As with many other healthcare systems around the world, COVID-19 has delivered a sharp blow to South Africa’s. Before the pandemic, the healthcare system was already struggling to cope with the combination of high HIV, TB & Malaria infection rates, a severe lack of funding to the public healthcare sector and persistent cuts to health spending. Now, with the highest …
Which supermarkets are doing the most to protect the rights of food workers?
As the Coronavirus pandemic drives home the importance of the frontline workers producing and supplying our food, Oxfam’s Behind the Barcodes campaign to improve the conditions of people in supermarket supply chains is more relevant than ever. And yet, the 2020 Supermarket Scorecard highlights that no supermarket is doing enough to combat human suffering in those supply chains, despite progress …
3 ways Coronavirus is having an impact on small producers and how to build back better
The Coronavirus is raging around the world. While many countries have started easing lockdowns, others still have restrictions in place or had to re-introduce measures because of renewed outbreaks. For the foreseeable future, the impacts on economic activity are huge. Oxfam works with women and men small and medium-sized farmers, producers and enterprises in agricultural value chains around the world, …
Coronavirus could have a devastating impact on land rights, but it doesn’t have to
The Coronavirus pandemic is having an unprecedented impact around the world. As of this blog publishing, over 6 million people have been affected across 213 countries and territories. It has affected us in all our lives. It has gone beyond a health crisis. It is a human crisis and it is attacking societies at their core. Effects of the pandemic …
Podcast: Breaking borders, refugees imagining a post COVID world
How do we imagine a fairer, kinder post-COVID world for refugees and asylum seekers?It’s Refugee Week! To celebrate, we bring you an episode which cuts across borders and hands the mic to two refugee activists who discuss the impact COVID-19 has had on the communities they work with. We hear from Obai Kurdali who works on peacebuilding and is based …
Podcast: Robtel Neajai Pailey on racism in development
Let’s talk about racism and development. Dr Robtel Neajai Pailey is a Liberian academic, activist and author.In this conversation, Maria and Robtel talk about development as a racist construct. They discuss the academization of decolonization, the systems of power and decision-making that uphold racism, and Robtel asks us: how complicit are we all in upholding the notion that whiteness (often …
Podcast: Living on a Resettlement Camp During a Pandemic
Coronavirus has brought up new challenges locally and globally, how do these challenges affect refugees and internally displaced people living on resettlement camps? How has the Coronavirus made a difficult and precarious living situation more complicated for internally displaced people and refugees? What is it like to live through this pandemic in a camp setting? And what are community members, …