COVID-19, Inequalities and Building Back Better

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Key messages Threatening to derail progress towards the SDGs, COVID-19’s devastating health, social and economic impacts are set to worsen inequalities within and between countries. To avoid a downward spiral that intensifies economic damage and catalyzes a broader humanitarian crisis, addressing inequalities should be a core part of implementing the UN system’s framework for the immediate socioeconomic response to COVID-19. Governments and the global community have a once-in-a-generation opportunity to ‘build back better’, to transform…

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Still Unprotected: Humanitarian Funding for Child Protection

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Children have a fundamental right to be protected, wherever they live. Children affected by humanitarian crises are among the most vulnerable to abuse, exploitation, violence and neglect and most in need of protection, yet there is limited commitment to fund protective responses. Throughout 2020, the impact of the global COVID-19 pandemic and the containment measures have layered risk upon risk for children in humanitarian crises. Although the overall funding for child protection is increasing, the…

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Social protection and humanitarian cash and food responses to COVID-19: Needs, coverage, and gaps

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The direct economic impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic and associated lockdowns are leading more people into poverty and hunger. Estimates to date on the impact of COVID-19 on poverty and food security are an important first step towards understanding the potential scale of need. However, they are mainly based on very high-level projections that apply uniform assumptions on impact, that simultaneously under-estimate the scale of needs and obscure who or where the needs are likely…

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Achieving inclusive and sustainable industrialisation and the SDGs in the post-COVID-19 world

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“In the context of international development, the year 2015 marked the transition from the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) to the much broader 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and the much more ambitious Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). It signalled an emerging paradigm shift in the international development agenda, a collectively agreed set of universal goals for an inclusive and sustainable global development process. At the outset, I want to point out that, without the MDGs, we…

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COVID-19: Reflecting on the role of the WHO in knowledge exchange between the Global North and South

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COVID-19 as a truly global pandemic presents a unique opportunity to reflect – through an ‘anti-colonial’ lens – on the role that WHO plays in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) versus high-income countries (HICs). This divide, also referred to as the global south and the global north, coincides in many ways with the separation between former colonies and colonial powers. This commentary will use COVID-19 as a case study to argue that the WHO can…

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12 leaders’ perspectives on supporting Africa’s health systems through Covid-19

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The AU Commission’s joint meetings of African Ministers of Health and of Finance build on the African Leadership Meeting Declaration (ALM), in which governments committed to both increasing domestic investment in health and improving the efficiency and effectiveness of health spending. These meetings could hardly come at a more important time. They provide an opportunity to share experiences in sustaining health gains through reforms to mobilise additional resources for health and to improve the value for money…

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Economic Policy during the COVID-19 Pandemic in South Sudan

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South Sudan is experiencing a distressing economic period. Government revenue has shrunk to historic lows and debt, both domestic and external, is mounting, marked by unsettled salary arrears and outstanding loans. A combination of the COVID-19 pandemic and the fallout of just-concluded civil strife is largely to blame. The pandemic and conflict have dramatically impeded oil sales, collection of non-oil revenues, and access to remittances and foreign aid. While income levels have dropped drastically, the…

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Averting an Education Catastrophe for the World’s Children

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This report proposes seven action areas to help guide the global community and local actors as they work to Save Our Future: Action Area 1: Prioritize reopening schools, deliver vital services to children, and treat the workforce as frontline workers. School closures were necessary to curtail the COVID-19 pandemic, but there are great costs to children from being away from school. Governments will need to reopen schools as soon as it is safe to do…

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The Human Face of COVID-19: Six Things to Consider for an Inclusive Recovery

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In a recent report, the World Bank has shown  that exclusion is costly to both  societies and economies. At the individual level, such costs include poorer educational outcomes and mental and physical health, lost wages and lifetime earnings, to name a few. At the national level, the economic cost of exclusion can be captured by forgone GDP and human capital wealth. Globally, the loss in human capital wealth due to gender inequality alone is estimated at…

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COVID-19 secondary impacts on health-and protection-related issues

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Since the start of the pandemic, concerns have been raised about the possible consequences of government containment measures and how overwhelmed healthcare facilities may have resulted in, and continue to pose, different kinds of challenges to women, men, girls, and boys, along with gender conforming and non-conforming LGBTQI+ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, and intersex) individuals with or without disabilities. Women, men, girls, boys, and LGBTQI+ individuals are adapting creatively and resiliently to the pandemic’s…

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