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In-depth Analysis: What should be Africa’s strategy to counter #Covid19? A strategy for containment

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The current Covid-19 pandemic, like most of its kind, poses two closely interlinked challenges. They can be summarized as the demands for urgent actions needed to contain the outbreak; and the requirement to work on long-term strategic issues including investments directed towards social and economic recovery, and peace and security. The last part— peace and security that is intrinsically tangled with governance, the nature and the role of state, the popular and performance legitimacy and…

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Looking at the coronavirus crisis through the nexus lens – what needs to be done

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Sarah Dalrymple puts forward actions that humanitarian, development and peace actors can take to apply the nexus approach to the devastating COVID-19 pandemic and thereby help mitigate its impact. According to her, taking a nexus approach to addressing the COVID-19 pandemic is imperative for responding effectively to this crisis and protecting those who are most vulnerable. She provides three things that need to be done to put this approach into practice.   Read more

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“We are all fragile, but we are not all equally fragile”: Humanitarian operations amidst the COVID-19 pandemic

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As the COVID-19 pandemic is spreading across the globe, its impact touches all corners of society. What happens when the pandemic reaches areas that were already dealing with various sorts of humanitarian challenges, and in what ways are humanitarian operations being impacted both directly and indirectly? In a time where the news are being flooded with information related to the pandemic and much of national authorities’ time and resources are being spent at mapping domestic…

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COVID-19 and the impact on local peacebuilding

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As the impact of the global coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic grows, local peacebuilders continue working to help communities break through cycles of violent conflict. During the first week of April, Peace Direct and Conducive Space for Peace held a series of consultations asking local peacebuilders how their lives and work have been affected by this unprecedented health emergency, what their communities need, and how they see their role during this time of crisis. These consultations included…

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Lessons Never Learned: Crisis and gender‐based violence

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The COVID‐19 pandemic exposes underlying inequalities in our socio‐economic and health systems, such as gender‐based violence (GBV). In emergencies, particularly ones that involve quarantine, GBV often increases. Policymakers must utilize community expertise, technology and existing global guidelines to disrupt these trends in the early stages of the COVID‐19 epidemic. Gender norms and roles relegating women to the realm of care work puts them on the frontlines in an epidemic, while often excluding them from developing…

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Governance, in crisis: What COVID-19 means for the present and future of global governance

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IHEID  has introduced a new series of think pieces to reflect critically on the limits (or untapped potential) of existing governance systems and innovative ways to solve future global challenges. This is one of them. The COVID-19 crisis has brought to light many realities about the contemporary global order, which was already far from stable. It demonstrates how quickly and deeply problems that originate in one part of the world can spread globally, highlighting the…

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Lockdown is wrong for Africa

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In this opinion peace, the director of the Institute for the Future of Knowledge and professor of philosophy at the University of Johannesburg, Prof Alex Broadbent, argues that the biggest public health risk in Africa is not Covid-19, but the consequences of regional and global measures designed to reduce its effect on public health. The cost-benefit analysis of these measures yields a different result in Africa than in Europe, North America and large parts of…

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Religion and COVID-19: Four Lessons from the Ebola experience

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Ebola and COVID-19, two devastating infectious diseases that spread rapidly through populations, crossing boundaries of all sorts, put local, national, and international health systems to crucial tests. They also try religious communities, locally and globally. The authors of this guest post, Katherine Marshall, Olivia Wilkinson and Dave Robinson, argue that we are learning vital lessons from both experiences. First, religion and science must combine their strengths. For this, religious voices must be at the medical…

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Coronavirus in conflict: The fight has hardly begun

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In this article, the authors argue that for several reasons, conflict-affected environments are especially vulnerable to the outbreak of infectious diseases, are less likely to be able to identify and respond to outbreaks, and are less equipped to stop their spread within and beyond their often porous borders.   Read more

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How to Make Women Count in the Response to Coronavirus: Lessons from the Women, Peace and Security agenda show the importance of women’s inclusion in the fight against COVID-19.

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As health organizations and national governments seek to stem the spread of COVID-19, it is critical that they understand the gender dynamics in their societies. Efforts to combat the pandemic will only go so far if women and girls are left behind in the process. For example, how can a woman experiencing domestic violence quarantine at home safely? Thankfully, global efforts to integrate women as equal partners in peace and security can provide key lessons…

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