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	Global markets have failed to provide people with basic needs by present and former UN special rapporteurs   Oct. 2020   Global markets have failed to provide people with basic needs like housing and water, say present and former UN special rapporteurs - Leilani Farha, Juan Pablo Bohoslavsky, Koumbou Boly Barry, Leo Heller, Olivier De Schutter, Magdalena Sepulveda Carmona.   The Covid-19 pandemic has exposed the catastrophic fallout of decades of global privatisation and market competition.   When the pandemic hit, we saw hospitals being overwhelmed, caregivers forced to work with virtually no protective equipment, nursing homes turned into morgues, long queues to access tests, and schools struggling to connect with children confined to their homes.   People were being urged to stay at home when many had no decent roof over their heads, no access to water and sanitation, and no social protection.   For many years, vital public goods and services have been steadily outsourced to private companies. This has often resulted in inefficiency, corruption, dwindling quality, increasing costs and subsequent household debt, further marginalising poorer people and undermining the social value of basic needs like housing and water. We need a radical change in direction.   There was a glimmer of hope when people seemed to recognise the crucial centrality of public services to the functioning of society. As French president Emmanuel Macron put it on 12 March, the pandemic had revealed that there are goods and services that must be placed outside the laws of the market.   Take water, a commodity all the more vital as washing your hands is one of the best ways to protect yourself from the virus. About 4 billion people worldwide experience severe water scarcity during at least one month of the year.   In the Chilean Petorca province, for example, one avocado tree uses more water than the daily quota allocated to each resident. Despite increasing daily water allocation to residents, the ministry of health revoked this decision just eight days later – an indication of how authorities continue to put the interests of private companies above the rights of their people.   And what about the long-awaited vaccine? Recognising that we cannot rely on market forces, more than 140 world leaders and experts have called on governments and international institutions to guarantee that Covid-19 tests, treatments and vaccines are made available to all, without charge. But the reality is that pharmaceutical companies around the world are competing to sell the first vaccine.   The global mantra to practise physical distancing to avoid spreading the coronavirus is meaningless for the 1.6 billion people living in grossly inadequate housing, let alone the 2% of the world’s population who are homeless. Yet most governments seem unwilling to step back into the housing arena to regulate the financial organisations that have helped create these conditions.   The financialisation of housing by these actors has for years resulted in higher rents, evicting low-income tenants, failing to properly maintain housing in good repair and hoarding empty units in order to increase their profits.   By continuing to opt for contracting out public goods and services, governments are paying lip service to their human rights obligations. Rights holders are transformed into the clients of private companies dedicated to profit maximisation and accountable not to the public but to shareholders.   This affects the core of our democracies, contributes to exploding inequalities and generates unsustainable social segregation.   We are six UN independent experts from many different backgrounds, current and former special rapporteurs on a range of economic, social and cultural rights. It is in this capacity that, together, we want to share this message: if human rights are to be taken seriously, the old construct of states taking a back seat to private companies must be abandoned.   New alternatives are necessary. It is time to say it loud and clear: the commodification of health, education, housing, water, sanitation and other rights-related resources and services prices out the poor and may result in violations of human rights.   States can no longer cede control as they have done. They are not absolved of their human rights obligations by delegating core goods and services to private companies and the market on terms that they know will effectively undermine the rights and livelihoods of many people.   It is equally crucial that multilateral organisations, such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, stop imposing financialised models and the privatisation of public services on countries.   This is also a pivotal moment for the human rights community. We call on all those committed to human rights to address the consequences of privatisation head on. Human rights can help articulate the public goods and services we want – participatory, transparent, sustainable, accountable, non-discriminatory and serving the common good.   We are in a state of emergency. This is probably the first of a series of larger crises awaiting us, driven by the growing climate emergency. The Covid-19 crisis is expected to push another 176 million people into poverty. Each of them may see their human rights violated unless there is a drastic change of model and investment in quality public services.   * Juan Pablo Bohoslavsky is the former UN independent expert on foreign debt and human rights; Koumbou Boly Barry is UN special rapporteur on the right to education; Olivier De Schutter is UN special rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights; and former UN special rapporteur on the right to food; Leilani Farha is the former UN special rapporteur on adequate housing as a component of the right to an adequate standard of living, and on the right to non-discrimination in this context; Leo Heller is UN special rapporteur on the human rights to safe drinking water and sanitation; Magdalena Sepulveda Carmona is the former UN special rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights. http://bit.ly/3mGu8iR   http://www.gi-escr.org/publications/states-human-rights-obligations-regarding-public-services-the-united-nations-normative-framework http://www.gi-escr.org/latest-news/gi-escr-and-the-center-for-economic-and-social-rights-publish-new-briefing-paper-on-public-services http://www.cesr.org/envisioning-rights-based-economy-new-report-cesr-and-christian-aid
	COVID19: turning a human rights lens on crisis response by Ralph Hamann, Allison Corkery, Keetie Roelen IDS, LSE Inequalities Institute, agencies   July 2020   South Africa: Civil society groups that mobilised around COVID-19 face important choices, writes Ralph Hamann from the University of Cape Town   Civil society groups have played an important role in responding to the COVID-19 social crisis in South Africa. Examples include the “community action networks” in Cape Town and Gauteng, as well as similar initiatives in more rural areas, such as the Eastern Cape. They also include extraordinary crisis response efforts by pre-existing NGOs, such as Boost Africa and Umgibe, and novel social innovations like Food Flow.   This activism has played a substantial role in hunger relief. In the Western Cape, for example, the Economic Development Partnership estimates that such initiatives have contributed about half of all food aid in recent months. This is especially salient considering that the state has actually decreased food distribution during the COVID-19 crisis.   But as the crisis drags on and evolves, these activist groups are responding to growing and diversifying needs, just when access to resources is becoming more insecure for many of them.   Activists thus face some tough choices around how to keep going, what to focus on, and how to achieve longer-term impacts. We have been studying and participating in a variety of these social relief and innovation efforts, in order to collect and share their experiences.   At this point in the evolving crisis, we seek to highlight the need for activists to carefully consider their strategic choices, so as to avoid some of their remarkable community activism from dissipating.   Stretched resources   Civil society activists have been responding to social and public health aspects of the pandemic for well over three months now. It is important to take stock of the resources they have been devoting to these efforts, and those that are needed for continued work.   Ensuring that food gets to those who need it and navigating tense community dynamics wrought by desperation is demanding and complex work. It is all the more tiring because many activists are volunteers – mostly women – who juggle long hours of volunteering with other demands. These are remarkable efforts and many activists are exhausted.   Activists also carry heavy emotional burdens. They are directly confronted with the human suffering caused by hunger, disease and conflict. They receive calls from desperate mothers whose babies are dying. Many such calls cannot be responded to. This emotional cost contributes heavily to risks of activist burnout.   Finally, most activists have been relying on donations to obtain the food, sanitisers and other materials that they distribute. As the novelty of the crisis diminishes, there are signs that donations are diminishing, but the needs are not. In a recent survey by the Western Cape NGO-Government Food Relief Coordination Forum, about 90% of respondents highlighted that the need for food relief was growing, while 70% reported a decrease in available resources to meet this need.   The primary need that galvanised many civil society groups to action has been hunger. Initially, many activists had hoped that this would be mostly a short-term need brought about by the lockdown. But the desperate struggle for food is increasing in many communities.   And the need for food has also been joined by other important needs, including children’s education and psycho-social requirements.   From the onset of the crisis, a big part of many civil society groups’ response was to slow the spread of the coronavirus. But now activists are also responding to the growing disease burden, which may include establishing community-based isolation areas, “safe homes” or fighting stigma associated with the virus.   In the context of these growing and diversifying needs, various choices will need to be made around what to focus attention on, both in the short term and the longer term. For some, even thinking about the longer term seems like a luxury, given the need to meet unrelenting day-to-day needs. Others emphasise the need to go beyond such immediate crisis relief to develop more systemic, longer-term interventions.   Longer-term, locally embedded strategies   Activists thus face the twin challenges of diminishing resources and proliferating community needs, as well as tensions between short- and longer-term interventions. These challenges and tensions may lead to the dissolution of some groups.   Groups that aim to sustain themselves and deepen their positive impacts will need to tackle these tensions head-on.   Importantly, there are no templates or “best practice” responses. Each activist group or initiative will need to negotiate its own responses to these tensions, taking into account their local context and priorities.   Nevertheless, exchanging experiences and strategies across initiatives can provide some ideas and inspiration.   For example, activists in the Gugulethu community action network have emphasised that the problem of hunger, while worsened by COVID-19, has always existed. They have thus developed a longer-term plan to enhance and maintain the many new community kitchens that have been set up, and to significantly expand community gardens to provide vegetables to these kitchens.   The longer-term vision is a network of local kitchens that are self-reliant, run by employees instead of unpaid volunteers. A strength of this plan is its reliance on local resources and its focus on developing local supply chains, galvanised by local community organising. Ensuring food relief (an immediate need) thus becomes a catalyst for local socio-economic development (a systemic change).   In Muizenberg, activists discussed longer-term options with those who have been in need of support. One of the results is a local community kitchen run by volunteers from across the economic spectrum. It provides nutritious, high-quality food both to the needy and to those who can pay a donation to help maintain the enterprise. The community kitchen not only sustains the hunger relief effort (the immediate need), but builds vital bridges across different sections of the community (a systemic change).   Engaging the state   The magic juice in any such strategy is the local community organising. The hope is that the civil society groups that have emerged to respond to COVID-19 can build longer-term momentum, expanding our “imagination of what is possible.”   A second and related hope is that they can help build a more accountable and responsive state. While the groups have been able to provide some much-needed and well-targeted sustenance in vulnerable communities, the necessary longer-term and larger-scale interventions will benefit from the resources and mechanisms of the state.   The state’s ability to respond to the problem of hunger has been very patchy. For years, activists have been pointing to this problem in their communities without a committed response from officials or politicians.   In that context, it’s been encouraging to see that there have been positive coordination efforts between government leaders and civil society groups, for instance in provincial forums in Gauteng and the Western Cape. Also, some civil servants have played important roles in participating in or supporting civil society efforts.   But other state representatives, such as some local councillors, have been remarkably absent in local community organising. Some have even offered resistance, fearing a possible political force in the making.   Most activists we speak to have no ambition for political office and are at pains to emphasise this to preempt political resistance. Yet, it is possible that the civil society organising in response to COVID-19 is bringing forth a new cadre of community leaders – a network of activists who will help keep the state accountable and engaged.   The scale and spread of civil society activism in response to COVID-19 has been remarkable. Some of these initiatives will likely dissipate as their resources are depleted and as the crisis evolves. But some will maintain their momentum and adapt to changing circumstances.   The spirit of community organising has strengthened and that is a silver lining among the dark clouds of our current times.   (This article was coauthored by a research group including Annika Surmeier, Ashley Newell, Christine Fyvie, Jenny Soderbergh, Jody Delichte, Mandy Rapson, Nadia Sitas, Scott Drimie, and Thanyani Ramarumo. It is based on discussions with diverse activists and practitioners, including Andrew Boraine, Ayal Benning, Claire McGuinness, Estelline Sauls, George van der Schyff, Isa-Lee Jacobson, Leanne Brady, Megan Wooley, Nonhlanhla Joye, Pamela Silwana, Phumeza Ntsantsa, Réjane Woodroffe, Samantha Bailey, Taryn Pereira, Theresa Wigley, Temie Makefungana, and Vuyisile Dlamini).   http://theconversation.com/civil-society-groups-that-mobilised-around-covid-19-face-important-choices-140989 http://theconversation.com/covid-19-how-the-lockdown-has-affected-the-health-of-the-poor-in-south-africa-144374 http://www.iied.org/building-back-better-means-building-back-fairer-after-covid-19 http://www.iied.org/beyond-covid-19-grassroots-visions-change   May 2020   COVID19: turning a human rights lens on crisis response, by Allison Corkery.   Amartya Sen famously claimed that famines are not natural disasters. They're man made. As we're now seeing, the same can be said for pandemics. There are a lot of nasty bugs in the world, as social-change strategist Dave Algoso recently observed, but it has taken a special cluster of institutional failures to get us to where we are today: over three million cases of COVID-19 and almost 250,000 deaths, so far, with tens of millions of people displaced, unemployed and impoverished.   If we take a look at these failures through a human rights lens, we gain new perspective on the responses we need both in the midst of the pandemic, and in the future.   Human rights have not featured prominently in the countless discussions about COVID-19 and its impact. When they do, the focus has typically been on civil and political rights. Governments are being urged not to take or to stop taking coercive measures that restrict our rights unjustifiably.   For example, the United Nations recently sounded the alarm about the 'heavy handed' and 'highly militarised' enforcement of social distancing in dozens of countries. One of the cases it cites is the Philippines, where 120,000 people have been arrested for violating the curfew.   Our civil and political rights are not the only ones under attack, however; the fallout from COVID-19 is also posing grave threats to our socioeconomic rights. Around the world, the pandemic has shown us that institutional failures have long been undermining these rights. Harms to them are now intensifying as a result.   This puts billions of people's rights to health, to work, and to social protection at even greater risk. In country after country, we are counting the cost - in lives and livelihoods - of deteriorating public health infrastructures, precarious labour markets, undervalued care work, reduced social protection, and problematic global supply chains. All these factors contribute to the pandemic's rapid spread; a deadly virus has become deadlier.   It is easy to say what governments shouldn't do when it comes to human rights; what they should do is often a lot less clear. Or at least it is less well understood. This is one reason why despite the focus on so many aspects of the pandemic by media, policy-makers, campaigners and citizens socioeconomic rights have received far less attention.   For all our sakes, but especially for the most vulnerable, this needs to change.   Upholding human rights in a pandemic remains an obligation and the law   Governments have a range of tools at their disposal to respond to the pandemic and discretion about how to deploy them. But this discretion isn't absolute. Under international human rights law, they must take measures targeted as clearly as possible towards protecting rights.   In the context of COVID-19, such measures include coordinating production and distribution to end shortages of supplies for testing and treatment; directing public investment to facilitate the development of safe, effective, and affordable drugs and vaccines; regulating to prevent stockpiling and price hikes; guaranteeing adequate income; prohibiting evictions; and alleviating other harms that may arise or be exacerbated by lockdown measures. Crucially, those whose lives and livelihoods are most at risk must be prioritised.   For hundreds of millions of people around the world, hunger is now a much graver concern than the virus itself. This stark fact shows us just how poorly socioeconomic rights have been addressed in the majority of response measures.   The United States has seen an unprecedented demand for food assistance, for example, with aerial photos capturing staggeringly long lines outside food banks all across the world's richest nation.   In India and Nepal, the exodus of migrant workers has exposed failed social protection systems in both countries.   Human rights law also has something to say about how response measures should be financed. Under international human rights law, governments have obligations to us in three areas: how they raise money, how they allocate it, and how they spend it. To use the classic pie analogy: How big is it? How is it being sliced? Who's eating it?   Financing questions should also be part of the conversation when we talk about how human rights are being protected in COVID-19 responses. If governments don't raise enough money or if it's raised in a way that's regressive, meaning poorer people are burdened more than richer ones; if government budgets fail to prioritise measures that protect socioeconomic rights and in particular those of disadvantaged groups; and if money is spent in inefficient and wasteful ways, then people's rights are being put at risk - especially in times like these.   As markets fail and inequality spirals, global conversations are needed more than ever   Take the case of South Africa. Strict lockdown measures had been in place for almost a month before the government unveiled its economic relief package on 21 April. After tireless campaigning by a broad coalition of civil society groups, the package included a temporary R500 (GBP 20) 'top-up' to the child support grant, which is a monthly cash transfer programme that reaches 13 million people. But this top-up was provided per carer, and not per child, which is what had been called for. The seemingly minor technical difference is hardly minor to the two million additional South Africans who will be left below the food poverty line.   A decision such as this is difficult to justify when the relief package leaves potential domestic financing sources largely untapped. A wealth tax, for example, could raise at least R143 billion, some estimates suggest. That's more than ten times the additional cost of extending the top-up to all children.   In a highly unequal globalised economy, some countries have more tools than others to respond to COVID-19. The world is in the grip of a race to the bottom over vital supplies. The result is price gouging and stockouts and of far more than just toilet paper. Public laboratories in Brazil can't source chemical reagents for testing because months worth of supplies have already been bought up by wealthier countries, for example.   Worse still, the pandemic has been accompanied by a cascade of fiscal shocks - including economic recession, plummeting commodities prices, currency devaluation, significant capital flight, and increased borrowing costs. Countries in the global South have been hit especially hard.   Under international human rights law, governments also have extraterritorial obligations. In other words, their actions must not cause foreseeable harm beyond their borders or prevent other governments from meeting their obligations. Individually, and as members of international institutions, governments are also obliged to cooperate internationally to safeguard the rights of those most at risk.   In the COVID-19 context, international financial institutions, in particular, must be made fit for purpose. As Indian economist Jayati Ghosh has argued, this means finally abandoning their 'market fundamentalist' conditionalities such as liberalisation and deregulation that prioritise the interests of global finance over people's rights.   If we are to achieve meaningful action to protect socioeconomic rights, the discussion needs to involve more than just lawyers and other experts. We need to translate legal obligations into meaningful tools for framing popular demands.   Around the world, when people call for justice, it's common to hear slogans like 'healthcare is a human right' or 'labour rights are human rights'. It's much less common to hear clear and compelling explanations of what these slogans mean, in terms of who has to do what to realise these rights.   When we say that something is a human right, we are saying that it's so essential, for everyone, that it must be guaranteed. As COVID-19 has shown, markets simply cannot do this. Blind faith in markets amounts to wilful neglect of human rights obligations in the economic arena.   If there is a ray of hope amongst the darkness in this unprecedented global event, it is the growing conviction by countless people and communities around the world that we can - that we must - build a better future when we emerge from the pandemic.   As we start to see space opening up to shift narratives about the role of government in resilient societies, it is clear that socioeconomic rights can play a central role in shaping this narrative.   * Allison Corkery is a Atlantic Fellow at the Social and Economic Equity Program, LSE Inequalities Institute.   http://afsee.atlanticfellows.org/blog/allison-corkery-covid19-human-rights http://afsee.atlanticfellows.org/blog-home http://www.lse.ac.uk/International-Inequalities http://www.cesr.org/news   May 2020   People in poverty bear the brunt of Covid-19, and the worst is yet to come, writes Keetie Roelen, Co-Director of the Centre for Social Protection at the Institute of Development Studies   Poverty puts people at greater risk of getting infected with coronavirus, and also makes them carry the brunt of its economic fallout. This transcends traditional boundaries of the Global South and Global North with consequences felt by people living in precarious conditions across the globe.   The much-repeated meme that the virus doesn't discriminate suggests a false sense of equality, while in fact Covid-19 lays bare and reinforces deep-seated economic and social inequalities.   People living in unstable housing arrangements or informal settlements are largely unable to abide by measures of lockdown and distancing oneself from others by the recommended 2 metres. As noted in a recent podcast episode: Social distancing is a privilege with people living in informal settlements such as in Dhaka, Bangladesh or in cities in Kenya living in large households, in close proximity to other families and sharing kitchen and toilet facilities with each other.   In the UK, homeless people and undocumented migrants do not have adequate shelter to keep themselves at a safe distance from others, despite government interventions.   Work has become even more precarious and the inflow of income even more unpredictable, particularly for those who were already struggling to make ends meet. Those working in informal sectors or depending on day labour are unable to go out in search of work due to distancing measures or have simply seen work dry up due to decreased demand.   With government responses often targeted at workers in the formal market, those in the informal economy are left to fend for themselves.   Children are especially affected. School closures in many countries across the globe means that children miss out on school meals. For those living in families that struggle to make ends meet, this often represents their only nutritious meal per day. Losing the certainty of one meal per day at a time when income has become highly uncertain, many children are at risk of hunger.   School closures also affect learning, and disproportionately so for children who do not have access to school materials or digital devices that can support home schooling or distance learning. The ability to learn at home is further undermined by daily stress about keeping one's head above water, and is leading to concerns that the pandemic increases the learning gap between children in low- and high-income households.   And the worst is yet to come. Research by UNU-WIDER suggests that poverty levels could rise to levels last seen 30 years ago, thereby reversing much of the progress that has been made towards achieving Sustainable Development Goal 1 to eradicate poverty. Save the Children estimates that up to 30 million children in Africa could be pushed into poverty as a result of Covid-19.   Social policy responses must go further   Many have called for ambitious and far-reaching welfare and social protection measures. These calls are growing louder and stronger with well-known economists such as Martin Ravallion arguing for the need to go beyond 'business as usual' and not to get obsessed about targeting the poor, for example. Others advocate for a Universal Basic Income that provides an unconditional transfer of cash to everyone. As of 10 April, 126 countries have put in place or adapted some form of social policy in response to coronavirus.   The promise and potential of these measures is laudable and encouraging, but not enough. Too many people are falling through the cracks and need further support, urgently. At the same time, the focus on providing immediate support should not go at the expense of a longer-term vision.   For many across the globe, the pandemic's consequences will continue to hit hard long after we have stopped worrying about infection rates. The expansions of social safety nets across the world should therefore not serve as temporary measures only. Instead, let us seize this moment as an opportunity to scale up investment in social protection systems that offers support to everyone in need for as long as they need it.   http://www.ids.ac.uk/publications/social-impacts-and-responses-related-to-covid-19-in-low-and-middle-income-countries/ http://www.ids.ac.uk/opinions/people-in-poverty-bear-the-brunt-of-covid-19-and-the-worst-is-yet-to-come/ http://www.ids.ac.uk/news/responding-to-covid-19-the-social-dynamics/ http://reliefweb.int/report/world/fighting-covid-19-africa-s-informal-settlements http://www.wiego.org/social-protection-responses-covid-19   http://www.wiego.org/covid19crisis http://bit.ly/2D4lucM http://knowyourcity.info/blog/ http://gcap.global/covid-19/ http://www.undp.org/content/undp/en/home/librarypage/transitions-series/temporary-basic-income--tbi--for-developing-countries.html http://www.socialprotectionfloorscoalition.org/news/ http://mppn.org/the-threat-posed-by-covid-19-to-people-living-in-poverty/ http://bit.ly/3fexXbe http://www.independent.co.uk/independentpremium/world/coronavirus-poverty-recession-inequality-sabina-alkire-multidimensional-a9516811.html http://theconversation.com/five-ways-coronavirus-is-deepening-global-inequality-144621 http://reliefweb.int/report/world/building-back-justice-dismantling-inequalities-after-covid-19-july-2020   http://www.actionaid.org.uk/blog/news/2020/05/21/how-is-covid-19-affecting-girls-around-the-world http://www.actionaid.org.uk/blog/news/2020/05/15/why-coronavirus-is-a-catastrophe-in-the-worlds-most-densely-packed-locations http://www.actionaid.org.uk/blog/news/2020/04/22/coronavirus-millions-facing-hunger-around-the-world http://viacampesina.org/en/the-winds-of-change-are-blowing-harder-covid-19-update-on-peasants-rural-workers-and-other-marginalized-groups/ http://www.fian.org/en/press-release/article/a-recipe-for-disaster-covid-response-based-on-the-industrial-food-system-2510 http://www.globaldev.blog/blog/food-insecurity-during-covid-19 http://www.globaldev.blog/blog/beyond-lockdown-rebuilding-social-contract http://www.chronicpovertynetwork.org/blog/2020/6/10/covid-19-and-health-five-expert-views   * UNRISD: Lives or Livelihoods? Protecting and Supporting Vulnerable Groups Through the Covid-19 Crisis: http://bit.ly/3gqKgS1 http://bit.ly/3aViJGY
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