COVID-19: Impact on gender dynamics in the livelihoods sector within crisis-affected countries

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This report is an overview of the gendered impact of COVID-19 on the livelihoods, income and employment of women, men, girls, and boys in different countries affected by humanitarian crises. These countries were included in the August 2020 INFORM Severity Indexand have gender-disaggregated data and analyses available at national or subnational levels. The report can be used by staff of humanitarian, donor, and operational actors covering a global or crisis-specific portfolio to roll out gender-nuanced,…

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Global Gender Analysis: COVID-19 secondary impacts on health-and protection-related issues

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This report provides an overview of publicly available information on the identified and projected impacts of the pandemic on gender-based violence (GBV), healthcare provision and access, and other health-related risks. The report focuses on countries experiencing humanitarian crises which have undertaken gender analyses at the national and subnational levels.   Download

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The challenge of peacebuilding during a pandemic

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Peacebuilding traditionally depends on face-to-face meetings, but social distancing makes these difficult. This blog post looks at what this means for the ‘localisation agenda’ and how the problems could be overcome. Around a third of COVID-19 cases and fatalities are happening in places dealing with humanitarian or refugee crises, or those that are more vulnerable. Indirectly, the pandemic is likely to cause increased poverty, starvation, higher child mortality rates, lower life expectancy and less education….

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The syndemic of COVID-19 and gender-based violence in humanitarian settings: leveraging lessons from Ebola in the Democratic Republic of Congo

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Key points: Efforts to situate gender-based violence (GBV) within the COVID-19 pandemic remain inadequate. Based on the knowledge that the public health crises of violence and infectious disease are intersecting, we use a syndemic perspective to examine their shared influence in humanitarian settings. When the humanitarian community exclusively prioritises the lives saved from infectious diseases, such as Ebola and COVID-19, the lives impacted by interrelated factors, such as GBV, can be overlooked. This narrative leverages…

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Observing COVID-19 in Africa through a Public Authorities Lens

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Most discussion of Africa’s response to COVID-19 takes place at the national level, focussing on the role of formal state authorities. However, less is known about the role of ‘public authorities’: traditional chiefs, self-help groups, kinship networks, professional associations, faith-based groups, civil society organisations, multinational companies, humanitarian agencies, organized criminal gangs, militias and rebels. These often operate below the national level and are particularly important in areas where the state is weak or absent. To…

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What COVID-19 means for work, inequality, and politics

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The COVID-19 pandemic was a predictable outcome of accelerated globalization – plenty of people said it would come. But many governments paid little attention to the risks of accelerated viral transmission and have been caught on the hop, resulting in feeble policy responses and unnecessarily high levels of epidemic severity.  Vulnerability to pandemics is only one of the weaknesses in our old model of globalization. Others include soaring inequality and the failure to respond to…

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Women’s mental health: acute impact of COVID-19 pandemic on domestic violence

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The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic created a situation of general distress. Although the focus has been initially more on the physical health during the pandemic, mental health concerns linked to the lockdown have quickly risen. This study aims to assess the effect of the COVID-19-related lockdown on Tunisian women’s mental health and gender-based violence. An online survey was conducted, using the Depression Anxiety and Stress Scales (DASS-21) and the Facebook Bergen Addiction Scale (FBAS)….

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The Pandemic and the Transformation of Liberal International Order

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In 2018, 43 leading International Relations scholars in the United States signed a public statement in support of an urgent call to preserve the current international order, triggering heated scholarly debates. The idealized form of the liberal international order was criticized by many scholars for its chronic problems, including the contradictions between proclaimed liberal values and illiberal behaviors, the inability to reform its institutional pillars to accommodate the diverse group of emerging powers, and the…

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What Happened? How the Humanitarian Response to COVID-19 Failed to Protect Women and Girls

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As COVID-19 spread across the globe, gender-based violence (GBV) experts and women’s rights activists around the world raised the alarm that the pandemic and its ensuing movement restrictions would negatively impact the safety of women and girls. This was evidenced early on by concerning reports from feminist activists and GBV service providers in China, Italy, Spain, and Brazil, amongst others.i From the first week of March, the media regularly highlighted the increased risk of violence…

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The impact of COVID-19 on the Horn of Africa

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The novel coronavirus (COVID-19) was first reported in the Horn of Africa region in early March 2020. At first, the number of cases seemed low compared to other regions, both on the continent and around the globe; however, these figures did increase steadily. Six months into the pandemic, it is encouraging to note the downward trend in the number of cases and deaths over the past few weeks. Thus far, more than 150,000 cases have…

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