Global Insights: COVID–19 and the Global South

Authors: Jonathan Crush, Ann Fitz-Gerald, Hallelujah Lulie, Briony Jones, Anja Osei, Shirin Rai, Rachel Robinson

Editors: Briony Jones and Maeve Moynihan

This post is part of a larger collection covering the Global Insights webinar series, hosted jointly by Balsillie School of International Affairs (Canada), the Department of Politics and International Studies at the University of Warwick (UK), the Institute for Strategic Affairs (Ethiopia), American University’s School of International Service (USA), and Konstanz University (Germany). Global Insights webinars take place every Thursday at 16:00h (BST). You can access a recording of this week’s webinar here.

Panelists: Ann Fitz-Gerald (Moderator - BSIA), Briony Jones (PAIS/WICID), Shirin Rai (PAIS/WICID), Jonathan Crush (BSIA), Hallelujah Lulie (ISA), Rachel Robinson (AU), and Anja Osei (KU)

COVID-19 is highlighting existing inequalities, exacerbating differences between the Global North and Global South, and bringing to light the gendered, racialised, and ethicised differences in the way people experience and can respond to crisis. COVID-19 is a health crisis, but it is also a crisis of security, governance, and democracy. The following post summarizes reflections through five questions and five policy recommendations.

In what ways does the pandemic in the Global South differ from that in Europe and North America?

Both scholars and journalists have been quick to highlight the differing experiences between the Global North and the Global South during the pandemic. A more nuanced approach that acknowledges similarities between the Global North and South as well as variations within the Global South itself is necessary. Within the Global South, economic consequences may be more severe, health burdens are greater, infrastructures for regulating populations are weaker, and trust in political institutions is lower, all of which may affect the capacity of governments to deal with the crisis. However, the population in the Global South is younger, less urbanised, has a history of dealing with health emergencies, and has fewer severe infections and fatalities thus far. This may just reflect a time lag and under-reporting in the Global South, but it may also demonstrate forms of resilience and early action which are not present in the Global North. There have been inspiring and effective responses throughout the Global South that disprove many flawed portrayals of the region, including effective food and resource distribution, accurate and consistent global health messaging, and the preservation of human rights in a time of crisis.

How is the COVID-19 pandemic in the North affecting the Global South?

The possibility of declining capital flow for development was a recurring topic throughout the webinar discussion. This decline encompasses remittances, foreign direct investment, and overseas development aid. In 2019, over 250 million migrants collectively remitted over $600 billion to their home countries. Remittances fell by 7% during the 2008 financial crisis, and the World Bank estimates that they have already dropped by 20% during the pandemic. The closure of borders in the Global North has already affected migration and remittance flows. As demand for clothing and other consumer goods declines, factory workers in the Global South have lost jobs without any security or pay. Support for foreign direct investment to Africa has already declined, and argued that the 0.7 Gross Domestic Product development assistance commitment may soon come under pressure as well. Such dramatic decreases in capital flow to the Global South will have a sustained impact on economies there. The US government’s attempts to defund the World Health Organisation exemplifies how governments may use COVID-19 as an excuse to limit funding to multilateral organisations. These tendencies towards isolationism, as well as neo-colonial trends as the Global North serve as concerning signs of what may come.

What is the response to COVID-19 taken by the South and what are we learning from it?

A variety of responses from the Global South have arisen so far, including quick and effective responses which demonstrate strong leadership at a time of crisis. National and local context drives this variation, but histories of responding to health crises and activism around the right to health impact it as well, as we see in Brazil for example. The Africa Centre for Security Studies has pointed to innovative responses such as Presidential Task Forces which mobilise professionals from different disciplines to share best practices like mobile testing. Governments in the South initially responded to the informal sector with tight spatial control, but later reversed this decision realising its vital importance for food security, among other aspects of daily life. In Addis Ababa for example, where around 40% of the economy is informal, the application of lockdown has to be different to contexts that we might see in London or Paris. In the context of the Global South, many populations see the lockdown response as more painful than the pandemic, leading to protest. As governments respond to this opposition, monitoring and observing in future elections will be affected, which may further cement authoritarian tendencies in government and increased dissatisfaction among populations.

Many countries in the global south are pursuing far-reaching democratization agenda. How is/could COVID-19 impact on these agenda?

The Global South is in a liminal moment in which xenophobic and populist politics may intensify, or a more collectivist political approach will triumph where states, civil society organisations, and multilateralism win out. For example, there is evidence in India of civil society organisations providing the much-needed food to the poor during lockdown, however there is also evidence of the pandemic being communalised to target India’s Muslim populations. This moment shows how the state can mobilise crises to shut down democratic critique in the name of urgency. Scholars, practitioners, and policy-makers must remain vigilant in order to guard against these potential threats to democracy, particularly in states where authoritarian tendencies are using such restrictions to quash opposition activism. In Senegal, for example, a recent study found that more than 80% of the population is suffering from the economic conditions due to lockdown, yet more than 80% approve of the government measures and are ready to comply. The pandemic and responses to it have and will continue to exacerbate inequalities surrounding gender and sexual orientation, in particular. For example, access to contraception and abortions is reduced and governments with a pre-exiting anti-LGBTQI stance continue to target sexual and gender minorities, but access to community support services are diminished. We have yet to see if this will also offer a powerful rallying cry for populations to demand more from the state.

How will/has COVID-19 impact(ed) Security Issues in the Global South?

In many places, the pandemic has emboldened state power and created an entry point to consolidate national consensus. The pandemic threatens security surrounding food, justice, equality, and more. In 2019 the FAO estimated that almost 2 billion people globally were either moderately or severely food insecure. Lockdowns have disrupted supply chains, reduced income, and increased food insecurity amongst the most vulnerable as the Hungry Cities Project has identified. The joint food and economic crises are forcing governments in some nations to relax lockdown restrictions before the health pandemic allows. The panel also highlighted the way in which the pandemic is widening the justice gap. In a report in 2019, the Task Force on Justice found that 1.5 billion people globally have a justice problem which they cannot resolve and that 4.5 billion people globally are excluded from the opportunities that the law provides. Current emergency measures may lead to, or indeed themselves be, violations of human rights for the general population and racial, ethnic, religious, and sexual minorities. A coordinated response from all justice actors – local, national and international, civil society and private sector – is necessary to independently monitor these measures, create safe zones in violence hotspots, and generate people-centred data on needs.

Key Conclusions: Five pieces of advice for policy-makers

1. Development agencies in the Global North should design aid programming that incorporates social care and social work. Governments in both the Global North and Global South should include increased resources for social care in relevant budgets, and recognise the value of care work being undertaken, as well as the gendered dimensions as women take up the burden of additional care work due to COVID-19.

2. Governments in both the Global North and Global South should invest resources in social infrastructure and build strong social welfare systems, considering policy tools such as universal welfare provision, basic income, wage protections schemes and public childcare provision.

3. Policy makers in governments as well as practitioners in development agencies should take an interdisciplinary approach including, but not limited to, health expertise.

4. Fund independent data collection, including a focus on people-centred data.

5. National governments and multilateral organisations should use this opportunity to create national consensus and dialogue.

Through these five pieces of advice for policymakers, the topic of COVID-19 and the Global South can spur conversation about how we understand the effects of the pandemic, how we construct narratives of the ‘crisis’ of the pandemic, and how we respond as scholars, practitioners and policy makers to ameliorate the impact of the crisis. While leadership, innovation and best practices are visible in the Global South, resource needs and declining development aid are growing. A multilateral response in conjunction with local and national action are of utmost importance to address the complexities and variations in the Global South at this time of crisis.

Mouzayian Khalil : 27 May 2020 10:20 |  Tags: Coronavirus Pandemic Democratization Development Global South Security |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Global Insights – COVID–19: Stress Test for the Global Economy

Authors: Ann Fitz-Gerald, Tewodros Mekonnen, John Ravenhill, Lena Rethel, and Stephen Silvia

Editors: Briony Jones and Maeve Moynihan

This post is part of a larger collection covering the Global Insights webinar series, hosted jointly by Balsillie School of International Affairs (Canada), the Department of Politics and International Studies at the University of Warwick (UK), the Institute for Strategic Affairs (Ethiopia), American University’s School of International Service (USA), and Konstanz University (Germany). Global Insights webinars take place every Thursday at 16:00h (BST). You can access a recording of this week’s webinar here.

Panelists: Ann Fitz-Gerald (Moderator - BSIA), John Ravenhill (University of Waterloo, BSIA), Lena Rethel (PAIS and Centre for the Study of Globalisation and Regionalisation/Warwick), Tewodros Mekonnen (Institute for Strategic Affairs, Ethiopia), Stephen Silvia (American University).

COVID-19 is a severe economic crisis affecting individuals, households, national economies and global supply chains. There are pressing questions around debt relief, gender justice, and failing international cooperation, and our responses to them will shape our economic futures for years to come. This panel discussion touches upon these issues, and others, in a wide-ranging exchange on the pandemic’s economic effects, responses, and options for policy makers.

1. What was the state of the global economy going into the current crisis?

Summing up the state of the global economy we characterise it as ‘brittle’, referring to recent contractions in international trade, increases in debt of several large economies, and the failure of international cooperation in international affairs. This inauspicious situation can be summed up by the surpassing of the 250 trillion US dollar mark of global debt last year, and does not bode well for the global economy in the ‘post-COVID’ phase. In addition to state debt we have high levels of corporate debt and household debt, leading to variations in individual experiences of the current crisis. This is compounded by the growing reliance on precarious labour which poses significant challenges when thinking through policies to ensure job security. Turning to the Global South specifically, there had been an upward trend in economic growth in Africa since the 2008 financial crisis. These positive trends will be undermined by the current crisis.

2. How is this crisis different from the 1930s or 2008 crises?

What is happening to the global economy now is certainly far worse than the 2008 financial crisis, which was a crisis in financing connected to a home mortgage bubble. The current crisis is much more like the crisis in 1974/5 where there was also an external shock, and we see the severity of the dual demand and supply shocks. We don’t yet know whether constraints on the repayment of loans will lead to economic instability in the future and we may see government bailouts. Even when lockdown is relaxed the likelihood is that spending, tourism and the service sector will be impacted for years to come. 212 million people are employed globally in the hospitality industry for example, which gives some sense of the long-term impacts that we may see. We could see huge unemployment increases as well as significant decreases in economic growth. The fact that lockdown-induced unemployment has caused a falloff in demand, which is in reverse order compared to a typical recession, makes it different to previous crises. It is particularly important to highlight the gendered dimensions of these effects, in terms of who undertakes the insecure labour, and who is undertaking additional care work in response to school and childcare closures.

3. What gaps and weaknesses has the COVID-19 crisis exposed in the national and international economies?

On the international level the main weakness has been the marked lack of cooperation. The one positive course of action has been the G20 agreeing on a moderate package of debt suspension for the poorest countries. Disruptions in imports and exports has constrained foreign exchange and this is hitting countries in the Global South hard, with calls to cancel and not only suspend debt. On an international level we have also seen a disruption of supply chains, and disruptions in the food supply. In addition, many national economies in the Global North have a welfare state connected to work and in the Global South no welfare state at all leaving those in lockdown with limited abilities to generate resources. For domestic economies the record low interest rates in many industrialised economies have robbed central banks of a key instrument to slow recessions, and we already heard warnings about this last year. This leaves only one instrument for national economies, and that is to pump cash into the economies, and there are a lot of pressures on ensuring this happens. In the context of high levels of deficit and debt this will have medium and long-term consequences, and the key question of who will pay for the debt which is accumulating remains unanswered.

4. Will this crisis trigger a transformation?

It is too early to say which transformations will occur as a result of the crisis, particularly as the pandemic is only in the early stages in the Global South. We have started to see some changes around purchasing practices, and we might well see moves towards automation, delivery at a distance, and increasing delinking of work from social benefits. There is some hope of transformations such as a move towards a more caring economy, universal basic income and a focus on the welfare state, but it is too early to predict. Indeed, one shouldn’t forget the aftermath of the financial crisis of the 1920s which saw the rise of fascism and Second World War. Large numbers of unemployment may lead to instability, and we may see increasing protectionism around a focus on national security. We may also see an intensification of regionalisation regarding supply chains and reliance on key goods. The position of China will be relevant for such changes, although the extent to which it is marginalised may be over exaggerated due to lack of agility in moving manufacturing hubs. East Asia is likely to be the region which rebounds most quickly, with less debt than other parts of the word and because of close integration of the economies.

5. What has worked in terms of dealing with the economic effects of this crisis?

The policy response so far has seen some innovative policy making, particularly in comparison to the 2008 financial crisis. Policy makers have, from the beginning, been using more of their tool kit e.g. wage subsidies, mortgage payment holidays, tax cuts, or looking for other types of short and medium term funding and investors. However, a lot of these measures have a short lived grace period and we will see some difficult choices about which companies and sectors will be supported by governments. This is as much a political decision as an economic question, and the ‘winding back’ from such measures is as yet unplanned. Innovations are required around the gendered effects of the crisis, use of technology and automation, social security systems, and access to finance for individuals and households. If we turn to the Global South, and Africa in particular, we see some learning among politicians and policy makers regarding response and early preparations for tailored solutions. Indeed, we have in many ways seen more effective responses to the economic aspects of the crisis than we have to the health aspects of the crisis. What we are lacking is leadership for a coordinated international response and this is concerning.

Key Conclusions: Six pieces of advice for policy-makers

1. Think about how to manage debt relief and introduce new instruments to ensure long-term sustainability of such relief that benefits the poorest.

2. Coordinate procurement and distribution of personal protective equipment on a global level.

3. Address, in a socially just way, the difficulty of implementing social distancing in many parts of the global supply chain.

4. Build welfare states for countries that do not have them.

5. Take steps to address climate change.

6. Focus on international trade and an international agreement winding back tariffs.

Mouzayian Khalil : 20 May 2020 17:42 |  Tags: Coronavirus Pandemic Debt Crisis Global Economy |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

A Regenerative State or Business as Usual?

By Shirin M Rai (WICID) and Jacqui True (GPS, Monash)

A key aspect of social relations that has been brought into sharp relief during the international COVID-19 crisis, is the labour of women in care work – paid and unpaid. Unpaid care work in households has increased during the pandemic shutdown, with home schooling of children, greater care needs of older persons, and overwhelmed health services. Those on the frontlines of the pandemic are women working in the formal care economy: nurses, nurse aides, teachers, child care workers, aged-care workers, and cleaners. Women make up 67% of the global health workforce and over 80% in some regions. Their situation as "essential workers" involves a gender-specific struggle for recognition of the value of paid and unpaid care labour, and for social redistribution of resources to reflect that equality. A key challenge for governments and international organisations is whether and how they will respond to reliance on this labour to develop policies that recognise, support and regenerate care economies?

As the COVID-19 pandemic has shown, women’s participation in all spheres of life is essential to sustainable development, durable peace and to the realization of human rights. And yet, we seem to be stuck between the competitive individualism of the market and the failure of state socialism and the social democratic welfare state. Women’s labour continues to be overlooked, and unaccounted for, even as the pandemic increases their burdens of social reproduction[1].

Violence against women has risen sharply, and while there has been a celebration of nurses and care workers, there is little evidence that care work is being better paid and supported. To the contrary, more than one in five healthcare workers in the UK are likely to leave their role as a result of COVID-19. Violence and discrimination against healthcare workers has also been cited in many countries from Mexico to Philippines and Australia. Unpaid care economies continue to be relied on to cushion ‘crisis shocks’, without much thinking about whether additional burdens of care can lead to increased levels of human depletion in such situations. This is an important gap to recognise, as well as a significant challenge, because those who are invisible as producers and workers will be invisible in distribution, both in terms of the allocation of resources and the redistributive policies and services needed to address the crisis, by both the state and non-state actors.

The household is a key unit in mobilising material, ideological and human resources in fighting the COVID-19 pandemic. It is the one constant: from providing food for families, supplying older people and friends with food and medicines, engaging in paid and unpaid care work including health care and contributing to community services, neighbourhood groups, charities. It is then unsurprising that it is under pressure during this pandemic and its consequent lockdown. Gendered expectations of altruism and self-sacrifice are also prominent in times of crisis. Indeed, pro-natalism in the aftermath of crises – building back better with babies – has been a historical pattern.

Crises are often mobilised by the state to shut down democratic critique in the name of (‘the tyranny of’) urgency. The ICNL COVID-19 Civic Freedom Tracker monitors government responses to the pandemic that affect civic freedoms and human rights, focused on emergency laws. For example, there is evidence that the COVID-19 crisis has negatively affected sexual and reproductive rights: Marie Stopes International has predicted that as many as 9.5 million women are at risk of losing access to family planning services as a direct result of the pandemic. In India, to attract investment, many states are giving businesses regulatory holidays, including over layoffs, compensation and decent conditions of work (Sustainable Development Goal 8) including provision of créches and are dismantling further trade union rights of collective bargaining. This needs to be guarded against.

While assumptions are being made about the increasing role of the state in the wake of the crisis, missing from the current discussion of global and economic recovery is the concept of a “regenerative state” that would address gender disparities as it develops policies to recover economies and social life. We would suggest that such an approach is particularly important as we come out of the strict lockdowns in many countries, and as policy options are considered to get the economies going. This is a critical juncture where we could either see an intensification of extremist, xenophobic and populist politics locally and globally or a move towards a more solidaristic, political approach, where states, civil society organisations, and multilateralism win out. We cannot take either as inevitable.

Regeneration is possible in the moment of openness we now encounter as a result of COVID-19’s rupture in business as usual. There is the potential for policy and governance to be re-visioned but this moment of openness will be short-lived and we need to mobilise if we are to see a change in direction in any jurisdiction. We note that such regeneration must include three core elements:

1) rebuilding of social infrastructure – health, education and social care - by recognising the value of the paid and unpaid care economy;

2) a democratic politics of dialogic, deliberative, and participative conversation that attends to issues such as the division of care labour and shadow pandemic of domestic violence and;

3) accountability mechanisms for economic and social rebuilding focused on a bottom-up approach to regeneration with civil society groups, social movement actors, and epistemic communities.

Above all, right now as urgent and new policy responses to COVID-19 are rolling out we need a care audit of every policy and investment to ensure an inclusive and sustainable social and economic recovery and global stability for future generations. The window of opportunity and time to act to build back better is now.

Mouzayian Khalil : 15 May 2020 14:34 |  Tags: Gender Lockdown Pandemic Regenerative State Social Reproduction Unpaid Work |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Responding to a crisis in the face of a rigid Government: Oxfam India’s work in Bihar

Oxfam India’s work in Bihar, India in response to the Covid-19 pandemic

Ranjana Das, Oxfam India

The Covid19 pandemic followed by an unprecedented lockdown in India called for an immediate humanitarian response. The double whammy which has thrown India’s poor into immediate food and essentials crisis calls for action where the government, civil society and non-government organizations must come together rising above their individual agenda and politics. The pandemic has particularly hit hard the east Indian state of Bihar.

Here I discuss a few emerging issues as a result of lockdown, Bihar government’s inadequate measures to address them, it’s indifference towards engaging with civil society and NGOs, and how an organization like Oxfam India could still respond to the crisis by adhering to a few important central government directives and appeals.

COVID-19, lockdown and major issues in Bihar

Bihar declared lockdown on March 22^ndtwo days prior to the national lockdown declaration on March 24^th. The major issues that have arisen can be classified into health, loss of livelihood and severe food crisis. Because of the lockdown announced by the Indian government there have been thousands of people pouring into Bihar from different parts of the country and moving to their home villages[1], many having walked for 100 plus miles. It took a few days for the Health Department to set up the necessary infrastructure at district hospitals and sub-district levels for initial screening, isolation and moving people to quarantine centers. At the time of writing this was happening mostly at district hospitals, schools and community centers. In this context contact tracing of the migrant work returnees became one of the most critical issues.

The second major issue due to lockdown is the loss of livelihood, especially for the poor daily wage workers who are engaged in the informal sector within the State (dihadi majdoor). A quick assessment done by a Patna[2]based organization Koshish Charitable Trust[3]across 18 slums, 13 municipal wards and 5 temporary locations in Patna shows that rag-pickers, daily laborers, working in nearby agriculture fields, construction workers, vegetable sellers, street vendors and domestic workers (who are mainly women) have no work because of the lockdown and hence no income which in turn has snowballed into a crisis of survival. They are forced to borrow money from local money-lenders at exorbitant rates of interest or from generous neighbors fin order to buy essentials. Many are reported to be going hungry or managing on just one meal a day. Many are migrants from other parts of the state and do not have ration cards to enable them to use the government provided Public Distribution System’s (PDS) food benefits.

Response of Bihar government [4]

The initial response of Bihar government was mainly to address the pandemic through the Health Department. One of the very first Health Department orders was to set up 10 isolation beds in each of the district hospitals of Bihar. Contact tracing, testing and treatment started gradually. On the relief front, there was a distribution of cooked food to homeless and destitute people for an initial few days with support from UNICEF. 

The government has also declared a PDS compensation for ration card holders. However, it excludes a large number of people who do not possess a ration card or any other documents like Below Poverty Line [BPL] cards to enable PDS access. A recent report by the economists Jean Drèze and Reetika Khera[5]states that over 100 million people in India and 18 million people in Bihar have been excluded from the PDS because an outdated 2011 census data is being used to calculate State-wide National Food Security Act (NFSA)[6]coverage which requires holding a ration card. Restricting the PDS coverage to ration card holders will mean excluding this 1.8 million in Bihar from the food security coverage during this hour of crisis.

To date the Government of Bihar is not allowing civil society groups/NGOs to distribute any relief materials including food. To confirm this a letter (dated April 1^st2020) was issued by the District Collector of Darbhanga district. This letter stated that (1) the Chief Minister Office had announced that no NGO will be allowed to work on COVID19 relief (2) that all relief has to be channeled through the government and (3) that the permits issued to local NGOs for food distribution will be revoked.

Oxfam India and Humanitarian response of COVID-19

Oxfam India is therefore working under severe constraints. Our first step under the lockdown situation has been to activate our local NGO partners at the community level. Since there has been a restriction issued from the State Government, we requested that our partners collaborate with the local District Health Department for mass awareness and the District Collector for relief distribution. Two of our partners in the districts of Madhubani and Kishangunje collaborated with the District Administration and Health Department to run an awareness campaign[7]across villages on COVID19 symptoms, using the Health Department issued IEC[8]materials, the importance of quarantine, social distancing and WASH[9]practices. They secured permission from the District Collectors to distribute dry rations and in both districts could reach out to 300 of the most vulnerable families including no-ration card holders, homeless and destitute. We have prioritized such families when distributing dry rations. These 300 families included 35 of those who were stranded in Madhubani station and could not move to their villages due to lockdown[10].

On March 30^th, a letter[11]was issued by Amitabh Kant, CEO NITI Aayog,[12]appealing to civil society organizations in India to come forward to help with providing food (cooked and dry), essentials and WASH services to people in need. This allowed us to distribute dry rations to 1100 families between April 4^thto April 8^th.

Moving on

Despite the letter by NITI Aayog, we are yet to receive any green signal from Bihar Government on engagement of civil society and NGOs despite several appeals. We continue our work on the basis of this and another recent letter[13]dated April 8^thfrom NITI Aayog where they have asked to designate a Nodal Officer in each District level to coordinate with local NGOs. We are also working closely with the Inter Agency Group[14]drafting an appeal to Bihar government to formally engage with civil society for COVID19 response.

Bihar government’s silence is deafening every time a disaster has struck the state. From 2019 floods to this year’s COVID19 pandemic they remain indifferent with their inadequate measures and apathy towards engaging with civil society. The Bihar Government urgently needs an integrated way of working with all groups in order to reach the most vulnerable in these trying times. Civil society/NGOs (with their credibility, community network & outreach and volunteer base) can reach groups who remain overlooked and excluded by government policy and rules. A Government-NGO collaboration would be a most welcome move to fight COVID19.

Mouzayian Khalil : 05 May 2020 14:00 |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Understanding social realities through gender transformative and participatory research methods

Diya Dutta[1]

In the summer of 2019, Oxfam India embarked upon an innovative research to understand the intersection between women’s unpaid care work burden and violence against women and girls. The study was conducted in rural and urban areas of the northern state of Rajasthan in India.

It was innovative because we applied a gender transformative and feminist participatory research lens to this problem. By this we mean that the study was grounded in feminist principles of social equality and justice, a belief that women and socially excluded groups are agents of change, and an intersectional and contextualised approach to conducting the research.

The Social Norms of Diagnostic Tool[2]devised by Oxfam was adopted to guide the Focus Group Discussions (FGDs). In-depth Interviews (IDIs) were also conducted to cover groups who could not be covered by the FGDs and also to triangulate the data. It is an innovative method which consists of a set of participatory exercises that identify and discuss social norms, perceptions and expectations that shape, constrain or promote sexual harassment and gender based violence in relation to unpaid care work. It involved several participatory activities which provided space for the agency of the community women to be expressed through role plays, short games, storytelling and group work.[3]

The ideal Social Norms Diagnostic Tool is a 2-day event with the same set of participants. We considered hosting a 2-day event but realised that unless the workshop is made residential, it would not ensure continuity. Residential workshops have their own set of challenges in India, from cost implication to women’s safety concerns and therefore the idea of a residential workshop was dropped. Women are also usually not willing to stay overnight as that takes away from their time at home when they could perform domestic duties.

This was the starting point of realising that often the lived realities of poor, marginalised communities are quite different from proposed research methodologies. Methodologies are often drawn within the comfortable meeting rooms of offices and institutions of learning can be far removed from the realities of the communities we seek to understand.

In what follows, I will outline some of the considerations, which informed and enriched Oxfam India’s study, despite us having to improvise and alter the Tool in the course of our fieldwork, which took place in Udaipur, Rajasthan.

The main issue was the extreme time poverty that women face and the long distances they have to travel to come to the workshop site (Rural Udaipur). On an average, they have to walk 10 km to the nearest location from where they can avail a public transport. Buses, and other private transport, aren’t that frequent; once the participants got a transportation it was almost a 2-hour drive to the workshop site. We considered moving the workshop site closer to women; but women were coming from various village panchayats and it would still be very far for some. Also logistical considerations made it appropriate to organise the workshop at our local partner, Aajeevika Bureau’s office.

Women arrived at 11am and by 4pm they were anxious to make their journey back to their villages, before it got too dark. So we got at best 5 hours to conduct the entire workshop with the women. The Tool therefore had to be modified to fit into a day.

In urban Udaipur, we conducted a workshop with poor Muslim women. Here religious restrictions on women’s mobility outside the home posed an impediment for women to openly participate in the workshop. They spent approximately 4 hours at the workshop but were always feeling anxious about what their husbands, family and community would say about them spending time in public for so long. Many women were also too timid to talk about their experiences, fearing some kind of backlash. There were cases of domestic violence but many of them refused to speak about it. Clearly the force of the community was much more evident in their lives than women from Dalit and Tribal communities.

A second issue we observed was the blurring of productive/social reproductive roles in women’s lives. Women mostly brought their young, infant children with them, having no place to leave them. This means women are never not working. Even in the midst of the discussions and role plays in the workshop, women were constantly juggling roles and taking care of their children.

A third issue was of gender segregation. In Rajasthan, a deeply patriarchal society, mixed gender groups would not have worked as the Tool suggests. The women simply would not open up in front of male members. In fact, we observed strict observance of ghoonghat(veil) in rural Rajasthan. If a man from an upper caste community was present among the women or a man from the same caste community as some of the women was present, then the women would immediately veil themselves and stop talking. So we conducted the workshops only with women and girls; and conducted individual interviews with the men and not in the workshop mode.

The other interesting issue is about the very idea of unpaid care work. This is so deeply ingrained in the socialisation process in women’s lives that to conduct a day-long workshop with women on the work they do at home daily was not easy. In some workshops, the women had been given some prior training in gender issues by Aajeevika Bureau. They were more aware of women’s rights issues and therefore the workshop was easier to conduct with them. But we faced some challenges working with older women (50-65 years) with whom prior gender training had not been done. They were evidently uncomfortable discussing the issues of unpaid care work, saying that this is our daily work and part of our identity, what is there to discuss about this? They felt it was a waste of time discussing these issues at a workshop.

Fifth, we were particularly struck by the candour and openness with which women spoke about sexual relations with their husbands. Totally unprompted, during the exercise of listing all the tasks that women do from morning when they wake up till at night when they go to bed, women in more than one workshop volunteered to speak about the need to cater to their husband’s sexual needs as part of their chores! Sex was rarely a pleasure activity for poor, marginalised women yet, a critical element in their lives. If they refuse, they invite the wrath of their husbands and could be victims of violence, just as, if they refused to cook or clean the house.

To sum up, there were generational and social groups (religious groups) intersections in the discussions and we tried to capture these by organising workshops with different social and religious and age groups. While the young adolescent girls found the workshops extremely exciting and the energy levels were very charged, the older generations were less enthusiastic. But there were always overlaps in group characteristics and a diversity of views and ideas emerged from these workshop discussions.

A key takeaway from this research was that in a gender transformative participatory action research, it is always prudent to allow the field to guide the data collection tools rather than the other way round. It makes for richer experience and more nuanced understanding of the problem.

Mouzayian Khalil : 16 Apr 2020 11:14 |  Tags: Gender Participatory Research Methods Social Realities |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

COVID–19 in Multiple Registers

“I won’t die of corona. Before that, I will surely die of hunger”

(Daily wage worker in New Delhi)

Briony Jones, Maeve Moynihan, Oyinlola Oyebode, Shirin M Rai

On March 11 2020, WHO declared the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) outbreak a global pandemic. Governments were urged by the WHO to make urgent decisions to reduce the spread of this new disease. These decisions are being made with scarce data and in a politically pressured context. Three things jump out for us in the cacophony around COVID-19: the importance of governance regimes that frame it and are being (re)shaped by it, its effect on our (im)mobilities[1], and the deepening of social inequalities in this time of crisis.

Under pressure and in phases, governments have been announcing compensation packages for different groups of employed (and/or soon to be unemployed) people; “I won’t die of corona. Before that, I will surely die of hunger” or similar was said by many people to Harsh Mander (Delhi activist) as India went into lockdown without any warning and thousands of daily wage earners were left without an income and in numerous cases a home. The Finance Minister declared, ‘no one will go hungry’ and offered 25 million poor women 500 Indian rupees, 5 kg of wheat or rice and 1kg of preferred pulses per month for the next three months to run their households; stretching this meagre resource to feed the family is not going to be an easy task.

Similarly, across the world, the swift action and centralised planning required for an effective response to COVID-19 is being used to justify authoritarian and violent responses against populations in need of protection. A recent article in the Guardian newspaper describes the use of tear gas in India, police shootings in Kenya, and degrading treatment by police to punish curfew ‘violators’ in the Philippines. A statement by 13 European Union Member States on the 2^ndof April said they are “deeply concerned” about the use of emergency measures to tackle the coronavirus outbreak. Not only is the current crisis being used by such governments to justify these acts of violence, but it is normalising undemocratic responses to crises more generally, which affects us all. These effects, however, are not evenly distributed and it is the poorest and most vulnerable who are most affected by lockdowns and authoritarian responses. Those who cannot work from home, or do not have secure contracts or protected salaries rely on being able to travel to find work and to respond to employment opportunities as they arise. A Save the Children report details how families in such contexts have little to fall back on, are unable to stockpile, and some may live in informal settlements which is likely to compromise security and wellbeing during lockdowns. Human Rights Watch has described the extraordinary challenge facing rural-urban migrant workers in India as they have been left without support by the Indian Government, which is failing in its responsibility to protect its citizens, a challenge which faces many other governments across the world.

Since the outbreak of the novel coronavirus, over 130 nations around the world have turned to migration management strategies that make refugees, asylum seekers, stateless people, and migrants particularly vulnerable at this time. Across Europe and the globe, countries have closed borders and put strict movement restrictions into place. For those seeking asylum or temporary migratory work, such constraints directly threaten their access to healthcare, safety, and livelihood. Some states, like Portugal, have temporarily extended full citizenship rights to asylum seekers in order to ensure healthcare access. Others, however, such as the United States, have halted asylum claims all together, violating international law and putting individuals at risk. In refugee camps, hundreds of thousands of others, from Rohingya Muslims in refugee camps in Bangladesh to Syrian refugees in the Za’atari and Azraq camps in Jordan, have tried to adapt to the ‘new normal’ in accordance with COVID-19 prevention measures. However, for those living in overcrowded camps with limited access to sanitation, hygiene and social distancing guidelines can be difficult to abide by. Everyday life, as we have argued above, is deeply gendered, making women particularly vulnerable to limited access in times of crises. Long distances to healthcare facilities and lack of provisions only add to the risks for people on the move. For example, the Kakuma refugee camp in Kenya is home to over 190,000 displaced people, yet it has just 25 beds for those who contract coronavirus. As the pandemic continues to take shape around the world, it will undoubtedly weave its way camps and settlements across the globe. On April 2^nd, authorities in Greece marked the first known case of COVID-19 in a refugee population and promptly locked down the camp. Given such circumstances, as the UNHCR recently stated, the humanitarian community must ensure that the rights and care of migrants, asylum seekers, refugees, and those on the move are protected during such precarious times.

Non-state responses to the crisis have been mixed; while thousands of people are volunteering to help, we also hear about sectarian, violent and unneighbourly responses to it. The length of lockdown will no doubt affect these responses. The question is whether coordinated, democratic and just responses can emerge and counter the authoritarian crackdown we have seen in some countries. COVID-19 is a global crisis and requires that we respond globally to redistribute resources, equipment, and knowledge not only within countries but between them. If not, the legacies of the current crisis will go well beyond the immediate tragic human loss of life and radically alter the way the governments can justify violence against their own people, and the way the most vulnerable in our communities are treated.

While the virus itself seems to be more dangerous to men than to women, the response to the virus may disadvantage and endanger women particularly – for example, 83% of nurses and midwives in India are women and therefore more exposed to the virus as part of their work. The Institute for Fiscal Studies reports that women, the lowest paid and under 25s are most likely to suffer a decline in living standards due to the lockdown. Lockdowns have also increased women’s burden of domestic and care work; it is not surprising that we are seeing a spike in violence against women and girls in this period of stress, anxiety and increasing poverty combined with lock-downs cutting off escape routes, reducing community safeguarding and preventing time apart to defuse situations. Anxiety is also generating a language of war, which feminists have argued always sets up a hierarchy of needs where women are marginalised or overlooked; urgency privileges the status quo. And status quo is what we do not need just now; what we do need is a change of political discourse that recognise care as work and supports it not with platitudes and ‘clapping for carers’ but with long term and adequate resources that build our social infrastructure. This is a global pandemic and gender inequality is a global issue; both need global solutions that pivot away from short-termism towards investing in health and in equitable and accountable governance. This can only be done through holding governments accountable to delivering a gender sensitive and equitable social infrastructure that will support the needs of all, and not just the few.

One outcome of this crisis could be the further loosening of regulation on key issues - the environment, group discrimination, targeting of migrants andethnic minorities as sources of the virus or spreading it because of ‘cultural’ differences, health and safety and minimum protections - in the name of reviving the economy. In his play Rhinoceros Eugène Ionesco reminds us of the threat of being swayed by a nefarious ideology as a contagious disease – Rhinoceroization. Today’s crisis is also being mobilised by right-wing populists, through communalising public discourse, garnering more power for individual leaders, overlooking many vulnerable communities, and through undermining democratic institutions. This could lead to a rollback of hard fought and won rights, which must not be allowed.

We could, of course, also see a more radical and progressive visions of how we function as a global society, from a slower pace of life, to alternative ways of working, to supporting our public social infrastructure and a more equitable distribution of resources. Already, there is a growing sense of people respecting what public institutions such as the NHS can do to help us in this time; the welfare state is needed to support the growing ranks of unemployed and the charities continue to be a third sector helping the most vulnerable. As after World War II, there could be a recognition that the state and society have to be critical actors in the economy, that participative politics is valuable and needed to hold states and businesses accountable and that ‘the big society’ is not just a slogan but is supported by a social infrastructure for all who wish to contribute to building a caring and equal society. As a recent Financial Times editorial underlined: "Radical reforms - reversing the prevailing policy direction of the last four decades - will need to be put on the table. Governments will have to accept a more active role in the economy. They must see public services as investments rather than liabilities, and look for ways to make labour markets less insecure. Redistribution will again be on the agenda; the privileges of the elderly and wealthy in question. Policies until recently considered eccentric, such as basic income and wealth taxes, will have to be in the mix."

Which of these competing visions take hold will determine how we deal with the post-COVID-19 world and its complex needs.

Mouzayian Khalil : 10 Apr 2020 16:03 |  Tags: Coronavirus Inequalities Social Distancing And The Poor |  Comments (2) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Excellence in Research leadership requires ethical commitment

Milena Cuccurullo

PhD Education

University of Warwick

Globalisation allows an unprecedented exchange of human resources across the world. This is the future of research and education. Enterprises, Universities and research institutions take huge advantage of this movement, but they must equally take responsibility and work hard to protect the rights of the people who move in search of knowledge and educational attainment. However, they are less likely to effectively protect their students or staff, their researchers in particular, when political interests and divisions prevent or at best limit their efforts. The murder of Giulio Regeni and the detention of Patrick George Zaky illustrate this and present a call for common action.

Giulio Regeni was a doctoral student at University of Cambridge. A brilliant Italian student in his 30s who moved abroad to carry on studying and doing research, like many others. The topic of his research was street vendors’ trade unions in Egypt, where he was arrested, tortured and killed in Cairo four years ago (1). To date nobody has been held accountable for his death. Five agents of the Egyptian security service are suspected to be his murderers (2); and the trial is on-going amidst misdirection from Egyptian government, lack of action from Italy and an embarrassing silence from the University of Cambridge.

The 7^th February 2020, Patrick George Zaky, an Egyptian student at University Alma Mater of Bologna, Italy, was arrested in Egypt accused of ‘harming national security’. He is an Erasmus Mundus student on a Masters in Women and Gender Studies programme, and a human rights activist (3). Patrick is still in a prison in Mansura, Egypt. Unlike Regeni’s case, the University of Bologna Chancellor, Prof. Ubertini, and town authorities have carried out campaigns in Bologna with more than 5 thousand people, asking for Patrick to be freed. Media pressure could be crucial this time to save his life. Other consortia of Universities across Europe have signed petitions in solidarity with the appeal by Bologna University requesting the liberation of Patrick, as this is an issue concerning the right to education and safety of all researchers and students around the world (4).

The murder of Giulio Regeni and the detention of Patrick Zaky call for all HEI to work for unity of visions and efforts in order to make sure that all students and researchers, all citizens in the community of education, are safeguarded, regardless of nationality. Here is where excellence is at stake. Excellence and leadership in research are not measured only by algorithms and funding pots. It is a matter of integrity and ethical commitment. And we all are committed, as students and academics, to speak out for Patrick. If we can join our voices perhaps ‘this time everything will be all right’.

(1) https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/jan/25/egypt-frustrates-giulio-regeni-investigation-three-years-on

(2) http://www.rainews.it/dl/rainews/articoli/regeni-tre-anni-da-omicidio-5-agenti-indagati-ma-giustizia-ancora-lontana-03097925-25fa-400e-8412-85b0812f5f6c.html

(3) https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/feb/09/italy-alarmed-after-egyptian-studying-in-bologna-arrested-in-cairo

(4) https://magazine.unibo.it/archivio/2020/02/12/arresto-di-patrick-george-zaky-la-mozione-delluniversita-di-bologna

 

 Italian artist Laika’s mural appeared in Rome, via Salaria, not far from Egypt’s embassy, between 10 and 11 February. It featured Giulio Regeni protecting Patrick Zaky and telling him ‘This time everything will be all right’, and the Egyptian word for ‘freedom’.

: 18 Mar 2020 12:54 |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

"We All Have a Role to Play in Peace": From the International to the Local and Back Again

Dr Briony Jones

Associate Professor in International Development; Deputy Director of the Warwick Interdisciplinary Research Centre for International Development.

Politics and International Relations Department, University of Warwick

https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/pais/research/researchcentres/wicid/

https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/pais/people/jonesb

Geneva Peace Week 2019 took place from 4^th – 8^th December 2019, and in the words of the organisers: “emphasises that each and every person, actor and institution has a role to play in building peace and resolving conflict”[1]. Following the 2017 Geneva Peace Week I reflected on the implications for knowledge of bringing researchers, policy makers and practitioners together[2]. I remain convinced of the benefits and indeed necessity of challenging boundaries between epistemic communities and striving for constructive dialogue between peace makers as broadly conceived. This is of particular pertinence for the fields with which my own work engages: justice, peace, development and human rights. But as I continue to seek dialogue, and to understand the complexities of which this means in practice, I am left wondering what it actually means to claim that “we all have a role to play in peace”.

The oft quoted words from George Orwell’s novel Animal Farm that “All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others” gives us pause for thought here. I strongly agree that every person, actor and institution has a role to play in building peace. But not all roles are perceived to be equal, and not all people are able to determine their roles equally. It is incumbent on all of us to recognise this and to take it into consideration when designing inclusive collaborations or making claims for, of, and about, peace. In my specialist area of transitional justice, the questions of whose justice and on whose terms currently informs much of the discussion between scholars, practitioners and policy makers. More inclusive programmes are increasingly prioritised, and examples range from the national and diaspora consultations undertaken by the Côte d’Ivoire Dialogue, Truth and Reconciliation Commission[3], to victim participation at the International Criminal Court[4] and the outreach programme of the International Criminal Court for the Former Yugoslavia[5]. The values which underpin and motivate such programmes are important and echo the raison d’être of Geneva Peace Week.

What is notable however is the framing of inclusion and participation, the way in which ‘locals’ are invited to participate in agendas set by others elsewhere, and how collaborative programmes between the Global North and South are too often not the equal exchange of minds and resources that they are purported to be[6]. I will always remember the words of one of my collaborators when he told me at our first project meeting when we were discussing roles: “we don’t want to just do the translations and collect the data. We want to analyse and to share in the research outputs”. If we believe that we all have a role to play in peace then we need to think more carefully about the following issues, among others of course:

1. Narratives of inclusion need to grapple with the ‘deviant’ voice – the individual who does not wish to participate, the institution which acts as a block to reform, the political impasse as peace agreements fail. This deviancy may frustrate the agendas of certain actors but may also illuminate another way of seeing the conflict and responses to it.
2. There is not one version of any actor, be it a ‘local’ or ‘international’ and roles are often changing over time and across contexts. The roles that we all play will not be static or easily captured through programming support.
3. There is a hierarchy of roles. There is a donor who controls the flow of financial resources, there is a community gatekeeper who controls who can participate in meetings, there are the academics who write about distant places and cultures and puts words in the mouths of their research subjects.

: 31 Jan 2020 12:42 |  Tags: Development Geneva Peace Week Human Rights Justice |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Introduction to WICID

Message from the Director, Professor Shririn Rai:

"WICID has been established in 2019 to address urgent problems of inequality and social, political and economic change on a global level.

"Interdisciplinary, critical and robust analysesthrough collaborative knowledge building and exchange characterize WICID’s approach and ensure impact in the fields we work in.

"We will work together with our partners across disciplines and institutions to produce world-class research. Through our Critical Pedagogy and MethodsLabwe will ensure that we develop appropriate, rigorous, innovative and interdisciplinary methodologies to pursue our collaborative research.

"The discipline of International Development is at a key moment in its trajectory, with a shift towards understanding issues of development globally. WICID's global networks will helpus develop a contextual, historicised and critical approach to development issues. This is also an exciting time for International Development at Warwick.

"Our ambition is to make WICID a hub for collaborative, cutting-edge research on international development and to contribute to change making for the better. Please become a member of WICID so that we can keep connected. "

: 24 Jan 2020 12:03 |  Tags: Development Gender Governance |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem