In this opinion piece, Ethiopia’s prime minister Abiy Ahmed argues that only a global victory can end this pandemic, not a temporary rich countries’ win. Read more

Armed actors are or will likely be involved in an affected government’s response to COVID-19 in a number of ways. This operational guidance by OCHA provides practical approaches to navigating humanitarian operating environments where domestic armed actors are responding to COVID-19 as part of the government’s efforts, where peacekeeping forces and/or foreign armed actors (military and/or police) may possess unique capacity to support humanitarian requirements, or where a combination of the above is observable. The…

In this blog post, Mwanahamisi Singano argues that with everyone locked down due to Covid-19, gender-based violence could rise to unprecedented levels, because homes are often not a safe place for women. She points out necessary measures to be taken to minimise this risk. Read more

South Sudan heavily depends on export of oil, the reopening of some damaged oil wells following the peace agreement in 2018 pushed up daily oil production (export) by about 20 percent in February 2019. Despite the increase, access of hard currency to importers from banks has not yet started, and therefore traders still depend on the informal market. The oil revenue will be impacted by the collapse of the world oil prices amidst the spread…

Written by Marie Dennis, this reflection argues that perhaps this pandemic will help us to recognize the critical need for a transformative shift away from violence in our values and priorities. She mentiones a few reasons that show that such a shift is urgent. Read more

The spread of the coronavirus in Africa is intersecting with the continent’s population displacement crisis. Protecting displaced persons and migrants will be key to reducing the overall rates of transmission. The author therefore argues that governments must emphasize that this pandemic requires a community-wide focus on public health and human security—one that includes the most marginalized and vulnerable. This includes forcibly displaced and economic migrants, as well as the impoverished communities that host them. Stigmatization,…

The COVID-19 outbreak is a public health emergency, which in the context of South Sudan’s lack of any viable national social safety net, possess multiple protection challenges and threats to human rights. In large part as a result of the armed conflict, public health services are not able to provide prevention, treatment and control of epidemic, endemic, occupational and other diseases for all persons living in the country. Additionally, the prevention and response therefore cannot…

Like any other disease, the coronavirus COVID-19 has in itself no meaning: it is only a micro-organism. It acquires meaning and significance from its human contexts, from the ways it infiltrates the lives of the people, from the reactions it provokes, and from the manner in which it gives expression to cultural and political values. The danger of the coronavirus and its attendant illness, coronavirus disease, is best understood as the product of a particularly…

The World Health Organization is working on the basis that death rates rise when COVID-19 casualties exceed domestic health service capacity. The response is to require “social isolation” and shutdowns of large swathes of society and the economy. So far, media focus has been on the crisis in China, Europe, and the United States. However, the world’s poorest countries have little public health care capacity, and often also lack effective central governments with any geographic reach or…

As an organisation focusing on early warning and conflict prevention, Crisis Group is especially concerned with places where the current global health challenge intersects with wars or political conditions – such as weak institutions, communal tensions, lack of trust in leaders and inter-state rivalries – that could give rise to new crises or exacerbate existing ones. They also hope to identify cases where the disease could, with effective diplomacy, stimulate reductions in tensions. This briefing,…