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Compounding crises undermine ethical, equitable COVID-19 response

Compounding Crises of COVID-19 and Super Cyclone in India and Bangladesh The strongest cyclone ever recorded in [ ... ]

Compounding Crises of COVID-19 and Super Cyclone in India and Bangladesh

The strongest cyclone ever recorded in the Bay of Bangal (with maximum sustained winds up to 265km/h) is expected to hit India and Bangladesh on Wednesday. Millions of people are being forced to evacuate north-east India, while only 12,000 shelters have been prepared in Bangladesh to house the nearly five million people in the expected path of Cyclone Amphan. The impact is likely to be hardest on those living in low-lying flood prone coastal areas, as the Needs Assessment Working Group of Bangladesh estimates that up to 14.2 million people in coastal districts are likely to be affected, displacing 1.4 million people and damaging up to 600,000 houses.

Vulnerable communities affected by COVID-19 outbreaks and lockdown will also likely be impacted, including the approximately 1.2 million Rohingya refugees that live in over-crowded camps in Cox’s Bazar in Bangladesh. In collaboration with humanitarian partners, including UNICEF and UNHCR, the IOM is constructing a COVID-19 treatment centre in Cox’s Bazar along with cyclone preparedness effort (alerting the community, reinforcing critical infrastructure and prepositioning emergency items before the cyclone makes landfall).

COVID needs in Humanitarian Emergency Settings

The UN High Commissioner for Refugees made an appeal for US$745 million for preparedness and response to outbreaks of COVID-19 among the more than 71 million refugees and forcibly displaced people that remain acutely vulnerable. While no major outbreaks have been reported in large refugee and IDP settlements, UNHCR is rapidly scaling up efforts in 134 refugee-hosting countries that are reporting local transmission. There is also widespread evidence of deep economic impacts on refugees, as 70% of refugees surveyed admitted to skipping meals, and this is most acute among refugee women.

Médecins Sans Frontières has outlined five key priorities for the international community in order to protect migrants and vulnerable populations in humanitarian response locations. These include:

Ensuring COVID-19 is not used as an excuse to enforce restrictive migration control policies and evade international obligations towards refugees, asylum seekers and migrants;
Governments must not use COVID-19 emergency measures to target refugees, asylum seekers and migrants, and measures should be proportionate and limited in duration, respect human dignity, and based on scientific evidence and not applied arbitrarily;
Lockdowns and mass quarantining cannot be cut-and-pasted or discriminatorily applied;
Direct humanitarian evacuation corridors for displaced people at risk (including people above 60 years and those with respiratory conditions, diabetes, or other health complications); and
Safeguarding access to healthcare for all (ensuring border closures do not prevent the mobility of people, essential supplies and aid workers, particularly in humanitarian response locations).

EU is Creating Humanitarian Air Bridges to enable the COVID-19 Response

The European Commission has allocated 10 million Euro to support a humanitarian air bridge amid travel shutdowns. In the absence of commercial air travel, the air bridge will allow humanitarian staff and supplies to be delivered across 30 routes deemed important for the COVID-19 response, with the first flight launched last week from France to the Central African Republic with 60 humanitarian workers and 13 metric tons of humanitarian cargo.

Build Back Better After COVID-19

The International Recovery Platform developed a toolkit of existing guidelines and tools to support countries and communities when they are ready to recover from the COVID-19 pandemic crisis. It supports recovering communities to “build back better” towards more resilient health systems, economies, and more just societies. The Compendium of Tools and Guidelines are organized according to four categories: Health Sector Recovery; Private Sector and Livelihood Recovery; Inclusive Recovery; and Disaster Recovery Governance. The IRP is a joint initiative of UN, international finance institutions, national and local governments, and NGOs engaged in disaster recovery and sustainable development.

A paper commissioned by the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency provides analysis and guidance on to inform the design, implementation and adaptation of conflict sensitive humanitarian and development responses to COVID-19.

Lancet Papers Decry the lack of Ethical global leadership on health inequities around COVID-19

A paper in the Lancet calls for greater ethical global leadership on health inequities during the COVID-19 pandemic. The authors reference widespread reports of the disproportionate impact of the pandemic on vulnerable communities around the world, while pointing to “unconscionable stockpiling by wealthy countries” and even attempts to extract profits from the crisis through economic speculation.

Another paper in the same issue highlights how social inequalities in health profoundly, and unevenly, impacting COVID-19 morbidity and mortality. Among the social determinants of health, the authors identify emerging findings on the correlation of the pandemic with poverty (including homelessness), physical environment, and race or ethnicity. The paper also notes how physical distancing measures are significantly more difficult for vulnerable and marginalized populations, while school closures have increased food insecurity for children living in poverty, exacerbating physical and mental health. The authors urge policymakers to emphasize the mitigation of social determinants, including improving housing and reducing overcrowding as well as improving access to health services and income support. The paper also calls on social determinants of health to be an essential part of pandemic research priorities, public health goals, and policy implementation.

Preventing a COVID-19 Related Global Food Crisis

The Food and Agriculture Organization made an appeal for US$350 million to scale up efforts to address hunger and livelihood-boosting efforts in contexts vulnerable to food crisis. As part of the broader UN Global Humanitarian COVID-19 Plan, the appeal will include supporting farmers’ access to fields, seeds and other inputs to plant or buy feed for their animals in order to avoid the cascading impacts of missing planting seasons such as drops in output. The FAO also advocates proactive efforts for stronger emergency livelihoods interventions to avoid famines.
The WEF also reports how the pandemic has amplified the risk of worldwide food-price spikes, urging greater coordination across governments to avert disruptions to food supply chains, including through food protectionism. While lockdowns have led to a collapse in demand for discretionary goods and services, the opposite is true of food as panic buying and food hoarding has proliferated. On the supply side, global grain stockpiles could be quickly depleted as the virus disrupts production and distribution, compounded by the worst locust outbreak in 70 years that have left countries in East Africa acutely vulnerable. In Kenya, for example, the price of staple foods has risen by 60% since last year.
ICRISAT published a new report that outlines four key strategies to protect the lives and livelihoods of farming communities in Eastern and Southern Africa. These include:
1. Diversification of farming systems for improved resilience and profitability (including technologies suitable for sustainable intensification);
2. Enhancing access to seed at scale of grain legumes and dryland cereals (through community seed banks that also supports grain aggregation);
3. Building capacity of partners to promote technologies in a participatory manner (including governments, community organizations, local leaders and women); and
4. Gender integration and empowerment to engage actively in agribusinesses (including livelihood-strengthening activities like climate-smart agriculture)

CommunityFirst COVID-19 Roadmap

This week, SeeChange Initiative and Ilisaqsivik Society, in partnership with the Association of Médicos Sin Fronteras in Latin America, and the Dahdaleh Institute, launched the CommunityFirst COVID-19 Roadmap, a planning tool to empower communities in developing local strategies to organize, prepare and respond to COVID-19. The Roadmap is available in English, Spanish and Inuktitut, and also includes an Emergency Readiness Checklist. Last month, the Executive Director of SeeChange and a Steering Committee member of the CommunityFirst Roadmap published an article in the Lancet on local efforts among Inuit communities to address COVID-19 and TB. The role of community-based responses to the pandemic was also highlighted in STAT.

Webinar Resources

COVID-19 in Humanitarian Setting: Magnifying Gender Inequalities? (JHU)
- Wednesday, May 20, 2020 (8-9am EST)
Digital Solutions to Covid-19 and Urban Challenges in Sub-Saharan Africa (CSIS)
- Thursday, May 21, 2020 (9-10am EST)
Humanitarian Operations During Covid-19: A Conversation with UNHCR (CSIS)
- Monday, June 8, 2020 (9:30-10:15am EST)

Compounding Crises of COVID-19 and Super Cyclone in India and Bangladesh

COVID needs in Humanitarian Emergency Settings

Médecins Sans Frontières has outlined five key priorities for the international community in order to protect migrants and vulnerable populations in humanitarian response locations. These include:

Ensuring COVID-19 is not used as an excuse to enforce restrictive migration control policies and evade international obligations towards refugees, asylum seekers and migrants;
Governments must not use COVID-19 emergency measures to target refugees, asylum seekers and migrants, and measures should be proportionate and limited in duration, respect human dignity, and based on scientific evidence and not applied arbitrarily;
Lockdowns and mass quarantining cannot be cut-and-pasted or discriminatorily applied;
Direct humanitarian evacuation corridors for displaced people at risk (including people above 60 years and those with respiratory conditions, diabetes, or other health complications); and
Safeguarding access to healthcare for all (ensuring border closures do not prevent the mobility of people, essential supplies and aid workers, particularly in humanitarian response locations).

EU is Creating Humanitarian Air Bridges to enable the COVID-19 Response

Build Back Better After COVID-19

Lancet Papers Decry the lack of Ethical global leadership on health inequities around COVID-19

Preventing a COVID-19 Related Global Food Crisis

The Food and Agriculture Organization made an appeal for US$350 million to scale up efforts to address hunger and livelihood-boosting efforts in contexts vulnerable to food crisis. As part of the broader UN Global Humanitarian COVID-19 Plan, the appeal will include supporting farmers’ access to fields, seeds and other inputs to plant or buy feed for their animals in order to avoid the cascading impacts of missing planting seasons such as drops in output. The FAO also advocates proactive efforts for stronger emergency livelihoods interventions to avoid famines.
The WEF also reports how the pandemic has amplified the risk of worldwide food-price spikes, urging greater coordination across governments to avert disruptions to food supply chains, including through food protectionism. While lockdowns have led to a collapse in demand for discretionary goods and services, the opposite is true of food as panic buying and food hoarding has proliferated. On the supply side, global grain stockpiles could be quickly depleted as the virus disrupts production and distribution, compounded by the worst locust outbreak in 70 years that have left countries in East Africa acutely vulnerable. In Kenya, for example, the price of staple foods has risen by 60% since last year.
ICRISAT published a new report that outlines four key strategies to protect the lives and livelihoods of farming communities in Eastern and Southern Africa. These include:
1. Diversification of farming systems for improved resilience and profitability (including technologies suitable for sustainable intensification);
2. Enhancing access to seed at scale of grain legumes and dryland cereals (through community seed banks that also supports grain aggregation);
3. Building capacity of partners to promote technologies in a participatory manner (including governments, community organizations, local leaders and women); and
4. Gender integration and empowerment to engage actively in agribusinesses (including livelihood-strengthening activities like climate-smart agriculture)

CommunityFirst COVID-19 Roadmap

Webinar Resources

COVID-19 in Humanitarian Setting: Magnifying Gender Inequalities? (JHU)
- Wednesday, May 20, 2020 (8-9am EST)
Digital Solutions to Covid-19 and Urban Challenges in Sub-Saharan Africa (CSIS)
- Thursday, May 21, 2020 (9-10am EST)
Humanitarian Operations During Covid-19: A Conversation with UNHCR (CSIS)
- Monday, June 8, 2020 (9:30-10:15am EST)

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