)

Current models are far too simplistic

Hypothesizing that the current model claims to be colour-blind in its analysis and that its simplistic model focuses solely on the present-day actions of an individual without acknowledging the persistent inequalities already present within our society, my research analysed 1860 census data alongside contemporary panel data from 2014–2021 through an instrumental variable specification. Through the most stringent specification applied,  I found a 10-percentage-point increase in the relative slave population of a county in 1860 results estimated average effect of 0.791 percentage point increase in the percentage of the current population with a subprime credit score in 2021, holding all else constant; a result that remains highly significant even in the most stringent model employed (3). Put simply, counties that had higher proportions of enslaved people in 1860 tend to have a higher percentage of residents with poor credit scores today, even after considering other factors that might influence this outcome.

Given the consistent but varying forms of discrimination experienced by Black Americans since the abolition of slavery, I also found that relative slave populations influence different channels’ persistence including through an education system that requires Black Americans to take on higher levels of debt to obtain the same education, only to earn consistently lower wages than their White counterparts. Unable to generate as much wealth as their White counterparts, Black Americans are often far more burdened by greater amounts of relative debt, limiting their ability to obtain larger assets like homes, which are so vital in generating and retaining intergenerational wealth (4).

Such findings demonstrate that the current credit scoring model, one that claims to be unbiased and does not explicitly penalize individuals based on race, fails to account for the multitude of contextual historical factors that continue to privilege certain groups while barring others from accessing the same system. Contemporary economic inequalities may be influenced by the lingering effects of historical factors emphasizing the complex interaction between race, inequality, historical factors, and contemporary economic outcomes.

As such, it also provides clear evidence that policies that do not adequately consider historical inequalities existing and persistent in the system may in fact serve only to continue to perpetuate such inequalities. Particularly in the context of the credit scoring model in the United States and similar systems of economic gatekeeping, not addressing the existing inequalities through the model restricts an individual’s ability to access affordable financing, housing, or decent employment prospects.

Significant reforms are the only way to address persistent injustices

The rapid introduction of artificial intelligence (AI) holds some promise in this context. A greater number of AI-enabled credit scoring algorithms are being tested that could vastly expand the number of variables influencing a credit score. This will hopefully allow a far more comprehensive picture of an individual current financial health. Models with a greater number of variables would increase the diversity of scoring criteria and de-emphasize the potentially discriminatory data points currently prioritized in the FICO model. The recent decision by the Biden administration to remove medical debt as a variable influencing credit scores also helps to address the burden of emergency care costs that can be detrimental to an individual’s ability to meet their financial responsibilities (5).

However, given that poor credit scores have the potential to make financing almost inaccessible for low- and middle-income individuals, additional social safety nets must be considered to ensure that drastic emergency expenses do not create cycles of intergenerational poverty resulting from poor credit scores. Without significant reform, the current credit scoring model will continue to punish low-income families, forcing them to take on more expensive financing to obtain the same assets as their neighbours, inhibit access to home ownership, make higher education less accessible without taking on larger debt, and continue to ensure a cycle of poverty that perpetuates racial inequalities within the United States.

Footnotes

(1) Pritchard, J., (2021) How the FICO Credit Score Is Composed. Available at: https://www.thebalancemoney.com/fico-credit-score-315552 (Accessed 28 July 2024).

(2) Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), (2023). Explore interest rates. Available at: https://www.consumerfinance.gov/owning-a-home/explore-rates/ (Accessed 28 July 2024).

(3) Farrell, C. (2024). The lingering legacy of slavery: historical injustices and credit scores in the United States. International Institute of Social Studies (ISS). ISS working papers. General series No. 723

(4) Jones, J., & Neelakantan, U. (2022). How Big Is the Inheritance Gap Between Black and White Families? Richmond: Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond Economic Brief.

(5) The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) (2023). CFPB Kicks Off Rulemaking to Remove Medical Bills from Credit Reports. Washington, D.C.: CFPB. Accessed 4 July 2024.

Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) (2023). CFPB Kicks Off Rulemaking to Remove Medical Bills from Credit Reports. Washington, D.C.: CFPB. Accessed 4 July 2024.

Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (2024). Explore Interest Rates. Retrieved from Consumer Financial Protection Bureau: https://www.consumerfinance.gov/owning-a-home/explore-rates/. Accessed 5 July 2024.

Dual Payments. (2020). Credit Score. Retrieved from Dual Payments: https://dualpayments.com/statistics/credit-score/#race. Accessed 28 July 2024.

Equifax and Federal Reserve Bank of New York, Equifax Subprime Credit Population, retrieved from FRED, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis; https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/EQFXSUBPRIME036061. Accessed 28 July 2024.

Farrell, C. (2024). The lingering legacy of slavery: historical injustices and credit scores in the United States. International Institute of Social Studies (ISS). ISS working papers. General series No. 723

Jones, J., & Neelakantan, U. (2022). How Big Is the Inheritance Gap Between Black and White Families? Richmond: Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond Economic Brief.

United States Census Bureau, (1864). 1860 Census: Agriculture of the United States, Washington: United States Census Bureau. Available at: https://www.census.gov/library/publications/1864/dec/1860b.html

About the author: Conor Farrell

Conor Farrell

Conor Farrell is a graduate of the International Institute of Social Studies where he majored in Economics of Development. He is passionate about the intersection of history and contemporary economic outcomes understanding that history is not a set of fixed beginnings and ends, but continues to live on through the institutions we have created to shape our societies and influence our future.

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Transformative Methodologies | Changing minds and policy through collaborative research?

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Can collaborative research with marginalised communities be transformative, turning around unjust social relations, and supporting solidarity and rights in a practical sense? In this blog post, we (Jack Apostol, Helen Hintjens, Joy Melani and Karin Astrid Siegmann) reflect on this question based on our experience with the PEER approach, a participatory research methodology, that we used in a study on undocumented people’s access to healthcare in the Netherlands. The answer? We posit that the claim that social science methodologies can directly transform social realities, may be raising expectations too high, at least for the PEER approach. Yet, dissolving barriers between academic and non-academic knowers might be useful in itself, leading to greater respect for, and the amplification of the voices of marginalised people.

https://www.istockphoto.com/nl/foto/vluchtelingen-mensen-met-bagage-lopen-in-een-rij-gm921353784-253049275

What is PEER?

PEER stands for Participatory Ethnographic Evaluation and Research. The participatory aspect stems from the involvement of members of marginalised and stigmatised communities as co-researchers. It is used in contexts where it is essential to build trust, where new insights are needed, and where the underbelly of sensitive topics can be exposed through mostly non-directive (open-ended) interviews with hard-to-research and marginalised groups in society. Examples of such topics include research on sexual health, sex work, the illicit or informal economy, and refugees on the move.

 

PEER research on undocumented people’s access to healthcare

We used the PEER methodology to understand the puzzle of why undocumented people in the Netherlands rarely access healthcare, despite their health rights being formally guaranteed in Dutch and EU regulations. Our research team consisted of people based at universities, like Helen, Karin, and our colleague Richard Staring, and non-academic experts from a group of undocumented peer researchers, including Joy and Jack. Interview questions were developed within the team, with peer researchers knowing best how to address sensitive issues with other undocumented people. Once interviews were concluded, debriefing meetings with the peer researchers formed the starting point of our data analysis.

The benefits of the PEER methodology for accessing and learning from people, who have good reasons to remain under the radar, came out clearly in our study. Joy highlights trust as the main advantage of reaching out to fellow undocumented persons for an interview: “Undocumented people cannot trust anyone. But if we interview them, they know that we are undocumented, and they can open up easily. They can tell the real story, their own emotions, and experiences. Because they know, having the same situation, you can understand them, how they feel, their thoughts.”

Time constrains were tough for peer researchers for whom research came on top of their normal working day. Working as a domestic worker full time, Jack recalls: “I worked as a full domestic worker that time. I started my work from the morning until 6 in the afternoon. Attending workshops and meetings during the whole period of PEER research project were a challenge to me. Usually, I rushed to the evening meetings at ISS [International Institute of Social Studies] after my whole day work. This made me physically and mentally a bit tired to participate in the discussion and share my ideas. Sometimes, I came late due to extra work. But I ought to do it as part of my commitment to the project.”

Two PEER researchers simulating an interview during training, August 2014, The Hague

So can the PEER Methodology change minds, influence policy?

Contributing to social change clearly motivated Jack:

“First, I believed that the project was for the well-being of the undocumented migrants in the Hague. This was about a health issue which was vital for the interest of the undocumented migrants whose access to medical care had been hindered by lack of information, discrimination, and ignorance of some medical professionals about the existing health policy of the government.” But what is the actual potential of such collaborative research to transform the injustices that undocumented people experience? Jack soberly concludes that any broader impact depends on the political context: “Absolutely, a rightist government is against migrants. Any outcome of the research based on a PEER approach would not actually convince the rightist government to take initiatives to change their policy in favour of migrants.”

This suggests the practical limits of what one can realistically achieve with academic research under an illiberal dispensation. On its own, without a shift in attitudes, social research cannot shift policy parameters. As the saying goes, one can take a horse to water, one cannot make it drink! Yet PEER research does break down barriers. The status-quo that segregates undocumented people from the rest of society is challenged, as PEER researchers open doors to long-concealed stories of undocumented life in the midst of plenty. Those without status are respected experts in self-organisation, and can be supported to negotiate access to rights and services. In conclusion, one can highlight the vital transformative role played by migrant self-help organisations like Filmis and others, whose solidarity work has stepped up since the start of the COVID pandemic.

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

About the authors:

Jacob Apostol is the co-founder and the current president of the Filipino Migrant in Solidarity (FILMIS) Association. He is a human rights advocate.

 

 

Helen Hintjens has been interested in pro-asylum advocacy for about 40 years now. She is inspired by the self-advocacy of those confronting current deterrence-based policies on migration and asylum.

 

Melanie (Joy) Escano is the Vice-President of Migrant Domestic Workers Union. She is also the co-founder and the current public relation officer of the Filipino Migrant in Solidarity (FILMIS) Association.

 

Karin Astrid Siegmann is Associate Professor in Labour and Gender Economics at the International Institute of Social Studies (ISS).

 

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EADI ISS Conference 2021 | How social accountability initiatives are helping pursue social justice aims

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Achieving social justice in service delivery in the health, social welfare, and humanitarian sectors is still a formidable challenge in most developing countries. Poor and marginalised people generally lack the voice to make their demands heard and the awareness to claim their rights. However, social accountability initiatives have become a promising way to address these issues, as a panel discussion at the recent EADI ISS Conference showed. In this article, Elsbet Lodenstein and Sylvia Bergh highlight the key insights that emerged during the discussion, which focused on issues related to ensuring substantive citizenship and legitimacy and the role of interlocutors, donors, and of researchers themselves in helping pursue social justice through such initiatives.

Traditional ‘democratic’ accountability mechanisms such as elections are failing citizens. In response, citizens have set up a range of initiatives called social accountability initiatives to demand the respect of civic, political, and social rights and improved public service delivery in their interest. Such social accountability initiatives are targeted at holding the state and service providers accountable and are – under certain conditions – proving rather effective. What can we learn from these initiatives?

A lively panel discussion that took place at the recent ISS EADI 2021 Conference showed that such initiatives can help pursue to social justice in a number of ways, contributing for example to equitable participation or greater respect for diversity. Participants in the panel session considered how these could be supportive to the transformation of power relations between marginalised groups and the state or other duty-bearers such as humanitarian agencies.

Convened by Elsbet Lodenstein (KIT Royal Tropical Institute) and Sylvia I. Bergh (ISS and Centre of Expertise on Global Governance at The Hague University of Applied Sciences), the panel reviewed experiences from the humanitarian, health, and sexual and reproductive health and rights sectors in several countries where participating researchers conducted case studies. The following social accountability initiatives were discussed during the panel session:

  • K. Sandhya (SAHAYOG) described how NGOs, CBOs, and grassroots organisations of poor and marginalised women in Uttar Pradesh in India jointly demanded accountability from Hospital Management Committees who are responsible for ensuring patient welfare and quality of care.
  • Another initiative in India was presented by Jashodhara Dasgupta (independent researcher), who analysed the trajectory of the transgender community’s claims for state recognition and access to the benefits of the welfare state.
  • Afeez Lawal (University of South Africa) shared insights on the role of health committees in the oversight of a Community-Based Health Insurance programme in Nigeria.
  • Seye Abimbola (University of Sydney, Australia; National Primary Health Care Development Agency, Abuja, Nigeria, and current Prins Claus Chair) explored how health committee members in Nigeria perceive their role in social accountability and how these perceptions shape their motivations to demand accountability for the underperformance of health service providers and policymakers.
  • A research team led by Thea Hilhorst (ISS) explored the social accountability mechanisms in place in the humanitarian sector in Sierra Leone, Afghanistan, and Myanmar. Mechanisms include feedback channels on programme delivery, community-based indicator setting activities, and complaint mechanisms.

Some key takeaways

What can we learn from the case studies about the potential of social accountability to contribute to social justice? The key takeaways of the panel discussion are summarised here:

  1. Ensuring the ‘right to have rights’ is a crucial first step in enacting change.

Many social accountability initiatives are based on the assumption that citizens are able and willing to express their voice in the face of injustice regardless of their gender, age, class, sexuality, or education and regardless of their experiences with and position vis-à-vis the state. Yet many citizens are discriminated against, whereby intersecting identities can influence the way in which citizens engage with the state and the way in which they participate in social accountability initiatives.

For example, Jashodhara Dasgupta noted how the recent Indian law on transgender persons makes no provision for ensuring gender non-conforming individuals’ access to public goods and denies them adequate protection from violence and discrimination. This makes it challenging for these groups to develop the confidence to demand accountability and take collective action.

Donors and funders in conflict settings may also need to be more aware of how different social markers may constrain the possibilities for exercising voice. Thea Hilhorst for example highlighted how internally displaced people, and within that group, minority groups, such as the Rohingya in Myanmar, cannot be reached by formal accountability initiatives.

Jashodhara Dasgupta and Y.K. Sandhya suggested that for marginalised groups, their own realisation that they are rights holders, i.e. having ‘the right to have rights’, needs to become a primary focus of social accountability initiatives. Attention could be drawn to this by strengthening the political capabilities and negotiation skills of marginalised groups to articulate and voice demands. Doing so means moving beyond just improving service delivery or effectiveness of humanitarian interventions to strengthening the agency of citizens in a way that can help further equitable participation towards changing the norms of engagement that challenges power relations.

  1. Your understanding of your role in society may influence how engaged you are in pursuing social justice.

Research plays a significant role in unpacking the assumptions about agency, motivations, and capabilities of intermediary organisations such as health committees or community governance boards in voicing demands on behalf of citizens. Afeez Lawal talked about how health committees in Nigeria have helped improve dialogue between health service providers and users. For example, they facilitated joint monitoring with traditional leaders, enrolees, and health providers to demand programme managers to address drug stock-outs and preferential treatment of non-enrolees. But, he noted, their ability to influence larger political agendas remains limited.

Seye Abimbola confirmed this based on his own research in Nigeria. He found that the perceptions of health committee members of their roles influence their level of engagement in social justice agendas. For example, they could consider themselves either representatives of the health sector aiming to improve the uptake of services and/or advocates for communities and patients. In general, though, the way in which health committees are created and trained tends to limit committee members’ sense of legitimacy to challenge governments and service providers, thus giving them a marginal role in fostering social accountability.

  1. Identifying interlocutors can help citizens act strategically.

Interlocutors or agents that catalyse change were considered crucial by many of the discussants. These individuals or associations are allies of citizens that share a common goal in helping to address injustices. They may have resources or networks that make it possible for them to connect individuals or groups to each other or to find ways to communicate with government officials, whether formally or informally. Often, as Seye Abimbola suggested, these may be the local elite who have the resources to bear the costs of participation and who have the connections to make a difference.

The identification of interlocutors who speak for marginalised groups requires longer-term and in-depth participatory research such as that conducted by Y.K. Sandhya and her team in India. Interlocutors might be individuals who act on behalf of citizens in their individual capacity; an example is a clerk of a health facility with whom the NGO informally built relation of trust and who pushed for internal reforms to intensify community-based monitoring.

Interlocutors might also be members of grassroots organisations – Sandhya noted that legitimate and established community-based organisations, such as the grassroots association of marginalised women in India, are able to navigate institutions, identify opportunities for legal and policy change and identify opportunities for support by influential actors who want to reverse situations of marginalisation and poor accountability. Other organisations with fewer resources might struggle more with this. It’s therefore crucial to find individuals who know how to navigate the institutional landscape and who hold power to facilitate dialogue or strategic action.

  1. Long-term support building on community initiatives is needed.

Social accountability initiatives need intensive, long-term support from funders in the humanitarian and development sectors. Sylvia Bergh flagged the danger of technocratisation of social accountability initiatives by donors, who often frame them as a technical and neutral process that leaves political struggle aside. If more initiatives would build on existing solidarity groups and indigenous forms of collective action and get support from these groups, the chance of enacting meaningful change could be much greater.

  1. Questioning own assumptions can help academics do better research.

The panel was concluded with an observation by Elsbet Lodenstein that (operational) research is required to break down assumptions about the voice, behaviour, and agency of citizens, civil society, and institutions and to understand how context influence these. Too often, external interventions in humanitarian and development sectors are based on problematic assumptions about how and why citizens act for change, or how and why governmental actors and other duty-bearers react to social accountability initiatives. Researchers can support the development of grounded, contextualised and ‘smart’ approaches to social accountability in terms of whom to engage, where to push the needle, and how to leverage existing forms of collective action by adopting methods of longer-term (participatory) research and in-depth analysis.

With thanks to Francesco Colin for the notes taken during the panel session.

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

About the author:

Dr Elsbet Lodenstein is a senior gender and governance advisor at the Royal Tropical Institute (KIT) with 18 years of experience in international development. She has a keen interest in integrating a social science and gender perspective into development programming and research and specialises in community engagement and the governance of local health systems, citizenship and the empowerment of marginalized groups, including women and girls. She is skilled in gender and intersectional analysis, gender integration, monitoring and evaluation, learning and knowledge management, policy review, evidence synthesis, and research capacity building.

Sylvia BerghSylvia I. Bergh (a Swedish national) is a Senior Researcher at the Centre of Expertise on Global Governance at The Hague University of Applied Sciences, as well as Associate Professor in Development Management and Governance at the International Institute of Social Studies (ISS), Erasmus University Rotterdam. Sylvia has a keen interest in multi-level governance issues, and has published widely on state-society relations in the Middle East and North Africa region.  She currently leads a research project that studies the effects of heatwaves on vulnerable populations in The Hague.

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Beware of calls to ‘rescue’ India’s ‘Covid orphans’

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News reports of children being orphaned by Covid-19 deaths in India raise the spectre of a generation of children without adequate parental care. But international responses that favour solutions like building orphanages and seeking adoption for these children are misguided and can lead to child exploitation. In this post, Kristen Cheney explains why, and how you can better support children orphaned during the pandemic.

Photo: Charu Chaturvedi
(Unsplash)

A year ago, my colleagues and I were already forewarning of calls to ‘rescue’ ‘Covid orphans’. As care reform advocates, we are familiar with the pattern: after every disaster—natural or manmade, instant (‘Haitian earthquake orphans’) or slow-burn (‘AIDS orphans’)—media coverage laments the situation of children left without parental care. So when Covid-19 was declared a global pandemic last year, we worried—not so much about whether as about when we would start to see calls for assistance to these orphans. It has taken a while, but now, with the horrible escalation of Covid-19 in India, these stories are starting to emerge.

Children’s advocates worry because these calls tend to take the form of ‘orphan rescue’ narratives, which usually spur desires to go to the children and build massive orphanages, as well as demands for international adoption. And yet we have known for decades that these responses, though well-meaning, are at best deeply flawed and counter to children’s overall wellbeing. Over half a century of child development research has documented the deleterious effects of institutionalisation and risks in international adoption, prompting the United Nations to adopt the Alternative Care Guidelines, which call for institutionalisation and international adoption as last resorts, favouring instead family-based care solutions.

Orphans don’t need ‘rescuing’; they need protection

At worst, ‘orphan rescue’ narratives have spurred corruption and exploitation of children, prompting perverse incentives to traffic children into institutions and even international adoptions for profit. In fact, this has profit motive been so prevalent that I have been tracking its development in what I call the global Orphan Industrial Complex.

While children are indeed losing their parents at alarming rates to Covid-19 in India, that doesn’t mean that foreigners should rush in to build orphanages or seek to adopt orphans. Care reform advocates like myself have long argued that not only are these solutions bad for children; with these good intentions inevitably comes an element of criminality. Under such circumstances, the Orphan Industrial Complex has a way of swooping in and commodifying such children, leading to exploitation (of donors and ‘orphans’ alike as ‘fake’ orphanages pop up to raise funds that line the pockets of traffickers), increasing corruption as people seeking to adopt search for loopholes to legal and child safeguarding measures, and even child trafficking into orphanages and adoption.

A recent BBC article pointed to such early warning signs occurring in India: a grandmother caring for her grandchildren orphaned by Covid-19 is quoted as saying, “A lot of people are coming to ask for adoption [of her grandchildren],” suggesting that the vultures are already descending.

Support for families of orphans and doing away with orphanages

Yet, the Indian government and NGOs have been working for many years on strengthening their child protection and alternative care policies to prevent such exploitation of ‘orphans’. For example, for the past five years, India has been working on shutting down orphanages while also strengthening their child protection systems to better prevent children’s separation from their families in the first place. Continued external support to orphanages only undermines such efforts.

When Covid-19 cases in India started spiking in April, however, so did the number of children left without parental care. Reports started rolling off the press, sometimes detailing the danger of exploitation of those children by unscrupulous traffickers hoping to take advantage of their vulnerabilities. In response, Indian advocates started posting informational memes on social media that detail legal and social advice about ‘what to do with Covid orphans’ [Fig 1]. NGOs have helped set up community helpdesks and outreach programmes to identify and assist families’ access to government schemes, medical facilities, and PPE distribution. To prevent a massive institutionalisation of children left behind, the Prime Minister’s Office declared a support and empowerment program for children affected by the pandemic that includes free education, free health insurance, and a monthly stipend for youth from 18 to 23 years old [Fig 2]. This is a commendable effort that will provide support to extended families to care for children without drastically uprooting them from all that they know. After all, the loss of one or both parents is already hard enough to deal with.

Reinvesting in communities

Whenever I warn people of the Orphan Industrial Complex and its perpetuation of inappropriate charitable responses to orphanhood, they often ask where they should direct their assistance instead. One thing that advocates have lamented is that it is so much easier to raise money for harmful orphanages or adoptions than it is to raise money for child protection and family preservation efforts. Yet we know that these are in the best interests of children.

So, I encourage people to support care reforms that keep children in families or family-based care whenever possible. This ensures children’s rights to family, community life, name, nation, and identity (as enshrined in the Convention on the Rights of the Child); families are where children grow best. But we also need to build the capacities of these systems by, for example, training social workers and supporting communities with services like education, health, and parenting support to help them to take care of their own children.

Finally, we can urge our friends, families, and governments to divest from orphanages (after all, there is a reason why we no longer have orphanages in Europe and North America; why do we consider warehousing children in institutions an appropriate response to crises abroad??) and support moratoria on international adoption such as that recently issued by the Dutch government.

Instead, now is the time to reinvest in communities, such as those in India that bear the burden of the Covid pandemic and lockdowns. We can strengthen them to enact proven care reforms that allow children—even those who find themselves in adverse circumstances like India’s new ‘Covid orphans’—to flourish.

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

About the author:

Kristen Cheney is Associate Professor of Children and Youth Studies at ISS. She is author of Crying for Our Elders: African Orphanhood in the Age of HIV and AIDS (2017) and co-editor of the volume, Disadvantaged Childhoods and Humanitarian Intervention: Processes of Affective Commodification and Objectification (2019).

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COVID-19 | How exclusionary social protection systems in the MENA are making the COVID-19 pandemic’s effects worse

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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]The COVID-19 pandemic has made the majority of people living in the MENA region even more vulnerable, adding to existing structural problems that include under-resourced public health services, a high degree of labour informality, and high poverty and unemployment rates. Temporary social and economic support measures to mitigate the pandemic’s effects are not sufficient, however – the region has to go beyond piecemeal policies. Countries need to expand the scope and scale of social provisioning and social protection as well as the quality of and access to public health services by moving towards a universalist approach to social policy, writes Mahmoud Messkoub. [/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=”19534″ 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]In the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), the COVID-19 pandemic has thrown into sharp relief the importance of state-centred approaches in managing pandemics and mitigating their socio-economic impacts on the population. But public health services in most MENA countries are underfunded and inadequately designed to cope with the pandemic. The MENA population has suffered, especially those people living in low-income and non-oil-exporting countries.

Here, as elsewhere in the world, to mitigate the impacts of the pandemic, states have taken a number of measures ranging from temporary cash payments to the poor and vulnerable, furlough schemes, and financial support to employers and industries to the relaxation of regulations governing financial market support to companies and individuals through lower interest loans. Most MENA countries adopted a combination of these measures (OECD, 2020).

However, these short-term measures cannot deal with the long-term structural insecurity and vulnerability facing the majority of people in the MENA who live precarious lives in highly unequal societies, where the top 10% of the population takes 64% of the total income (Alvaredo et al., 2017). Their vulnerability to a large extent can be ascribed to the concentration of economic activity and employment in the informal sector, which is usually overlooked in social security and regulatory measures that tend to focus more on formal employment sectors (ILO, 2019; O’Sullivan et al., 2012). The exclusionary character of the countries’ social protection programmes is a great cause for concern, as even in ordinary circumstances vulnerable populations working informally do not have adequate social protection against health problems, a loss of income, and other contingencies.

Informality and unemployment rates are high in the MENA

According to OECD (2020), in the MENA the informal sector employs some 68% of the workforce, while in individual countries such as Yemen and Lebanon the portion rises to 74% and 71%, respectively. Another structural problem is persistently high unemployment rates that have particularly hit the youth as well as educated women across the MENA  (O’Sullivan et al., 2012). In 2018, the youth unemployment rate was around 30% in the MENA – the highest in the world (Kabbani, 2019). And large-scale poverty and vulnerability are also high in the MENA despite its riches. MENA countries are heterogeneous in terms of their resource base. The headcount poverty rates of a-dollar-a-day (or more) are high in the labour-abundant and resource-poor countries like Egypt. But poverty is also present in the populous, resource-rich and industrializing countries of Iran and Algeria. The other aspect of poverty is its regional spread: rural headcount poverty rates are higher in rural areas than in urban areas (Messkoub, 2008).

The most vulnerable are being overlooked, also during the pandemic

It is against this backdrop of poverty and vulnerability that the pandemic emerged, plunging the weakest countries in the region into a deeper crisis, with very limited social protection measures to help protect vulnerable populations. Whilst all countries in the region had some kind of social protection programmes before the pandemic, and in some cases extensive ones, coverage in most middle- and low-income MENA countries is limited to members of the civil service, police, and military, as well as those in the modern, regulated private sectors of manufacturing and services. The majority of the population working in agriculture, the informal sector, and other unregulated activities have very limited access, if any, to state social protection programmes. To start with, entitlement to most of these programmes requires a formal labour contract. But entitlement and access vary depending on the area of social protection: health, old age, unemployment, work injury, or family allowance.

Regarding health services, there is an urban-rural divide in favour of the former, in addition to high out-of-pocket expenditure and a general neglect of primary and preventive healthcare. High spending on expensive diagnostic and curative health care can be observed, and low-income/low-status migrants, displaced people, refugees, and ethnic minorities have limited access to public health services (WHO, 2010; Loewe, 2019).

The fragmentation of health insurance and service provision also limits the coverage and adequacy of social policies. In most MENA countries, there are different public and private health insurance programmes and health service providers. If these were integrated into a common national health insurance programme, the result could be increased coverage and an improvement of the services provided by reducing administrative costs and rationalising overlapping services (Loewe, 2019). Other complementary public health measures should also be placed on the agenda: the provision of clean water, improved sanitation, and a greater emphasis of preventative health care (Karshenas et al., 2014).

Why universal social protection is needed now more than ever

Thus, countries in the region are in urgent need of increasing expenditure on public health to manage the current pandemic as well as strengthening the health system to improve entitlement and access to health services. Reform and re-organisation of the health system beyond the public sector is part of this agenda. The region needs to return to the ideals of universal entitlement and access to health and other social services that are essential to the social policy agenda of developmental states. Selectivity and exclusion in terms of who qualifies for social protection benefits will only harm these countries, as responses to the pandemic have shown.

References and further readings

Alvaredo, R., Assouad, L. and Piketty, T. (2017) Measuring lnequality in the Middle East 1990 2016: The World’s Most Unequal Region? Reprinted  2020. [https://halshs.archives-ouvertes.fr/halshs-02796992/file/2017-15_.pdf] [Accessed: 10 September 2020.]

ILO, 2019. Working Poor or how a job is no guarantee of decent living conditions. April.

Kabbani, N. , 2019. Youth Employment in the Middle East and North Africa: Revisiting and Reframing the Challenge. Brookings Institution. [https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/Youth_Unemployment_MENA_English_Web.pdf ][Accessed: September 2020]

Karshenas, M., Moghadam, V. and R. Alami (2014), ‘Social Policy after the Arab Spring: States and Social Rights in the MENA Region,’ World Development, Vol. 64, issue C, pp.726-739.

Loewe, M. (2019), ‘Social Protection Schemes in the Middle East and North Africa: Not Fair, Not Efficient, Not Effective,’ in Jawad, R., Jones, N. and M. Messkoub (eds., 2019), pp.35 60.

Messkoub, M. (2008), Economic Growth, Employment and Poverty in the Middle East and  North Africa, Geneva: ILO Working Paper Series, No. 19.

Messkoub, M. (2021, Forthcoming), ‘Social Policy in the MENA Region,’ in H. Hakimian, ed.(2020) Routledge Handbook on Middle Eastern Economy. London: Routledge.

OECD, 2020. COVID-19 crisis response in MENA countries. Updated 9 June [https://read.oecd-ilibrary.org/view/?ref=129_129919-4li7bq8asv&title=COVID-19-Crisis-Response-in-MENA-Countries] [Accessed: 10 September 2020.]

O’Sullivan, A., Rey, M-E and Galvez Mendez, J. (2012) Opportunities and Challenges in the MENA Region. OECD.[/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]An earlier version of this blog titled ‘COVID-19, Public Health and Social Policy in MENA’ was first published by the Alternative Policy Solutions, a public policy research project at the American University of Cairo.[/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_1614791812480{margin-top: 0px !important;}”]About the author:

Mahmoud Messkoub (PhD Econs, University of London) is based at the International Institute of Social Studies (ISS, Erasmus University of Rotterdam, NL). He has researched and taught economics of development, social policy and population (mobility/migration, age structure and ageing) at universities of London (Queen Mary), Leeds and Erasmus (ISS). His current research interests are in the areas of economics of: social policy and population ageing, migration and universal approach to social provisioning. His recent publications are related to social policy, poverty and employment policies, cash transfers and evaluation of unpaid household work. He has acted as a consultant to ESCWA, ILO and the UN (DESA, UNFPA). He is currently working with an EU and African consortium on an EU funded – Horizon 2020 research project : ‘Crisis as Opportunities: towards a Level Telling Field on Migration and a New Narrative of Successful Integration’ 

 [/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column css=”.vc_custom_1596795191151{margin-top: 5% !important;}”][vc_separator color=”custom” accent_color=”#a80000″ css=”.vc_custom_1594895181078{margin-top: -15px !important;margin-bottom: 10px !important;}”][vc_column_text]

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[/vc_column_text][vc_column_text][newsletter][/vc_column_text][vc_separator color=”custom” accent_color=”#a80000″ css=”.vc_custom_1594895181078{margin-top: -15px !important;margin-bottom: 10px !important;}”][/vc_column][/vc_row]

Covid-19 | Worsening inequality in the developing world: why we should say no to a ‘new normal’

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hunger food insecurity covid corona

[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]As the Covid-19 pandemic drags on, many of us living in wealthy countries are still struggling to get used to the ‘new normal’ of frequent regulatory changes that affect our freedom of movement and well-being. In developing countries, the negative effects of the pandemic move beyond the curtailing of movement to include increasing hunger, unemployment, and inequality. We can now witness some of these seemingly permanent changes that may take years or even decades to reverse, and we should not accept this as a ‘new normal’, write Shradha Parashari and Lize Swartz.[/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=”18324″ 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]Introduction

Over the past months, the world has come to experience the unthinkable as the Covid-19 pandemic has swept across the globe (Mahapatra, 2020). The overall outlook for world economy is bleak. According to Economist Intelligence Unit, as from March 17, global economic growth has slowed to just one percent—the lowest level of growth since the global financial crisis of 2008 (Economist Intelligence Unit, 2020). The pandemic has affected both the developing and developed world. However, instances of hunger, unemployment and poor access to virus testing and treatment facilities are more prevalent in developing countries (World Food Programme Report, 2020).

Developed countries are taking important measures to protect their people from the Covid-19 virus and consequent slowdown of the economy and life in general by providing unemployment benefits, measures for food security, and privileges such as facilities enabling employees and entrepreneurs to work from home or at a safe distance from one another (Mahapatra, 2020). This is a rare case in the developing world, where governments face challenges in ensuring that tens of millions of people already on verge of starvation do not succumb to virus and its adverse economic consequences, which includes hunger (Dongyu, 2020).

Thus, the pandemic, popularly referred to as the ‘pandemic of inequality’ (Mahaptara, 2020), has exposed existing inequalities and has given rise to new inequalities. According to United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres,

COVID-19 has highlighted growing inequalities. It has exposed the myth that everyone is in same boat, when the truth is, we all are floating in same sea; some are in superyachts, while others are clinging to drifting debris.

It is becoming clear that the pandemic is affecting the poor in both the developed and developing world more than wealthier groups, but it is especially the long-term effects of the pandemic in developing countries that remain a cause for concern. The pandemic has created a disruptive ‘new normal’ for everyone through government orders on social distancing and Covid-19 protection measures. Below are just some of the negative effects of this ‘new normal’ that support our argument that it should not be accepted as such.

First, for billions of poor persons, these guidelines are burdensome and impossible to comply with (Du et al., 2020). Poor informal workers in Asia, Africa and Latin America live in densely populated neighbourhoods with unreliable and shared access to water and sanitation facilities, making home quarantine or social distancing almost impossible. These workers lack access to bank accounts, insurance and secure employment that forces them to work on daily basis, defying lockdowns and creating an increased risk of Covid-19 transmission (Du et al., 2020). For them, a ‘new normal’ means not being able to work and meet basic needs.

Second, the hunger crisis is most evident in the central and western parts of Africa, where there has been a massive spike in the number of people facing food insecurity. Up to 90% of people living in Southern Africa are estimated to have become food insecure (World Food Programme Report, 2020). The closure of schools has further aggravated the hunger crisis in the developing world where children are highly dependent on meal programs at schools. For example, in Latin American countries and the Caribbean, the closure of schools during the pandemic has deprived around 85 million children of what is often the only (hot) meal they get daily (Dongyu Qu, 2020). This has led to surging hunger-related poverty during the pandemic. However, this is not the case in Global North, where school closures are simply an inconvenience for most parents.

Moreover, the lockdowns have left millions of workers jobless, especially the informal workforce in the developed and developing world (Daniyal et al., 2020). Workers in developed countries are still better off than those in the developing world as governments in US and Europe have pledged to pump trillions of dollars to support the unemployed workforce (TRT World, 2020). In contrast, the situation is grim in developing countries as informal workers are not covered by any social protection measures or proper employment contracts (TRT World, 2020). Millions of workers in Pakistan, Cambodia, Vietnam, and India have faced unemployment as the market remains shut due to the pandemic.

Why we should resist a ‘new normal’

As the pandemic drags on, many people in wealthier countries or those in developing countries with secure jobs or livelihoods, especially those whose lives are disrupted but not severely negatively affected, especially in economic terms, are getting used to the ‘new normal’. For many people, a ‘new normal’ means working from home, not visiting restaurants, not going on holidays outside of our countries, and having to wear a face mask. For millions people who are less fortunate, a ‘new normal’ means a loss of jobs and the inability to secure new employment, going to bed hungry, and working illegally with an exposed risk to the virus.

We have to reject this ‘new normal’ characterized by worsening living conditions and increasing economic inequality before it becomes seen as accepted and a permanent feature of life among poor people in developing and developed countries alike. The search for a vaccine and its global roll-out may take many months still. We have to start think beyond the end of the pandemic to ensure that its negative effects, particularly for people in developing countries, are urgently addressed. If we don’t, the consequences can be far-reaching.[/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]References:

Dongyu Qu, “Coronavirus could worsen hunger in developing world”, World Economic Forum, accessed September 15, 2020. https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2020/04/coronavirus-worsen-hunger-developing-world/

Economist Intelligence Unit, “Coronavirus what we expect for global growth”, accessed September 16, 2020. http://country.eiu.com/article.aspx?articleid=1849161968&Country=United%20States&topic=Economy&subtopic=Recent+developments

Jillian Du, Robin King and Radha Chanchani, “Tackling Inequality in cities is Essential for Fighting COVID-19”, accessed September 15, 2020. https://www.wri.org/blog/2020/04/coronavirus-inequality-cities

Richard Mahapatra, “COVID-19: The Pandemic of Inequality”, accessed September 15, 2020. https://www.downtoearth.org.in/blog/economy/covid-19-the-pandemic-of-inequality-72442

Oxfam, “Half a billion people could be pushed into poverty by coronavirus, warns Oxfam”, accessed September 14, 2020. https://www.oxfam.org/en/press-releases/half-billion-people-could-be-pushed-poverty-coronavirus-warns-oxfam

Sara Christensen, “Hunger in Developing Countries: Five Facts You Need to Know”, accessed September 16, 2020. https://borgenproject.org/hunger-in-developing-countries-five-facts/

Shoaib Daniyal et al., “As Covid-19 pandemic hits India’s daily-wage earners hard, some leave city for their home towns”, accessed September 16, 2020. https://scroll.in/article/956779/starvation-will-kill-us-before-corona-the-covid-19-pandemic-has-hit-indias-working-class-hard

TRT World. “Coronavirus hits jobs, Millions face unemployment and poverty”, accessed September 15, 2020. Retrieved from TRT World: https://www.trtworld.com/magazine/coronavirus-hits-jobs-millions-face-unemployment-and poverty-35294

Tasfia Jahangir, “The Moral Dilemma of Slum Tourism”, accessed September 15, 2020. https://fundforeducationabroad.org/journals/moral-dilemma-slum-tourism/ 

World Food Programme, “COVID-19: Potential Impact on World’s Poorest People”, accessed September 15, 2020. https://docs.wfp.org/api/documents/WFP-0000114205/download/?_ga=2.261738637.121369336.1599543905-1508832003.1599543905

[/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_1604570090932{margin-top: 0px !important;}”]About the authors:

Shradha Parashari is an ISS of Erasmus University Rotterdam alumna of the 2017-2018 batch. She is currently working as a Research and Operation Associate at PAD India.

Lize Swartz

 

Lize Swartz is a PhD researcher at the ISS focusing on water user interactions with sustainability-climate crises in the water sector, in particular the role of water scarcity politics on crisis responses and adaptation processes. She is also the editor of the ISS Blog Bliss.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column css=”.vc_custom_1596795191151{margin-top: 5% !important;}”][vc_separator color=”custom” accent_color=”#a80000″ css=”.vc_custom_1594895181078{margin-top: -15px !important;margin-bottom: 10px !important;}”][vc_column_text]

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Power to the People? The Right to Information Law in Morocco

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Morocco’s recently enacted Right to Information Law is a potentially powerful tool in the hands of its citizens, but their ability to use it is still largely dependent on the government’s commitment to transparency and political will to enforce it.

With the ratification of the Right to Information Law (31.13) in February 2018, Morocco has officially joined the Open Government Partnership (OGP).1 This is a major step for the monarchy as it vows to commit to the four key principles of the OGP: public access to information, asset declarations by public officials, fiscal transparency, and citizen participation. On March 12, 2020, Law 31.13 came into force two years after its promulgation. According to the new law—and pursuant to Article 27 of the 2011 constitution—citizens have the right to request information held by the public administration, elected institutions, and public service provision organizations. Whereas the Right to Information Law promises to promote transparency and responsiveness as well as to restore public trust in state institutions, it is still unclear as to how it will benefit disadvantaged groups in marginalized regions and improve local governance. Law 31.13 has the potential to improve the quality of public services and empower citizens, but there are also major obstacles and gaps that require immediate attention—including the lack of political commitment to transparency, the prevailing institutional culture of retaining information, and, most importantly, the increasing closure of the civic space and crackdown on opposing voices.

Discussions on a Right to Information Law were initiated as early as 2007, following Morocco’s ratification of the UN Convention against Corruption (Resolution 58/4). However, it was not until the Arab uprisings and the February 20th movement when government officials and civil society actors embarked on an initiative to promote accountable, responsive, and inclusive governance.2 As a result, Article 27 was drafted and included in the 2011 amended constitution, and, therefore, access to information became a fundamental right to all citizens and legal residents of Morocco. A specialized commission composed of members of ministerial departments, government agencies, private sector companies, and civil society organizations was later established to work out the details of the law. Law 31.13 was the product of these collective efforts. It was ratified in February 2018 after years of debate and legislative battles. The law was originally scheduled to come into effect a year after its publication in the official gazette in March 2019. However, Law 31.13 was only officially enacted in March 2020, following a one-year delay due to logistical hiccups and implementation-related issues.

In a nutshell, Law 31.13 grants citizens the right to access information retained by government entities. Individuals can submit a free application to the relevant institution and request information on items such as laws, data, and reports. However, there are exceptions that apply to the type of information requested, such as those relating to homeland security and citizens’ private data. The law, under Article 29, also outlines penalties for citizens’ misuse of the requested information. Government agencies must respond to requests within twenty working days of their receipt. In some urgent cases (e.g. protection of lives or public safety), information must be provided within three days. Information officers’ failure to respond to requests is penalized under Article 19 of the law.3 Consequently, the implementation of law 31.13 relies on two main pillars: the appointment of well-trained civil servants who can adequately respond to public requests for information, as well as the proactive and timely publication of data that is accessible to the public.

Law 31.13 has the potential to be an effective tool for empowering citizens, especially those in marginalized regions, such as those in the rural margins of the monarchy. Most of these regions have witnessed intense popular unrest over the past few years, as citizens demand improved availability of basic services, such as healthcare, electricity and clean drinking water. The recent regionalization reforms introduced in Morocco’s 2011 constitution4 and the ensuing Organic Laws5 provided a significant boost toward strengthening the role of local governance and citizen participation in the decisionmaking process. However, the realization of these goals was unlikely without citizen access to relevant information. The municipal councils are now obliged to comply with Law 31.13, which will enable citizens to scrutinize their local representatives and hold them accountable. Karim El Hajjaji, co-founder of Tafra Association6, says “So far, it is extremely difficult to know what the communes [municipalities] are doing with the public resources they have in hand. Law 31.13 makes it mandatory to publish not only their budgets, but their public procurement calls and processes, spending programs, and all information related to local governance.”7

Thus far, the diminished availability of financial resources and qualified human capital are often cited as the biggest obstacles toward the successful implementation of the law. But in practice, altering societal and institutional culture is the real challenge. The law requires the Moroccan territorial collectivities (regions and municipalities) to nominate new information officers tasked with responding to citizens’ requests. These territorial collectivities are generally showing willingness to engage and are sending their newly nominated information officers to trainings. However, Ahmed Jazouli, a Moroccan policy expert involved in the training programs of civil service agents, maintains, “The main obstacle is the culture of retaining information by civil servants. They should be trained on releasing information and on the proactive publication of data. It is essential to focus on changing the dominant culture among public servants.”8

Apart from changing bureaucratic culture, it is key to foster a political culture of transparency, which is currently lacking. Most public institutions still hold back information that may show evidence of mismanagement or misuse of public resources to avoid legal scrutiny. According to the new law, it is mandatory for municipalities to make their financial data and development plans available online, yet few municipal budgets are currently accessible online. For instance, the city council of Casablanca has made significant efforts to promote dematerialized services and to keep its website updated. This example stands in contrast to other major well-endowed cities such as Rabat, which currently lacks a website. According to Karim El Hajjaji, “It is definitely not a matter of financial resources, but rather of political will.”9

Far-reaching campaigns are also crucial for raising public awareness of the law and its impact on their everyday lives. The law offers an opportunity, but it is up to citizens to exercise their rights to ensure equitable service delivery policies. Civil society organizations have a strong role to play in this regard. For example, Transparency Maroc, together with several national and international partners, organized a group of civil society organizations to lobby for a transparent and participatory budget. Similarly, referring to the Right to Information Law, Transparency Maroc is demanding more consistent information about the special COVID-19 fund, which was set up by the Moroccan government in March 2020 to compensate those who lost income due to the lockdowns.10 Indeed, the government’s management of this fund—which supports over five million households—has received widespread criticism from activists and NGOs. Oxfam Maroc, for example, is advocating for the fund to come under parliamentary oversight and be subject to checks by the Court of Audit. Others, including Tafra, called on the government to disclose the data used to develop the scenarios for the evolution of the pandemic in Morocco. However, the Haut Commissariat au Plan refused to do so, citing personal data protection constraints. This means that researchers and experts–such as those at Tafra–are not able to quality check the scenarios put forth by the government and thus cannot be part of the decisionmaking process in terms of lockdown policy and how the special fund is spent.

Finally, the potential of the Right to Information Law cannot be assessed without taking into account the closing civic space, including the restriction of media freedom in Morocco. More recently, the government used the COVID-19 crisis to pass a new emergency law, No. 2.220.292, declaring a health emergency and setting penalties of a up to three-month prison sentence and a fine of up to 1,300 Dirham (around 134 USD), for anyone breaching “orders and decisions taken by public authorities” or for anyone “obstructing” through “writings, publications or photos” of those decisions. Apart from prosecuting more than 90,000 people for breaking the law and other crimes, authorities have used it to prosecute several human rights activists and citizen journalists, accusing them of “incitement to violate the authorities’ decisions during the health emergency,” when in fact they criticized the “cronyism” and unequal distribution of aid by local authorities during the COVID-19 crisis.

The continued crackdown on journalists and opposing voices stands in stark contrast to the government’s recent efforts aimed at increasing citizens’ trust in the government and responding to calls for transparency. Such trust is arguably a pre-condition for citizens to invoke the law and make use of its provisions. In the meantime, disenchanted citizens would rather mobilize collectively and in the streets of major cities, as in May 2020, when protestors gathered to contest their exclusion from the COVID-19 fund. In short, while the Right to Information Law is a potentially powerful tool in the hands of citizens and civil society organizations, its application and enforcement largely relies on the government’s political will and commitment to genuine reforms.

 

This research is part of a larger project on the dynamics of decentralization in the MENA region. The project is generously funded by the Carnegie Corporation of New York.

This blog article was first published here by the Sada Journal.

About the authors:

Marwa ShalabyMarwa Shalaby is an assistant professor in the departments of Gender and Women’s Studies and Political Science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Her work focuses primarily on the intersection of the politics of authoritarianism, and women in politics. Follow her on Twitter @MarwaShalaby12.

Sylvia BerghSylvia Bergh is an associate professor in development management and governance at the International Institute of Social Studies, Erasmus University Rotterdam, The Hague, and a senior researcher at the Centre of Expertise on Global Governance at The Hague University of Applied Sciences. Her current research focuses on social accountability initiatives in the Middle East and North Africa region.

1 Seventy-eight countries and a growing number of local governments—representing more than two billion people—along with thousands of civil society organizations are members of the Open Government Partnership.

2 A recent report by the OECD points out that most MENA countries lacked access to information laws prior to the Arab uprisings. In the few MENA cases that promulgated such laws before the uprisings, many provisions penalized the sharing and communication of information without prior authorization by the relevant authorities.

3 The law states that officials who fail to provide citizens/legal residents with requested information will be subject to disciplinary actions, however, the specifics of such penalties remain unclear.

4 According to Article 1 of the 2011 amended constitution, “the territorial organization of Morocco is decentralized, and based on an advanced degree of regionalization.”

5 OL #113.14 outlines the authorities and responsibilities of the different local governance units (i.e., regions/provinces/municipalities) and it puts in place participatory mechanisms for citizens (Article 119).

6 Tafra Association is a research center in Rabat whose mission is to improve the understanding of Moroccan institutions to participate in the consolidation of the rule of law in Morocco.

7 Interview conducted by the author (Marwa Shalaby) in Rabat, February 2020 and follow-up email in June, 2020.

8 Interview conducted by the author (Marwa Shalaby) in Rabat, February 2020 and follow-up email in June, 2020.

9 Interview conducted by the author (Marwa Shalaby) in Rabat, February 2020 and follow-up email in June, 2020.

10 Getting access to this fund is even more important given the fact that 46 percent of the active population has no health insurance and 4.3 million households are employed in the informal sector without social security benefits.

 

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When children have children: Can postponing early motherhood help children survive longer?

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Baby feet and mother's hand

In 2010, approximately 34% of young women in developing countries – some 67 million – married before reaching 18 years of age. An additional 14-15 million women will marry as children or adolescents every year in the coming decades. Child marriages lead to pregnancies and childbirths at an early age, which can have negative consequences for the health of both mother and child. Does the age at which motherhood takes place matter, and can postponing motherhood into adulthood help increase the chances of children surviving beyond five years of age? My study of teen pregnancies amongst Bangladeshi girls shows that age does matter, and it matters quite a lot.

Baby feet and mother's hand

Globally, in developing countries excluding China, one in three girls will probably be married before they are 18, according to UNFPA figures from 2012. Bangladesh has the highest rate of child marriages in Asia (and the third-highest rate worldwide); two in three women marry as children or adolescents in this country. This exceptionally high rate of child marriages in Bangladesh persists despite a minimum legal marriage age of 18 years for women, and it leads to more teenage pregnancies and a care burden for young women. A survey interviewing 72,662 Bangladeshi mothers in 2001 showed that 10% of interviewed women had their first child between the ages of 10 and 14 years, and another 69% of them had their first child between the ages of 15 and 19 (Figure 1).

Figure 1: Age at which Bangladeshi women have their first child

Bangladeshi women age of first child
Figure 1: In total, 72,662 Bangladeshi women who gave birth in at least two different points in time were surveyed for the Maternal Health Services and Maternal Mortality Survey of 2001. This figure shows which fraction of these women gave birth for the first time at a certain age. Source: Trommlerová (2020).

In general, we know that adolescent childbearing is associated with negative health outcomes for both mother and child. The mother faces an increased risk of premature labour, labour-related complications, and death during delivery (Senderowitz, 1995). She  may also suffer an injury, an infection or a serious health limitation, such as an obstetric fistula or perineal laceration (UNICEF, 2001), due to giving birth. These problems are caused both by physical immaturity and poor socio-economic conditions of young mothers, including a lack of access to sufficient antenatal and obstetric care (WHO, 1999).

The child of an adolescent mother is at a higher risk of a low birth weight (Restrepo-Méndez et al., 2015), which is mainly associated with poor maternal nutrition of adolescents during pregnancy (UNICEF, 2001). Low birth weight is, in turn, a frequent cause of death in the first year of life of infants (McCormick, 1985, Sohely et al., 2001). Apart from biomedical reasons, there are additional channels that link adolescent pregnancies to higher mortality in early childhood. These include insufficient access to maternal health care services and lack of experience in taking care of children.

A better understanding of the link between adolescent childbearing and young children’s survival chances is important as scientific evidence can drive policy changes, particularly in enforcing the minimum legal marriage age in Bangladesh. It can also inform the advocacy of changes in cultural practices. Thus, the central question is: Can postponing motherhood of teenage girls help their children to survive beyond infancy or childhood?

Building on previous knowledge, I looked more closely at the impact of adolescent childbearing on the mortality of young children at different ages between 0 and 5 years. The goal was to separate the effect of having a child at an early age from the fact that poorer (and, frequently, less healthy) mothers tend to marry younger and might therefore have less healthy children. The idea is the following: if children born to young mothers suffer higher mortality in early childhood due to biological factors, such as physical immaturity of mothers and the resulting low birth weight of their children, then we should observe different mortality rates not only between children born to adolescent and adult mothers, but also among siblings born to the same mother in her adolescence and adulthood—that is, in different phases of her life.

It turns out that children born to young mothers (child brides in Bangladesh) are more likely to die in the first year of life than their siblings born later on. This is true irrespective of how rich the household is (left graph in Figure 2). Only in poor households, these negative effects extend up to the child’s fifth birthday (black and blue lines in right graph of Figure 2).

In the two graphs below, we see how much lower the probability of death for an infant or a child is if the mother is older than 10-14 years. The age of the mother is displayed in five-year age groups on the horizontal axes. Different lines indicate different income groups (poorest Quintile 1 – black; Quintile 2 – blue; Quintile 3 – green, Quintile 4 – red; richest Quintile 5 – yellow). The percentage of increased risk of early childhood mortality per age group is shown on the vertical axes of the graphs. The left graph depicts infant mortality (up to one year of age) while the right graph shows child mortality (between one and five years of age).

The graphs show that up to one year of age, the income of the family does not really matter (left) while between one and five years of age, a higher income can help outweigh the negative effect of teenage pregnancies (right). The downward trend observable in the left graph is universal for all income groups and it indicates that all children have higher survival chances in the first year of life if their mother is not a teenager. In the right graph, a similar downward trend is observable only for the two poorest income groups, which means that only in poorer families, children of ages one to five have worse survival chances if their mother is a teenager. The three richer income groups show no downward trend (and their slightly upward trend is statistically not important) which means that in richer families, the mother’s age does not really influence her child’s survival if the child managed to survive the first year of life. The graphs are based on my study of adolescent childbearing among Bangladeshi women.

Figure 2: Infant and child mortality effects of maternal age for five different wealth quintiles

Child mortality Bangladesh
Figure 2: Dash-dotted lines mark the average mortality rate to benchmark the effect sizes. Source: Trommlerová (2020).

 

These results confirm my idea that the effects of adolescent pregnancies on child survival in the first year of life are of biological nature because they are universal. Possibly, they are related to the immaturity of young girls’ bodies and to low birth weight of their children. Beyond infancy, these negative effects remain only in poorer households, which is consistent with the notion that richer households are able to counteract a biologically induced, worse starting position of children born to adolescent mothers by compensatory investments in child health. However, these investments do not become effective until the children reach the age of one year old.

Finally, the estimated effects are substantial in magnitude: for instance, the survival chances of children born to mothers aged 20-24 years are 56% higher in infants’ first year of life and 24% higher when the child is aged between one and five, when compared to their older siblings who were born to young mothers (aged 10-14 years). These effects either persist or become even larger when comparing adolescent maternal age (10-14) to older ages (25-29, 30-34, etc. up to 45-49 years). Importantly, these results remain true also when I exclude older women or first-born children from the sample.

To summarize, I have shown that infants and children have a much better chance of survival when their mothers are adults. The postponement of motherhood into adulthood could help prevent around 12,900 infant and 18,700 under-five deaths annually in Bangladesh, as rough calculations explained in my paper show. These effects can be directly attributed to the practice of child marriages.

This article is based on a recent paper I authored, see here.

Main reference:

S.K. Trommlerová (2020). When Children Have Children: The Effects of Child Marriages and Teenage Pregnancies on Early Childhood Mortality in Bangladesh. Economics & Human Biology 39, 100904.

Other references:

McCormick, M. (1985). The contribution of low birth weight to infant mortality and childhood morbidity. The New England Journal of Medicine 312(2), 82-90.

Restrepo-Méndez, M.C., D.A. Lawlor, B.L. Horta, A. Matijasevich, I.S. Santos, A.M. Menezes, F.C. Barros and C.G. Victora (2015). The association of maternal age with birthweight and gestational age. Paediatric and Perinatal Epidemiology 29, 31-40.

Senderowitz, J. (1995). Adolescent Health: Reassessing the Passage to Adulthood. World Bank Discussion Paper 272. World Bank, Washington DC.

Sohely, Y., D. Osrin, E. Paul and A. Costello (2001). Neonatal mortality of low-birth-weight infants in Bangladesh. Bulletin of the World Health Organization 79(7), 608-614.

UNFPA (2012). Marrying Too Young. End Child Marriage. United Nations Population Fund, New York.

UNICEF (2001). Early Marriage – Child Spouses. Innocenti Digest 7. Innocenti Research Centre, Florence.

WHO (1999). The Risks to Women of Pregnancy and Childbearing in Adolescence. WHO, Division of Family Health, Geneva.

About the author:

Sofia TrommlerováSofia Trommlerová is a postdoctoral researcher in economics at Universitat Pompeu Fabra in Barcelona, Spain. Her main research interests encompass family economics, gender, child health, development economics, and economic demography. In 2017-2018 she was a postdoctoral researcher in development economics at the International Institute of Social Studies (ISS), Erasmus University Rotterdam, The Netherlands.

 

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How COVID-19 is tragically exposing systemic vulnerabilities in Peru

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COVID testing in Peru

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

COVID testing in Peru
COVID-19 testing in Peru. Credit: Ministerio de Defensa del Perú on Flickr.

Precocious optimism followed by demise

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Proximate explanations of failure: mobility and behaviour

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

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

More fundamental structural reasons

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Realities exposed

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

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

About the authors:

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

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

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COVID-19 | Ephemeral universalism in the social protection response to the COVID-19 lockdown in the Philippines

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Since March 2020, the Philippines has implemented one of the world’s strictest and longest lockdowns in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, which has caused severe disruptions in peoples’ livelihoods. The government’s emergency social protection response, the ‘Social Amelioration Program’ (SAP), has also been notably massive, introducing one-off near-universal income protection. It is an insightful case given that the country’s existing social assistance system has been celebrated as a model for developing countries, even though it has been mostly bypassed in the emergency response. Moreover, the country’s highly stratified and fragmented social policy system has resulted in implementation delays and irregularities that have fostered social hostilities and undermined the potential for such momentary universalism to have lasting transformative effects.

The Philippine government first imposed its ‘community quarantine’ on 15 March, which has since been extended until 30 June. Thus far, the pandemic has not been severe relative to evolving global indicators, with 302 confirmed infections per million people and 11 confirmed deaths per million people as of 25 June (although at only 5,760 tests per million people, these confirmed rates are likely to be significantly underestimated). However, as elsewhere in the Global South, the lockdown has thrown the country into an employment crisis given that more than 60 percent of its workforce is informal, most in precarious situations even when earning above the official poverty line.

In response, the government rolled out the ‘Social Amelioration Program’ (SAP), comprising at least 13 different schemes and with an estimated total budget equivalent to as much as 3.1 percent of the country’s GDP [1]. The largest scheme is the Emergency Subsidy Program (ESP), which has been allocated 200 billion Philippines pesos (PhP; about 3.5 billion euros), more than three times the combined budget of all the other schemes.

The ESP was initially intended to cover 17.9 million households, while the other SAP cash subsidy schemes were to target more than 5.2 million individuals. Assuming that none of these overlapped (e.g. only one subsidy recipient per household), the SAP would have covered over 23 million households, or more than 96 percent of the roughly 24 million households in the country. This extent of coverage is effectively universal, representing an attempt to provide basic income support to all but the richest five to ten percent of households.

The ESP initially sought to provide cash transfers to low-income and vulnerable families during the months of April and May, the projected duration of the lockdown. The transfers range from 5,000 to 8,000 PhP per month (about 90 to 140 euros), depending on the minimum wage of the region of residence. This is notably more generous than the existing poverty-targeted conditional cash transfer programme, the Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program (hereafter Pantawid), which provides families with at most 3,450 PhP per month (approximately 60 euros). The 4.4 million Pantawid families have nonetheless been included in the ESP and the amount they receive has been topped-up to the ESP amount.

Despite these ambitions, the SAP has already been faltering. Based on our research [2], a number of problems can be discerned:

Delays and backtracking in the distribution of the ESP. While the ESP was supposed to be paid in two monthly tranches in April and May, the first tranche was yet to be completely distributed as of 15 June [3]. It was later announced that the second tranche, whose distribution only began on 11 June, would only be distributed to beneficiaries living in communities where the lockdown conditions had not been eased – about 8.5 million families – as well as to an additional five million ‘waitlisted or left out’ families, or, as explained by the DSWD, those that did not make it to the list of first tranche beneficiaries [4]. It is not clear whether either of these numbers include the Pantawid households mentioned above or why there would have been ‘left out’ families from a programme that was ostensibly universal.

Vague and fragmented selection guidelines. In addition to this lack of clarity at the aggregate level, the guidelines in the selection of ESP beneficiaries have also been vague and fragmented, which subjects them to different interpretations and discrepancies on the ground. There is no single document that describes the process in detail or provides even an overview. The social registry that is used for poverty targeting in the Pantawid – the Listahanan – was not used for the identification the non-Pantawid families, who constituted 75 percent of the ESP target beneficiaries in the first tranche. Instead, the government reverted to reliance on village-level government functionaries, who have proven decisive in identifying ESP beneficiaries and distributing assistance. This has re-politicized the administration of social protection after years of supposed attempts at depoliticization by means of the Listahanan and the Pantawid.

Failed attempts at overcoming residualism. The SAP reflects an attempt to overcome the limitations of the country’s polarised and fragmented social protection system, even while this system has rendered almost impracticable its universalist impulses. The existing system notably excludes close to half of the population at the middle of the income distribution – often referred to as the ‘missing middle’ [5]. This refers to the 40 percent of employed people working in the informal sector who are not covered by the contributory social insurance designed for those formally employed, which covers about 40 percent of employed people, while at the same time they are not covered by the Pantawid, which covers about 21 percent of the population. The Pantawid beneficiaries are presumed to be the poorest people, although there have been serious concerns regarding its accuracy of targeting, meaning that it excludes many of the poor, while including many who are not (at least, not according to the poverty lines used by the programme) [6].

Social hostilities in the face of systemic confusions. The confused and fraught implementation of the SAP has therefore exacerbated fundamental schisms entrenched within the existing social protection system, including confusions about who is in fact targeted by the ESP and contestations by local government officials over the number of beneficiaries set for their respective cities or municipalities [7]. In particular, given the perception that Pantawid families are prioritised by the ESP (in the sense that they are automatically eligible for the programme), they have drawn public attention and scrutiny, even though they only accounted for about 25 percent of targeted recipients of the ESP in the first tranche. As a result, anti-poor sentiments have proliferated on social media since the distribution of the first tranche [8].

The inadequacy of celebrated models of poverty-targeted social assistance

These confusions and tensions show how the pursuit of genuine universalism within an existing stratified, fragmented and residualist social protection system presents major in-built challenges for advancing beyond moments of crisis. While the Philippines has been able to roll out a massive emergency social protection response to the COVID-19 lockdown, with near-universal coverage of possibly more than 90 percent of the population, reliance on the existing institutional infrastructure has had the effect of fostering social hostilities and potentially quelling support for such universalism among the population.

This is particularly significant given that the flagships of this infrastructure – the Pantawid and the Listahanan – have received huge support from international financial institutions and successive governments for 13 years prior to the pandemic and have been promoted as models up to the crisis, yet they have proven to be utterly inadequate for identifying systemic vulnerabilities at such a crucial time as the pandemic. The enormity of need engendered by the COVID-19 crisis evidently pushed the government to go beyond its conventional focus on poverty-targeted social assistance. As it scrambled to do this, it mostly bypassed the targeted system that had been so carefully groomed and adulated by donors, which has been neither fit for the purpose of actualizing universalistic aspirations, nor politically facilitative for their perpetuation.[/vc_column_text][vc_separator color=”custom” accent_color=”#f00f0f” css=”.vc_custom_1593177038993{margin-top: -10px !important;margin-bottom: 10px !important;}”][vc_column_text][1] https://www.officialgazette.gov.ph/downloads/2020/03mar/20200328-JOINT-MEMORANDUM-CIRCULAR-NO-1-S-2020.pdf

[2] This work builds on our ongoing research that we have been conducting since 2015 into the political economy surrounding the institutional evolution of the Philippine social protection system, as part of ERC-funded research project entitled ‘Aiding Social Protection: The Political Economy of Externally Financing Social Policy in Developing Countries’ (grant agreement No 638647). Our current research on the COVID response has been based on deskwork ¬– by necessity given that all three authors have been in lockdown in Europe – and has involved the collection and analysis of official documents (including relevant laws, presidential reports, and other administrative edicts) and media coverage concerning the Philippine government social protection responses to the pandemic, and selective remote interviews with  social workers from the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) who have been involved with the COVID-19 response at various levels of government.

[3] https://public.tableau.com/views/SAPMonitoringDashboardforEmergencySubsidyunderAICS/Dashboard1?:display_count=no&:showVizHome=no

[4] See https://news.mb.com.ph/2020/06/11/1-3-m-4ps-beneficiaries-get-sap-2-cash-aid-reports-dswd/ and https://www.dswd.gov.ph/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/Annex-A.-Media-Based-SAP-FAQs-Part-3-ver-june-1-8pm-final.pdf

[5] Cf. Fischer 2018, 2020; ILO, 2017; Rutkowski, 2020.

[6] The rampant inaccuracies of the Pantawid are detailed in our forthcoming article currently under review. Also see Kidd and Athias (2019). 

[7] For instance, see https://www.rappler.com/nation/257316-reinstate-original-beneficiaries-metro-manila-mayors-dswd

[8] E.g., see viral posts on Facebook like this and this, and news reports like this.

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

About the authors:

Emma CantalEmma Lynn Dadap-Cantal is a PhD student at ISS. Her dissertation is a comparative case study of the political economy of social protection in Cambodia and the Philippines, with particular emphasis on the role of external donor influences in shaping the social protection systems in these two countries.

Charmaine G. Ramos

Charmaine G. Ramos (c.ramos@luc.leidenuniv.nl) is a lecturer at Leiden University College, Leiden University, The Netherlands. Her current research focuses on analysing social policy and resource governance, as a means for exploring how political economy dynamics constrain and structure institutions for social transformation and productive expansion in developing economies.

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

Title Image Credit: Asian Development Bank on Flickr

COVID-19 | Putting COVID-19 into context(s)

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Covid Checks in India

COVID-19 is a hazard, but does not produce the risks that we now see unfolding throughout the world, says ISS researcher Dorothea Hilhorst, who recently participated in a webinar organized by Humanitarian Knowledge Exchange platform Kuno to reflect on how the COVID-19 pandemic is being handled and what could be done differently. Here’s what she had to say.

Covid Checks in India

COVID-19 is sweeping the globe and widely triggers top-down and centralised emergency measures. I don’t recall another crisis that has created such a response, even though the actual numbers of people affected have been very modest compared to many of the other crises we have in this world, including the lack of access to clean water, resource competition in mining areas, conflict and refugee problems, and climate change. In the beginning, I often found myself thinking if only the world would muster the courage to also address these other crises, and give them more priority than short-term economic gain.

However, it is also clear that there are strong limitations to the bold and robust responses of top-down emergency management. Firstly, I really resent how we seem to conflate the hazard of COVID-19 with subsequent risks. Yes, COVID-19 is a nasty and infectious virus. But it is not a virus that dictates that it should lead to widespread food shortages or increased marginalisation of the poor and vulnerable populations. These are spillover crises that relate to but are not directly caused by the virus.

These spillover crises are not just happening, they are let be by policy. When we signal the risk of food insecurity in the wake of COVID-19, I see agencies jumping to raising funds and stockpiling to feed the world. However, why don’t we talk about preventing this crisis? Why not focus on diplomacy to continue food exports from surplus-producing countries? Why not ensure that markets stay open and continue to function? Why not give peasants free range to go to their fields (at distance from other human beings) instead of locking them down in their houses?

Secondly, we have to be really aware about the many instances where governments have instrumentalised COVID-19 for other purposes, such as to curb the freedoms of civil society, to silence the media, or to undermine political opponents. Hungary is a case in point, where the government, under the pretext of misinformation about COVID-19, has closed critical media outlets. Authorities in many areas are seen to instrumentalise COVID-19 to increase surveillance and control, at the detriment of human rights and civil society, with rumours increasing the mistrust between people and their state.

Thirdly, while there is no doubt that top-down policies and expert knowledge is required to address the crisis, there are also indications about the limitations of this approach. Top-down approaches may ignore, stifle, or expire local coping capacities, social networks, and small-scale formal and informal institutions. Based on previous experiences and research, this may have grave consequences and render the COVID-19 response counter-productive:

  1. Local institutions are people’s first and very often only line of defence against crises. Where top-down policies don’t reach out to communities to provide services and when people cannot rely on local institutions, they become increasingly vulnerable. Why close schools instead of mobilising teachers to help spread messages about personal hygiene in relation to COVID-19?
  2. In areas where state-society relations are already characterised by mistrust before the crisis, there is a high risk that people will not believe the messages about COVID-19 coming from the authorities and will try to circumvent policies aiming to prevent the spread of the virus. A notorious example was found when the Ebola pandemic erupted in Sierra Leone: people sometimes hid patients to avoid their hospitalisation.
  3. One-sided top-down policies can contribute to spillover crises at the local level, including crises of livelihoods and food security. This can lead to adverse coping mechanisms that actually increase the risks of COVID-19. There are signals that some women in the Eastern DRC who are prohibited to cross the border with Rwanda for their petty trade now resort to transactional sex to feed their families.

Let’s stay alert, or as we say nowadays, let us be ‘woke’ about these consequences of responding to COVID-19. The virus is a hazard, but does not produce the risks that we now see unfolding throughout the world. Top-down measures need to be linked up with bottom-up initiatives and coping mechanisms to effectively deal with the crisis.

Hilhorst’s discussion was part of a webinar titled ‘How COVID empowers local civil society organizations’. Other speakers included Hero Anwar, Program Director at REACH Iraq; Gloria Modong, Executive Director, Titi Foundation South Sudan, and Deputy Chair, NGO Forum South Sudan; and Feliciano Reyna, Executive Director and founder of Accíon Solidaria in Venezuela and representative of Civilis.

The entire webinar can be (re-)watched here: https://www.kuno-platform.nl/events/kuno-covid-cafe-how-covid-empowers-local-civil-society-organizations-in-the-south/

]This article is part of a series about the coronavirus crisis. Read all articles of this series increase surveillance and control.

About the author:

Dorothea Hilhorst

Dorothea Hilhorst is Professor of Humanitarian Aid and Reconstruction at the International Institute of Social Studies of Erasmus University Rotterdam. She is a regular author for Bliss. Read all her posts here.

Title Image Credit: Gwydion M. Williams on Flickr