Fighting COVID-19, Building Peace – a civil society perspective

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This report is divided into four sections. The first explores how the pandemic has affected civil society’s capacity to operate. It covers both practical matters, like the inability to visit communities in person, as well as the issue of shrinking civic space. The second section describes and analyses how local peacebuilders view the pandemic as occasioning violence and stimulating drivers of conflict. The third discusses the dearth of coordination between government and civil society, as…

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Lessons from the Ebola epidemics and their applications for COVID‐19 pandemic response in sub‐Saharan Africa

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COVID‐19, caused by a novel coronavirus named SARS‐CoV‐2, was identified in December 2019, in Wuhan, China. It was first confirmed in sub‐Saharan Africa in Nigeria on 27 February 2020 and has since spread quickly to all sub‐Saharan African countries, causing more than 111,309 confirmed cases and 2,498 deaths as of 03 June 2020. The lessons learned during the recent Ebola virus disease (EVD) outbreaks in some sub‐Saharan African countries were expected to shape and influence…

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Opinion: COVID-19 calls for disrupting the way we communicate in a crisis

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Effective communication is the single most important factor in controlling COVID-19 — as every epidemiologist will tell you. Yet, as the disease continues to spread to some of the most marginalized communities on Earth, the humanitarian response is hitting a wall.   Read more

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Safe Our Education: Protect every child’s right to learn in the COVID-19 response and recovery

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The global community hopes that before too long a vaccine for COVID-19 will be found, produced and universally delivered, and the world will become safer. But unless action is taken now, the long-term legacies of the pandemic will be rising inequality and a devastating impact on children’s learning. New analysis for this report shows how COVID-19 may affect both the funding and the delivery of education in some of the countries most at risk of…

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Continuing Care During COVID-19: Adopting Life-Saving Approaches to Treat Acute Malnutrition

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Key findings and recommendations: Increased rates of acute malnutrition are an inevitable consequence of COVID-19 and the measures taken to slow its spread – especially in fragile and conflict affected settings where rates of acute malnutrition are already substantially higher than in stable settings. In the face of government-mandated shutdowns, millions of people have lost their income, agriculture harvests and sales have been disrupted, food prices have increased, and aid programs focused on nutrition have…

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Cut Corruption, Not Social Protection during COVID-19

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Before the coronavirus or COVID-19 pandemic began its deadly spread, global attention was focused on the staggering rise in economic inequality across many countries. Inequality accelerated following the 2008 economic crisis, when many governments responded by cutting government spending and hollowing out programs crucial to human rights such as health, housing, food support, and unemployment.   Read more

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The hunger virus: how COVID-19 is fuelling hunger in a hungry world

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COVID-19 is deepening the hunger crisis in the world’s hunger hotspots and creating new epicentres of hunger across the globe. By the end of the year 12,000 people per day could die from hunger linked to COVID-19, potentially more than will die from the disease itself. The pandemic is the final straw for millions of people already struggling with the impacts of conflict, climate change, inequality and a broken food system that has impoverished millions…

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Emerging Promising Practices – Supporting Continued Access to Education during COVID-19 (Issue 2)

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This document is the second in a series that highlights emerging practices as UNHCR operations and their partners work to support the continuity of education for displaced and refugee students during the pandemic and support them in returning to school.   Download

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How to operationalise human rights for COVID-19 measures

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Summary: There is an emerging awareness that governments must strike a fair balance between protecting and promoting public health on one side and individual human rights on the other. Human rights could smoothly be integrated into the COVID-19 measures’ decision process. Such integration will ask for human rights awareness, knowledge and accessibility. Governments are responsible for fulfilling human rights, and thus also for introducing the right tools for decision-makers and implementers. An easy to use…

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COVID-19 & Poverty and Hunger

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COVID-19 has directly killed hundreds of thousands of people around the world. It is also taking a deep toll on the food security, nutrition and livelihoods of millions of people across the globe. The socio-economic fallout from COVID-19 has resulted in sharp declines in household income due to job losses and/or reduced livelihoods options. Declining remittances is leading to steep increases in poverty and hunger, particularly in low-income developing countries. Those living in fragile and…

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