Radical Socialist statement on LG Polymers disaster

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Published on Friday, 08 May 2020 09:34

 

Radical Socialist is greatly alarmed at the death of 11 people, including a six-year-old girl, and more than

a thousand people affected after styrene monomer gas leaked from a chemical plant belonging to LG

Polymers at RR Venkatapuram in Visakhapatnam on May 7, 2020. Around 350 people are hospitalised till

now. This gas leak has directly affected an area over a radius of about three kilometres. At least five

villages within this radius have been severely affected. According to experts, styrene is a neuro-toxin and

inhalation leads to immobilisation and eventual death in ten minutes.

The chemical plant situated in a densely populated area in Visakhapatnam city occupies an area of 213

acres. Earlier called Hindustan Polymers, the company was taken over by the South Korean multinational

LG Chem in July 1997.  It manufactures polystyrene and expandable polystyrene from imported styrene

and reprocesses primary plastics into engineering plastics. 

In January 2018, AP Pollution Control Board granted environmental clearance to LG Polymers to expand

production from 415 tonnes of chemicals per day to 655 tonnes per day, at an extra cost of Rs 168 crores.

These include polystyrene and expandable polystyrene, both using hazardous chemicals for its

manufacture. This clearance is considered valid till December 2021. However, later in May 2019, the

State Level Environment Impact Assessment Authority (SEIAA) pointed out that LG polymers was

functioning without a valid environmental clearance order from it. It stated that no clearance was obtained

by the company regarding ‘petrochemical based processing’ in the schedule to the EIA notification,

2006.” 

In the wake of the COVID-19 lockdown, after the first phase of lockdown ended on April 14, 2020, the

company also managed to gain permission for functioning citing that it was an “essential” industry. The

South-Korean company had managed to obtain a No Objection Certficate (NOC) even as the first phase

of the COVID-19 lockdown ended. 

By no stretch of the imagination can a plastics manufacturing unit like LG Polymers be categorised as “

essential”. This has clearly happened in collusion with senior government officials. The issues around

the environmental clearance and the subsequent events around the lockdown makes it amply clear that

this can’t be termed as an accident but constitutes criminal negligence by the company which out to

maximise profits has bypassed all safety norms. Moreover, such an industrial disaster coupled with the

ongoing pandemic can have  far reaching dangerous consequences. 

Radical Socialist also notes, and urges all socialist, working class, and ecologically conscious people and

organisations to undertand that the Modi government, right from 2014, has been committed to

overturning environmentally sound policies. As with other issues like centralisation of powers and

overturning labour laws, it is using the current crisis to push aggressively for its eco-destructive policies,

in the name of development/economic revival. This has to be combatted not merely in this case, but in all

cases. The LG Polymers disaster is a warning that Indian capitalism and the Modi regime cannot be

trusted at all in this matter, and only continuous resistance can ensure any positive development.

Radical Socialist demands that:

• The directors of LG Polymers be arrested for criminal negligence and flouting environmental and safety
• norms.
• The officials colluding with the company and easing environmental and safety norms should be booked.
• All safety precautions must be taken before reopening plants dealing with chemical and hazardous
• materials.
• All victims of this disaster must be adequately compensated.
• The local environment, atmosphere and groundwater sources must be cleaned and purified.
• Violation of safety norms in industries must be recognised as a criminal offence.  
• Efforts must be made to shift from such polluting industries to environment friendly ones. 

May 8, 2020

Class and Race Inequality, Health, and COVID-19

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Published on Wednesday, 15 April 2020 18:48

Caste Overlordship and the Problem of the Indian Revolution

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Published on Wednesday, 15 April 2020 10:34

 By Murzban Jal

Murzban Jal has been a regular contributor to this website. We publish below an article by him, hoping it will lead to more discussions. -- Administrator, Radical Socialist Website 

We revolt because it is impossible to breathe, in more than one sense of the term.

 

Frantz Fanon.

 

 

Introduction

 

Since the idea of the Asiatic mode of production and the social formations embedded thereon was not taken seriously in twentieth century Marxism, especially in India, the understanding of Marxism was predicated on a Eurocentric and Stalinist theoretical problematic that was itself completely alien to Marx’s original understanding of revolutions in Asia in  general and India in particular. This led to a teleological and unilinear understanding of history where history was seen as a march-past from primitive communism via slave society, feudalism and capitalism, and, as if, waiting for socialism to automatically evolve as if metaphysically and independent of revolutionary action. While at the theoretical sense it meant that the Indian revolution had to be predicated on the revolutions in advanced capitalist nations, or at best usher in the bourgeois national revolution; in the practical sense it meant that Moscow and Beijing would throw their shadows on the Indian revolution. The communist revolution would be totally absent from this revisionist framework.

In this colonial Eurocentric view of history and society, the liberal democrats led by Nehru opted for a reformed type of capitalism at the time of independence governed by parliamentary democracy, while the Established Left was by and large anchored in the bourgeois parliamentary system, except twice when it was swayed by revolutionary action as seen in the Telengana movement (1946-51) followed by the Naxalbari movement from the late 1960s onwards.

And when postmodernism started showing its influence in India, the Established Left in the deconstructionist name of différance, let caste, feminism and ecology in their movement. What happened was that the Established Left moved in from one mess (Stalinism and Maoism) to another (postmodernism). And then suddenly différance came onto the scene of Indian politics, but not as caste, feminism and ecology, but as fascism. The Stalinist Left was left trembling, not knowing what to do. It is then they thought that the ghosts of Nehru and Gandhi would serve better to fight fascism than the specters of Stalin and Mao. But little would they know that ghosts are best understood as mere ghosts and the time to bury them was of extreme necessity.

Earlier the Established Left had two Overlords—Stalin and Mao. Now they are joined by many, many more. Again little would they realize that while their Overlords would appear as mere ghosts, the time for the real Overlord has come. Fascism is now no mere tale for the Established Left to narrate. It is reality, terrible and brute reality.

           

 

 Where are we Heading?

 

“Shame”, so the young Marx once wrote to his friend Arnold Ruge, is “a revolution in itself”.[1] The impossibility of breathing that Frantz Fanon said is also another kind of revolution. In fact one may ask: “If in class divided societies, breathing is really impossible, then how come the anti-caste, anti-class revolution is not hitherto successful in India? Why has fascism come and why does it quite oft speak in the name of Gandhi?”

            And with global capitalism tightening its grip over the entire globe, where it creates a world after its own ugly and distorted image; racism, casteism, the politics of primordial nativism and terrorism become the new commodities for sale in the global market. And in this production of these new commodities, we need another form of breathing. In this sense, to quote a contemporary Marxist-Humanist philosopher Peter Hudis: “Time seems to be moving backward in many respects, as xenophobic—as well as subtle but no less insidious—forms of racism seem to define the very shape of globalized capitalism in the twenty first century”.[2]

            It is in this sense that I say that reflections on caste and class are to be constituted in an understanding of history moving backwards. But if we are indeed moving backwards, “the question is, to what?”[3] Where are we heading? What future beckons us?

In an essay ‘In Defense of Leninism’ which was published in Economic & Political Weekly which I later added in my edited book Challenges for the Indian Left, I said that if according to Marx, great personages and facts appear in history as if twice, the first as tragedy the second as farce, then we must add that in neo-liberal capitalism history appears now also as joy since unbridled capitalism has put on the stage of world history the great revolutionaries: Lenin, Trotsky, Luxemburg, etc. And if great personages do appear once more, then great events have also to occur with their appearance. If history appears as moving backwards, then the reversal is also now seen.

            And that is why I am saying that if history in the era of late imperialism in permanent crises is seen moving backwards, in the era of barbarism, its direct antithesis, socialism, cannot be left out from the scene of history. And this is because history moving backwards is an anomaly against history itself. Luxemburg’s great question, “socialism or barbarism”, now speaks out.  Unfortunately the dominant discourse is that of historical barbarism that now speaks. For if in the Western world, capitalism speaks through the language of racial and religious conflicts (as if the production of all other commodities it has exhausted), then in India it is through the discourse of caste and messianic religious that capitalism is able to speak. It is, as if, capitalism has totally lost its voice and needs to speak through the other. 

            Ironically both caste and religion as explicit public discourses found their voices in India only in the early 1990s with the political endorsing of the “end of socialism” theme by the Indian state. Socialism had to die for the Caste Overlord to speak its real language. The earlier Caste Overlord died who spoke the language of Nehruvain socialism, another Caste Overlord, now joined by many more lords and ladies came marching in this little scene of Indian history. And when caste did speak through the language of “justice” and “affirmative action” with the coming of the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP), it seemed that what Christophe Jafferlot calls a “silent revolution” did finally appear. But was this indeed the case? Would the BSP unleash a revolution of any sort, silent or otherwise? Would the dalit communities submerged beneath the hegemony of the upper caste elites under Congress rule be finally getting their own voice? Or would this be a mere inversion of Brahmanism to create nothing but an “inverted Brahmanism”? Would this silent revolution under the auspices of an “inverted Brahmanism” be nothing but a schizophrenic revolution that would lead to a complete counterrevolution? And would caste be the basis of this schizophrenic revolution turned counterrevolution?

 

What is Caste?

 

Since caste has been repeating finding its voice, mainly from parties like BSP and aided by centres of inclusion-exclusion (usually funded well by American universities and patronized by Congress politicians), one needs to out this question in the scientific perspective. Thus to the question: “What is caste?” I answer that caste is a form of enclosed community constituted in a concrete mode of production and sanctified by a concrete religious and political ideology and that it implies an essential cutting off people from one another.  It is this sense of essential clannishisness and an estrangement emerging thereon that an analysis of caste can take place. For a working dialectical materialist definition by caste I mean an enclosed, ossified and petrified class that is reified as a closed clan system with its parasitical bureaucratic system where humans lose their humanity. Let us see what Marx had to say about India appearing as:

 

Idyllic village communities, inoffensive though they may appear, had always been the solid foundation of Oriental Despotism, that they had restrained the human mind within the smallest compass, making it the unresisting tool of superstition, enslaving it beneath traditional rules, depriving it of all grandeur and historical energies. We must not forget that the barbarian egotism which, concentrating on some miserable piece of land, had quietly witnessed the ruin of empires, the perpetuation of unspeakable cruelties, the massacre of the population of large towns, with no other consideration bestowed upon them than on natural events, itself the helpless prey of any aggressor who designed to notice it at all. We must not forget that this undignified, stagnatory, and vegetative life, that this passive sort of existence evoked on the one part, in contradistinction, wild, aimless, unbounded forces of destruction and rendered murder itself a religious rite in Hindustan. We must not forget that these little communities were contaminated by caste and slavery, that they subjugated man to external circumstances, that they transformed a self developing social state into never changing natural destiny, and thus brought about a brutalizing worship of nature, exhibiting its degradation in the fact that man, the sovereign of nature, fell down on his knees in adoration of Hanuman the monkey, and Sabbala, the cow.[4]

 

In the first volume of Capital this is what we see:

 

 

 

Manufacture, in fact, produces the skill of the detailed labourer by reproducing, and systematically driving to an extreme within the workshop, the naturally developed differentiation of trades which it found ready to hand in society at large. On the other hand, the conversion of fractional work into the life-calling of one man, corresponds to the tendency shown by earlier societies, to make trades hereditary; either to petrify them into castes, or whenever definite historical conditions beget in the individual a tendency to vary in a manner incompatible with the nature of castes, to ossify them into guilds. Castes and guilds arise from the action of the same natural law, that regulates the differentiation of plants and animals into species and varieties, except that, when a certain degree of development has been reached, the heredity of castes and the exclusiveness of guilds are ordained as a law of society.

“The muslins of Dakka in fineness, the calicoes and other piece goods of Coromandel in brilliant and durable colours, have never been surpassed. Yet they are produced without capital, machinery, division of labour, or any of those means which give such facilities to the manufacturing interest of Europe. The weaver is merely a detached individual, working a web when ordered of a customer, and with a loom of the rudest construction, consisting sometimes of a few branches or bars of wood, put roughly together. There is even no expedient for rolling up the warp; the loom must therefore be kept stretched to its full length, and becomes so inconveniently large, that it cannot be contained within the hut of the manufacturer, who is therefore compelled to ply his trade in the open air, where it is interrupted by every vicissitude of the weather.”

It is only the special skill accumulated from generation to generation, and transmitted from father to son, that gives to the Hindu, as it does to the spider, this proficiency. And yet the work of such a Hindu weaver is very complicated, compared with that of a manufacturing labourer.[5]

 

And a few pages later we have this:

 

Those small and extremely ancient Indian communities, some of which have continued down to this day, are based on possession in common of the land, on the blending of agriculture and handicrafts, and on an unalterable division of labour, which serves, whenever a new community is started, as a plan and scheme ready cut and dried. Occupying areas of from 100 up to several thousand acres, each forms a compact whole producing all it requires. The chief part of the products is destined for direct use by the community itself, and does not take the form of a commodity. Hence, production here is independent of that division of labour brought about, in Indian society as a whole, by means of the exchange of commodities. It is the surplus alone that becomes a commodity, and a portion of even that, not until it has reached the hands of the State, into whose hands from time immemorial a certain quantity of these products has found its way in the shape of rent in kind. The constitution of these communities varies in different parts of India. In those of the simplest form, the land is tilled in common, and the produce divided among the members. At the same time, spinning and weaving are carried on in each family as subsidiary industries. Side by side with the masses thus occupied with one and the same work, we find the “chief inhabitant,” who is judge, police, and tax-gatherer in one; the book-keeper, who keeps the accounts of the tillage and registers everything relating thereto; another official, who prosecutes criminals, protects strangers travelling through and escorts them to the next village; the boundary man, who guards the boundaries against neighbouring communities; the water-overseer, who distributes the water from the common tanks for irrigation; the Brahmin, who conducts the religious services; the schoolmaster, who on the sand teaches the children reading and writing; the calendar-Brahmin, or astrologer, who makes known the lucky or unlucky days for seed-time and harvest, and for every other kind of agricultural work; a smith and a carpenter, who make and repair all the agricultural implements; the potter, who makes all the pottery of the village; the barber, the washerman, who washes clothes, the silversmith, here and there the poet, who in some communities replaces the silversmith, in others the schoolmaster. This dozen of individuals is maintained at the expense of the whole community. If the population increases, a new community is founded, on the pattern of the old one, on unoccupied land. The whole mechanism discloses a systematic division of labour; but a division like that in manufactures is impossible, since the smith and the carpenter, &c., find an unchanging market, and at the most there occur, according to the sizes of the villages, two or three of each, instead of one. The law that regulates the division of labour in the community acts with the irresistible authority of a law of Nature, at the same time that each individual artificer, the smith, the carpenter, and so on, conducts in his workshop all the operations of his handicraft in the traditional way, but independently, and without recognising any authority over him. The simplicity of the organisation for production in these self-sufficing communities that constantly reproduce themselves in the same form, and when accidentally destroyed, spring up again on the spot and with the same name—this simplicity supplies the key to the secret of the unchangeableness of Asiatic societies, an unchangeableness in such striking contrast with the constant dissolution and refounding of Asiatic States, and the never-ceasing changes of dynasty. The structure of the economic elements of society remains untouched by the storm-clouds of the political sky.[6]

 

One should understand that to have a scientific understanding of caste on should find a material referent for the same. To talk of the material referent is of great importance, since parties that propagate alleged anti-elitist politics (like the BSP) and the ideology that speaks in the name of Ambedkar (like the many factions of the RPI in Maharashtra) not only do not want to talk of the material referent, but choose to be totally blind to this very important factor.

And this material referent is the mode of production—to be precise the Indic variation of the Asiatic mode of production, a mode that did not exist in some exotic past, but which through its numerous mutations, yet exists. What we shall do is take the above two renderings and then go back to ‘The British Rule in India’ where Marx locates caste as “semi-barbarian, semi-civilized communities”[7] where these caste-communities are seen manifesting themselves as clan systems which creates the structures of extreme hierarchy and the ideology of rank worship. Rank worship is inherently related to the totem of purity and the taboo of pollution.  If purity and pollution are its ritualitsic superstructure then economic and cultural stagnation are its two main pillars. One follows Ambedkar in outlining the two principles of graded inequality and division of labourers as central to the mechanism of caste. In the principle of graded inequality various labouring-subaltern castes are unable to recognize their exploiter, but are themselves graded within themselves unequally. And in the principle of division of labourers, there is a marked internal division based on the ideology of caste-hierarchy. While the Left has almost not touched these it is first the liberals that saw caste as a progressive structure—Gandhi was the chief proponent of this worldview. Not only did they recognize this fact, they perfected this. And this is precisely why Ambedkar saw the Congress as the most reactionary party which perfected these principles of graded inequality and division of labourers.  But is this is the case, if Ambedkar thought that the Congress was the party of the Indian counterrevolution, then why is the Established Left not going hammer and tongs after it? 

Further, what happens with caste and its fetish of purity and ranking is that racism also comes in. As racism, albeit of the South Asian variety, the upper castes are not merely “understood” as being of higher biological stock and the lower ones considered as inferior, but actually “cultivated” as inferior. When I am talking of casteism as a form of South Asian racism, I am also calling this “schizophrenic racism” where ranking in terms of “high” and “low”, “pure” and “impure” form its ontological basis. The tragic element is that even the lower castes imitate this model and imagine that they belong to a superior stock. For a certain type of Indian politics, this idea of caste as race forms the leitmotiv of its fascist politics. Both V.D. Savarkar and M.S. Golwalkar based their politics on the idea of race and racial superiority. But this not mean that Gandhi and Nehru were free from this blame. For then too this same idea was sketched deep in their ideological cranium. 

The third part of caste, I outline as “neurosis-psychosis”. I here claim that caste generates essentially a form of mental illness which creates cultural and political schizophrenia. This form of cultural illness and the ideological superstructure which caste creates is unable to generate critical-scientific thinking and a democratic culture. The main thing that this new form of cultural illness does is that it breeds the contempt of other social groups. The creation of authoritarian fascist politics is an essential part of neurosis-psychosis. But this form of contempt and also this form of neurosis-psychosis is also an essential part of Indian liberalism.

It is here imperative to understand that Marx’s idea of the “estranged mind” from Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844, Georg Lukács’ “reification of consciousness” from his History and Class Consciousness, R.D. Laing’s idea of the “divided self” and Theodor Adorno’s “general regression of thinking” are able to articulate caste as “neurosis-psychosis” along with Marx’s theory of alienation.   What I am saying is that the idea of the caste system as “a sort of equilibrium, resulting from a general repulsion and constitutional exclusiveness, resulting between all its members”[8] fits in Marx’s theory of alienation, while the idea of the “wild aimless, unbounded forces of destruction”[9], fits in the theory of “neurosis-psychosis”. One must understand this rather strange combination of class, racism (as schizophrenic racism) and neurosis-psychosis that has given rise to both liberalism of Gandhi and Indian fascism. What I am saying is that caste combines both the sites of the economic base and the political and ideological superstructure of the reified-estranged mind. That is why I have brought in Marx’s problematic of alienation, reification and fetishism that deals with this Indian form of capitalism in India where caste and its accompanying schizophrenia is not only preserved, but actively reproduced, albeit in modern, capitalistic forms.

It is in this perspective that I say that the Indian revolution has a very specific and particular task which cannot be reduced to the question of the New Democratic Revolution and other allied questions. One needs here going to a quote from Slavoj Žižek. According to Žižek (he is quoting Gilles Deleuze here): “If you’re trapped in the dream of the other, you’re fucked”.[10]  The problem is with the “caste question” we inevitably live in the dreams of the other. But it is not merely the other, but the Big Other which now literally f***s us all. Now who is this Big other that is f*****g us all.

 

The Big Other

 

“The tradition of all the dead generations”, so Marx once said, “weighs like a nightmare on the brain of the living.”[11] Probably no other nation can be burdened by its past as India. For understanding this, let us go once more to the good old Marx:

 

And just as when they seemed engaged in revolutionizing themselves and things, creating something that did not exist before, precisely in such epochs of revolutionary crisis they anxiously conjure up the spirits of the past to their service, borrowing from them names, battle slogans, and costumes in order to present this new scene in world history in time-honored disguise and borrowed language.[12]

 

It is this idea of “borrowed language” that we need to understand. We also need to understand what Marx meant by “conjuring up of the dead of world history”.[13] What I am saying is that caste—the unfortunate and terrible reality—appears in borrowed and conjured forms. Caste, or to be precise, Caste Overlordship as the Big Other, is both the ancient law giver and exploiter and also the appears as the modern bourgeois. But Caste Overlordship also has a habit of conjuring tales, the tales of “ahimsa” and “Ram Rajya” of “non-vegetarianism” and “cow protection”.

            About caste there are infinite tales: Just as snakes and elephants wander around in India and just as the sadhu takes his flute and presto climbs up the magical rope only to disappear, so too caste is a part of this exotic India. These tales are those perfected by post-Ambedkar-Ambedkarites (from the RPI and BSP to centres of inclusion-exclusion). Caste for them is something unique and exotic about India. Then are other tales: caste is a mere part of an archaic division of labour and just as modernity dissolves the archaic, so too caste will inevitably be dissolved. The second tale is of the liberal democrats and the Stalinists.  

            But caste is neither an exotic or liberal tale. It is real and appears not only as the ritualistic priest of days gone by, but realizes itself as the fascist state itself, the state takes the form of the Big Other. This Big Other, one should further note, is anti-Marxist. He assures us that caste is excellent, and if it is not excellent then it will most certainly be abolished one fine day. And the best way that caste would be both affirmed and negated is in the Gandhian conjuring way. Consider Gandhi:

 

The injunction against Sudras studying the Vedas is not altogether unjustified: a Sudra, in other words, a person without moral education, without sense, and without knowledge would completely misread the Shastras.[14]

 

It is this nasty perspective that we mention what Marx said:

 

A ship of fools can be perhaps be allowed to drift before the wind for a good while; but it will still drift before the wind for a good while; but it will still drift to its doom precisely because the fools refuse to believe it possible. This doom is the approaching revolution. [15]  

 

One can hope that the doom that Marx is talking of is the doom of the ruling classes. The ship of fools is comprised of the liberal democrats and the Stalinists. hey most certainly are going to crash on the rocks. Look at the ship of fools and see how they are drifting, without will, without plan for action. It is the liberal democrats who are without double going to crash, would they will let the entire nation crash, the proletariat included.  And they would not crash in the revolution, but the counterrevolution. The leader of the Indian liberal democrats is not Nehru, but Gandhi. It is Gandhi. And he is steering the ship of fools. 

In this case why has the nation been taught to worship Gandhi when he himself absolutely and unconditionally justifies the caste system and its demonical hierarchy, and along with the caste system justifies capitalism and landlordship where he classifies the Indian peasants and workers—the Sudras—as people “without moral education”?  The terrain now has to change in the understanding the Indian revolution. This terrain is not of class conflict in the purely West European manner, class conflict devoid of the terrors of the caste system. The terrain is of the Indic variation of the Asiatic mode of production with the caste mode of production forming its economic base. It is in this new perspective, that we see the figure of the Big Other very clearly who like the tradition of all the dead generations is weighing like a nightmare on the brain of the living. The figure is of Gandhi. And now Gandhi is wearing jackboots marching to the tune of Ram Rajya and marching with him are the cows and vegetarians of the world. If Marx said that workers of the world should unite, for Gandhi (not to forget the fascists) it is the cows and vegetarians who should unite.

No wonder that for Ambedkar, Gandhi was the biggest counterrevolutionary. But then is anyone listening?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Statement of Feminists and Women’s Rights Organizations from the Global South and marginalized communities in the Global North

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Published on Sunday, 05 April 2020 17:37

We, the undersigned organizations committed to feminist principles and women’s human rights, call on governments to recall and act in accordance with human rights standards in their response to COVID-19 and uphold the principles of equality and non-discrimination, centering the most marginalized people — women, children, elderly, people with disabilities, people with compromised health, rural people, unhoused people, institutionalized people, LGBT+ people, refugees, migrants,indigenous peoples, stateless people, human rights defenders, and people in conflict and war zones. Feminist policy recognizes and prioritizes the needs of the most vulnerable communities. Beyond the response to this pandemic, it is necessary for the development of peaceful, inclusive and prosperous communities within human rights-driven states.

It is critical that governments utilize a human rights and intersectional based approach to ensure that everyone has access to necessary information, support systems and resources during the current crisis. We have recognized nine key areas of focus to be considered in the context of the COVID-19 crisis. They are listed below with brief descriptions of potential challenges and recommendations that consider the lived experiences of people in vulnerable position — especially women and girls that endure a disproportionate impact due to their sex, gender, and sexual orientation — and steer policymakers toward solutions that do not exacerbate their vulnerabilities or magnify existing inequality and ensure their human rights.

These guidelines are not a replacement for the engagement of women and girls and other marginalized communities in decision-making, but a rationale for consultation and diversity in leadership.

Key Focus Areas for a Feminist Policy on COVID-19

Food security. In countries that depend on food imports, there are fears of closing borders and markets and the inability to access food. This concern is exacerbated for people experiencing poverty and in rural communities, especially women, who do not have easy access to city centers and major grocery stores and markets. This leads to people with the means purchasing large quantities of goods which limits availability for those with lower incomes who are not able to do the same and are likely to face shortages when they attempt to replenish their food supplies.

In response to this challenge, we call on governments to:

Increase — or introduce — food stamps and subsidies, both in quantity for those already receiving them and in expansion of access to include those who become more vulnerable due to current circumstances

Direct businesses to ration nonperishable food supply to control inventory and increase access for those who, due to their income levels, must purchase over a longer period of time

Send food supply to rural communities to be stored and distributed as needed to eliminate the delay in accessing supply in city centers and safeguard against shortages due to delays in shipping

Send food supply to people unable to leave their homes (e.g. disabled people living alone or in remote areas)

Healthcare. All countries expect a massive strain on their public health systems due to the spread of the virus, and this can lead to decreased maternal health and increased infant mortality rates. There is often lack of access to healthcare services and medical supplies in rural communities. The elderly, people with disabilities, and people with compromised or suppressed immune systems are at high risk, and may not have live-in support systems. The change in routine and spread of the virus can create or exacerbate mental health issues. This crisis has a disproportionate impact on women who form, according to the World Health Organization’s March 2019 Gender equity in the health workforce working paper, 70% of workers in the health and social sector, according to the World Health Organisation. It also disproportionately affects those who provide care for others.

In response to this challenge, we call on governments to:

Ensure the availability of sex-disaggragated data and gender analysis, including differentiated infection and mortality rates.

Increase availability and delivery of healthcare services and responders, medical supplies, and medications

Ensure women’s timely access to necessary and comprehensive sexual and reproductive health services during the crisis, such as emergency contraception and safe abortion

Maintain an adequate stock of menstrual hygiene products at healthcare and community facilities

Train medical staff and frontline social workers to recognize signs of domestic violence and provide appropriate resources and services
Develop a database of high-risk people who live alone and establish a system and a network to maintain regular contact with and deliver supplies to them

Provide for the continued provision of health care services based on non-biased medical research and tests — unrelated to the virus — for women and girls

Implement systems to effectively meet mental health needs including accessible (e.g. sign language, captions) telephone/videocall hotlines, virtual support groups, emergency services, and delivery of medication
Support rehabilitation centers to remain open for people with disabilities and chronic illness

Direct all healthcare institutions to provide adequate health care services to people regardless of health insurance status, immigration status and affirm the rights of migrant people and stateless people — with regular and irregular status — and unhoused people to seek medical attention to be free from discrimination, detention, and deportation

Ensure health service providers and all frontline staff receive adequate training and have access to equipment to protect their own health and offer mental health support

Assess and meet the specific needs of women health service providers
Education. The closure of schools is necessary for the protection of children, families, and communities and will help to flatten the curve so that the peak infection rate stays manageable. It, however, presents a major disruption in education and the routine to which children are accustomed. In many cases, children who depend on the school lunch program will face food insecurity. They also become more vulnerable to violence in their homes and communities which can go undetected due to no contact. School closures also have a disproportionate burden on women who traditionally undertake a role as caregivers.

In response to this challenge, we call on governments to:

Direct educational institutions to prepare review and assignment packages for children to keep them academically engaged and prevent setbacks and provide guidance for parents on the use of the material

Create educational radio programming appropriate for school-age children
Subsidize childcare for families unable to make alternate arrangements for their children

Expand free internet access to increase access to online educational platforms and material and enable children to participate in virtual and disability-accessible classroom sessions where available

Provide laptops for children who need them in order to participate in on-line education

Adopt measures to ensure they continue receiving food by making sure it can be delivered or collected

Provide extra financial and mental health support for families caring for children with disabilities

Social inequality. These exist between men and women, citizens and migrants, people with regular and irregular status, people with and without disabilities, neurotypical and neuroatypical people, and other perceived dichotomies or non-binary differences as well as racial, ethnic, and religious groups. Existing vulnerabilities are further complicated by loss of income, increased stress, and unequal domestic responsibilities. Women and girls will likely have increased burdens of caregiving which will compete with (and possibly replace) their paid work or education. Vulnerable communities are put at further risk when laws are enacted, or other measures are introduced, that restrict their movement and assembly, particularly when they have less access to information or ability to process it.

In response to this challenge, we call on governments to:

Encourage the equitable sharing of domestic tasks in explicit terms and through allowances for time off and compensation for all workers

Provide increased access to sanitation and emergency shelter spaces for unhoused people

Implement protocol and train authorities on recognizing and engaging vulnerable populations, particularly where new laws are being enforced
Consult with civil society organizations the process of implementing legislation and policy

Ensure equal access to information, public health education and resources in multiple languages, including sign and indigenous peoples languages, accessible formats, and easy-to-read and plain languages

Water and sanitation. Everyone does not have access to clean running water.

In response to this challenge, we call on governments to:

Ensure infrastructure is in place for clean, potable water to be piped into homes and delivered to underserved areas

Cease all disconnections and waive all reconnection fees to provide everyone with clean, potable water

Bring immediate remedy to issues of unclean water

Build public handwashing stations in communities

Economic inequality. People are experiencing unemployment, underemployment, and loss of income due to the temporary closure of businesses, reduced hours, and limited sick leave, vacation, personal time off and stigmatization. This negatively impacts their ability to meet financial obligations, generates bigger debts, and makes it difficult for them to acquire necessary supplies. Due to closures and the need for social distancing, there is also lack of care options and ability to pay for care for children, the elderly, and people with disabilities. This produces a labor shift from the paid or gig economy to unpaid economy as family care providers.

In response to this challenge, we call on governments to:

Implement moratoriums on evictions due to rental and mortgage arrears and deferrals of rental and mortgage payments for those affected, directly or indirectly, by the virus and for people belonging to vulnerable groups

Provide Universal Basic Income for those with lost income

Provide financial support to unhoused people, refugees, and women’s shelters

Provide additional financial aid to elderly people and people with disabilities
Expedite the distribution of benefits

Modify sick leave, parental and care leave, and personal time off policies
Direct businesses to invite employees to work remotely on the same financial conditions as agreed prior to pandemic

Distribute packages with necessities including soap, disinfectants, and hand sanitizer

Violence against women, domestic violence/Intimate partner violence (DV/IPV). Rates and severity of domestic violence/intimate partner violence against women, including sexual and reproductive violence, will likely surge as tension rises. Mobility restrictions (social distance, self-isolation, extreme lockdown, or quarantine) will also increase survivors’ vulnerability to abuse and need for protection services. (See Economic inequality.) Escape will be more difficult as the abusive partner will be at home all the time. Children face particular protection risks, including increased risks of abuse and/or being separated from their caregivers. Accessibility of protection services will decline if extreme lockdown is imposed as public resources are diverted. Women and girls fleeing violence and persecution will not be able to leave their countries of origin or enter asylum countries because of the closure of borders and travel restrictions.

In response to this challenge, we call on governments to:

Establish separate units within police departments and telephone hotlines to report domestic violence

Increase resourcing for nongovernmental organizations that respond to domestic violence and provide assistance — including shelter, counselling, and legal aid — to survivors, and promote those that remain open are available

Disseminate information about gender-based violence and publicize resources and services available

Direct designated public services, including shelters, to remain open and accessible

Ensure protection services implement programs that have emergency plans that include protocols to ensure safety for residents and clients

Develop a protocol for the care of women who may not be admitted due to exposure to the virus which includes safe quarantine and access to testing

Extend the duration of judicial precautionary measures/protection orders to cover the whole mandatory period of lockdown and quarantine

Make provisions for domestic violence survivors to attend court proceedings via accessible teleconference

Direct police departments to respond to all domestic violence reports and connect survivors with appropriate resources

Ensure women and girls and other people in vulnerable positions are not rejected at the border, have access to the territory and to asylum legal procedures. If needed, they will be given access to testing

Access to information. There is unequal access to reliable information, especially for those structurally discriminated against and belonging to marginalized communities. People will need to receive regular updates from national health authorities for the duration of this crisis.

In response to this challenge, we call on governments to:

Launch public campaigns to prevent and contain the spread of the virus
Consult and work with civil society in all initiatives to provide information to the public

Make information available to the public in plain language and accessible means, modes and formats, including internet, radio and text messages

Ensure people with disabilities have access to information through sign language, closed captions, and other appropriate means

Increase subsidies to nongovernmental organizations that will ensure messages translated and delivered through appropriate means to those who speak different languages or have specific needs

Build and deploy a task force to share information and resources with vulnerable people with specific focus on unhoused, people with disabilities, migrant, refugees, and neuroatypical people

Abuse of power. People in prisons, administrative migration centers, refugee camps, and people with disabilities in institutions and psychiatric facilities are at higher risk of contagion due to the confinement conditions. They can also become more vulnerable to abuse or neglect as a result of limited external oversight and restriction of visits. It is not uncommon for authorities to become overzealous in their practices related to enforcement of the law and introduction of new laws. During this crisis, vulnerable people, especially dissidents, are at a higher risk of having negative, potentially dangerous interactions with authorities.

In response to this challenge, we call on governments to:

Provide and implement restrictions in relation to COVID-19 in accordance with the law. Any restriction should be strictly necessary, proportionate and in the interest of legitimate objectives of general interest

Monitor restrictions taken in the public interest do not result in any gender-specific harm to women and girls who are already extremely vulnerable and at risk of being denied their basic human rights

Consult any changes in existing laws with human rights organizations and Ombudsperson/Human Rights Defenders

Encourage law enforcement officers to focus on increasing safety rather than arrests

Train law enforcement officers, care workers, and social workers to recognize vulnerabilities and make necessary adjustments in their approach and engagement

Adopt human rights-oriented protocols to reduce spreading of the virus in detention and confinement facilities

Strengthen external oversight and facilitate safe contact with relatives i.e. free telephone calls

Support civil society organizations and country Ombudsperson/Human Rights Defenders in monitoring the developments within those institutions on a regular basis

Commit to discontinuing emergency laws and powers once pandemic subsides and restore the check and balances mechanism

Signed by:

Networks and organizations

1. 4M Mentor Mothers Network

2. A Long Walk Home

3. ABAAD-Resource Center for Gender Equality

4. ABOFEM ARGENTINA

5. Action pour l’Education et la Promotion de la Femme (AEPF-Tchad)

6. Activista Ghana

7. Adivasi Dalit Woman Civil Rights Forum

8. African Diaspora Women’s Network

9. African Disability Forum- ADF

10. African Women 4 Empowerment

11. African Women Leaders Forum

12. AFROAMERICAS

13. AKAHATA

14. Akina Mama wa Afrika

15. Akshara Centre

16. Aliansi Remaja Independen Sulawesi Selatan

17. All India Progressive Women’s Association AIPWA

18. Alliances for Africa

19. AMVFE

20. ANANDI

21. Annie North Women’s Refugee and Domestic Violence Service

22. Arab Women Network for Parity and Solidarity

23. Arise Nigerian Woman Foundation

24. Arts for Women Indonesia

25. Artykuł 6 (Article 6 feminist disability collective)

26. Asamblea Feminista Plurinacional

27. Asian-Pacific Resource and Research Centre for Women (ARROW)

28. Asociación Ciudadana ACCEDER

29. Associação brasileira de antropologia- Brazilian Anthropology Association

30. Association for Advocacy and Legal Initiatives Trust (AALI)

31. association Tunisienne des femmes démocrates

32. Associazione Dream Team Donne in Rete

33. Associazione Il Giardino dei Ciliegi

34. Associazione Maddalena

35. Associazione Orlando

36. Associazione Risorse Donna

37. Associazione Topnomastica femminile

38. Aswat Nissa

39. AtGender

40. ATHENA Network

41. Atria, institute on gender equality and women’s history

42. AWID

43. Awmr Italia Donne della Regione Mediterranea

44. Balance AC

45. Bangladesh Centre for Human Rights and Development (BCHRD)

46. Bangladesh Model Youth Parliament (Protiki Jubo Sangsahd)

47. Baobab Women’s Project CIC

48. BAPSA

49. Believe mental health care organisation

50. Berliński Kongres Kobiet

51. Beyond Beijing Committee (BBC)Nepal

52. Border Crit Institute

53. BraveHeart Initiative for Youth & Women

54. Breakthrough (India)

55. Breakthrough (USA)

56. Broadsheet, New Zealand’s Feminist Magazine

57. Campaign for Lead Free Water

58. Canadian Feminist Network

59. CARAM Asia

60. Catholics for Reproductive Health

61. CEDAW Committee of Trinidad and Tobago

62. CEHAT

63. Center for Building Resilient Communities

64. Center for gender and sexual and reproductive health, James P Grant school of public health

65. Center for Hunger-Free Communities

66. Center for Justice and International Law (CEJIL)

67. Center for Migrant Advocacy Philippines

68. Center for Women’s Global Leadership

69. Center for Women’s Health and Human Rights, Suffolk University

70. Center Women and Modern World

71. Centre for Feminist Foreign Policy

72. Centre for Gender Justice

73. Centre for Social Concern and Development (CESOCODE)

74. Centro de Derechos de Mujeres

75. Centro de Mujeres ACCION YA

76. Centro di Women’s Studies Milly Villa - Università della Calabria

77. CENTRO MUJERES A.C.

78. Centro Mujeres Latinas

79. CETEC

80. Channel Foundation

81. CHIRAPAQ Centro de Culturas Indígenas del Perú

82. CHOUF

83. Closet de Sor Juana

84. Coalition for Sexual and Bodily Rights in Muslim Societies (CSBR)

85. COFEM

86. Colectiva Lésbica Feminista Irreversibles

87. Colectivo "Género y Teología para el Desarrollo"

88. Collettivo Anguane

89. Comisión de Antropología Feminista y de Género, Colegio de Etnólogos y Antropólogos Sociales A.C

90. Comité de América Latina y el Caribe para la Defensa de los Derechos de las Mujeres, CLADEM

91. Common Health

92. Community Care for Emergency Response and Rehabilitation

93. Community Healthcare Initiative

94. Comunicación, Intercambio y Desarrollo Humano en América Latina, Asociación Civil ( CIDHAL, A. C.)

95. Congregation of Our Lady of Charity of the Good Shepherd

96. Consortium on Gender, Security and Human Rights

97. Cooperativa Sociale Centro Donne Mantova

98. Coordinadora de la Mujer

99. COSPE

100. Council of Indigenous Women of Lower Lands of Europe

101. Courageous people health and development lnitiative

102. CREA

103. Creativería Social, AC

104. DAWN Canada

105. Design Studio for Social Intervention

106. DESSI International

107. Development in Practice, Gender and Entrepreneurial Initiative (DIPGEI)

108. DIVA for Equality

109. Dorothy Njemanze Foundation

110. Dziewuchy Berlin

111. This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

112. Emma organization for human development

113. EMPOWER Malaysia

114. End Violence Against Women Coalition (UK)

115. Enhancing Access to Health for Poverty reduction in Tanzania (EAHP Tanzania)

116. Enlace Continental de Mujeres Indígenas de las Américas ECMIA

117. Enlightenment and empowerment of northern women initiative

118. Equality Bahamas

119. Equipo Jurídico por los Derechos Humanos

120. Equipop

121. Etihad Peace Minorities Welfare Foundation

122. EuroMed Rights

123. European Roma Rights Centre (Brussels, Belgium)

124. FACICP Disability Plus

125. Families Planning Association of Puerto Rico (PROFAMILIAS)

126. Family Planning Association of Nepal

127. FAMM Indonesia

128. Federation for Women and Family Planning

129. Federation of Sexual and Gender Minoriites Nepal

130. Federazione Femminile Evangelica Valdese e Metodista

131. Female Safe Environments-Her Safe Place

132. FEMBUD

133. Femini Berlin Polska

134. Feminist Alliance for Rights

135. Feminist Humanitarian Network

136. Feminist Policy Collective

137. Feminoteka Foundation

138. Femmes leadership et développement durable

139. FEMNET - African Women’s Development and Communication Network

140. Fiji Women’s Rights Movement (FWRM)

141. First Future Leadership

142. Flash Dynamic Concepts

143. Fondo Centroamericano de Mujeres

144. Food Corporation of India Handling Workers Union

145. Food Sovereignty Alliance, India

146. For Violence-Free Family Coalition

147. Forum Against Oppression of Women

148. Forum against Sex Selection

149. Four Worlds Europe

150. Fund for Congolese Women

151. Fundación Arcoíris por el respeto a la diversidad sexual

152. Fundación Código Humano

153. Fundacion Estudio e Investigacion de mujer FEIM

154. FUNDACION MARIA AMOR

155. Fundación Puntos de Encuentro

156. Fundacja "Inicjatywa Kobiet Aktywnych"

157. Fundacja Dziewuchy Dziewuchom

158. Furia vzw

159. GAMAG

160. Gamana Mahila Samuha

161. Gantala Press, Inc.

162. GAYa NUSANTARA Foundation

163. Gender and Environmental Risk Reduction Initiative(GERI)

164. Gender and Sociology Department, Institute of Sociology, Czech Academy of Sciences

165. Gender at Work

166. Gender Awareness Trust

167. Gender Equality,,Peace and Development Centre

168. GenDev Centre for Research and Innovation, India

169. Gimtrap AC

170. GirlHQ Foundation

171. Girls Voices Initiative

172. Girlupac

173. Global Alliance for Tax Justice

174. Global Fund for Children

175. Global Fund for Women

176. Global Justice Center

177. Global Rights for Women

178. Global South Coalition for Dignified Menstruation

179. Global Women’s Institute

180. Graduate Women International

181. Grandmothers Advocacy Network

182. Grupo de Estudos Feministas em Política e Educação (GIRA/UFBA)

183. Grupo Guatemalteco de Mujeres-GGM

184. Hawai’i Institute for Human Rights

185. Herstoire Collective

186. Hollaback! Czech

187. Hope for the Needy Association

188. Humanity in Action Poland

189. ICW - International Community of Women Living with HIV

190. Icw argentina

191. Identities Media

192. If/When/How: Lawyering for Reproductive Justice

193. IMMAHACO Ladies COOPERATIVE Society 87 set

194. Inclusive Bangladesh

195. iNitiatives for Nigeria

196. Institute for Economic Justice

197. Institute for Gender and Development Studies-University of the West Indies

198. Institute for Young Women Development

199. Institute of Gender Studies, University of Guyana

200. Instituto de Estudos de Gênero da UFSC e NIGS UFSC

201. Instituto de Investigación y Estudios en Cultura de Derechos Humanos CULTURADH

202. Instituto de Transformación social de pr

203. Instituto de la Mujer

204. Instituto RIA

205. Interamerican Network of Women Shelters

206. International Center for Advocates Against Discrimination (ICAAD)

207. International Commission on Global Feminisms and Queer Politics (IUAES)

208. International WOmen’s Rights Action Watch Asia Pacific

209. International Women’s Rights Project

210. Ipas CAM

211. Istituto Comprensivo Statale "Don G. Russolillo"

212. Jaringan Muda Setara

213. Jaringan Perempuan Yogyakarta - Yogyakarta Women’s Network

214. Jordanian National Commission for Women

215. Journal of International Women’s Studies

216. Justice Institute Guyana

217. Kenya Female Advisory Organization

218. Kotha

219. L’union de l’action féministe

220. LABIA - A Queer Feminist LBT Collective

221. Latin American and Caribbean Womens Health Network

222. Le kassandre

223. Le Maestre Ignoranti

224. Lesbianas Independientes Feministas Socialistas - LIFS

225. LGBTI+ Gozo

226. Libera...Mente Donna ets

227. Liberian women Humanitarian Network

228. Life in Leggings: Caribbean Alliance Against Gender-based Violence

229. Lon-art Creative

230. LOOM

231. MADRE

232. Mahila Sarvangeen Utkarsh Mandal (MASUM)

233. Malcolm X Center For Self Determination

234. Mama Na Mtoto Initiative(Mami)

235. Manifest Wolnej Polki

236. MAP Foundation

237. Marie Stopes International

238. McMaster University

239. Mesa Acción por el Aborto en Chile

240. MEXFAM AC

241. Movimiento de Mujeres de Chinandega

242. MOVULAC ONG

243. MOWA Band of Choctaw Indians

244. Mt Shasta Goddess Temple

245. Mujer Y Salud en Uruguay-MYSU

246. Mujeres+Mujeres

247. Mulier

248. MUSAS Peru

249. NAPM

250. NAPOLINMENTE a.p.s.

251. Narasi Perempuan

252. Naripokkho

253. National Alliance Of Women Human Right Defender/Tarangini Foundation

254. National Alliance of Women’s Organisations

255. National Birth Equity Collaborative

256. National Forum Of Women With Disabilities

257. National Network For Immigrant And Refugee Rights

258. National Platform For The Rights Of The Disabled

259. NDH LLC

260. Nederlandse Vereniging Gender & Gezondheid

261. NEPEM - Center of feminist studies at Federal University of Minas Gerais

262. Network for Community Development

263. Nigerian Feminist Forum

264. Nigerian Professional Working Women Organization

265. Nobel Women’s Initiaitve

266. NoMore234NG

267. Non una di meno

268. O.A.B.I.: Organization for Abused and Battered Individuals

269. Observatorio de Géneroy Equidad

270. Odri Intersectional rights

271. Omni Center for Peace, Justice & Ecology

272. ONG ESE:O

273. Organización Artemisas

274. Organization Name

275. Orikalankini

276. Our Generation For Inclusive Peace

277. OutRight International

278. Oxfam (various offices)

279. Oxford Human Rights Hub

280. Pan African Positive Women’s Coalition-Zimbabwe

Parteciparte

Pastoralist Girls Initiative

Peasants Dragnet

Perempuan Mahardhika

Perhimpunan Pembela Masyarakat Adat Nusantara (PPMAN) – Indigenous Lawyers Association Archipelagos

Perkumpulan Lintas Feminist Jakarta / Jakarta Feminist Association

PES Women

Pittsburgh Human Rights City Alliance

Plan International

Por la Superación de la Mujer A.C.

Power in her story / Manila Feminista

Programa de Investigacion Feminista, CEIICH UNAM

Programa Género, Cuerpo y Sexualidad de la FHCE/UDELAR

Promundo-US

Punto Género

Qbukatabu

Queer Women in Business + Allies

Race, Racism and the Law

Radha Paudel Foundation

Raising Voices

RALI – Reborn Athena Legal Initiative

Rassemblement Contre la Hogra et pour les Droits des Algeriennes :”RAHDA”

Rays of Hope Community Foundation

Red Chiapas por la Paridad Efectiva

Red de Educación Popular entre Mujeres – REPEM

Red de la No Violencia contra las Mujeres-REDNOVI

Red de Mujeres contra la violencia

Red de Mujeres por una Opinión Pública con Perspectiva de Género en Campeche AC

Red Mexicana de ciencia tecnología y genero

Red Nacional de Refugios AC

Red Nacional Universitaria por la Equidad de Género en la Educación Superior

Red Thread

Rede Nao Cala USP – Network of professors against gender violence at the University of Sao Paulo

Remember Our Sisters Everywhere

Reporteros de investigación

Restless Development Nepal

Rutgers WPF Indonesia

Rutgers WPF Indonesia

Sacred Circle of Indigenous Women of Europe

SAHAJ

SAHAYOG

Salamander Trust

Samsara

Sanctus Initiative for Human Development and Values Sustainability (SIHDEVAS]N

Sangsan Anakot Yawachon Development Project

Save Generations Organization

Sehjira Foundation

Sex Workers Outreach Project (SWOP) Behind Bars

Shayisfuba feminist collective

Shedecides

Shifting the Power Coalition – Pacific

Shirakat – Partnership for Development

Shishu Aangina

Simavi

Society for the Improvement of Rural People(SIRP)

Solidarite Des Jeunes Filles Pour L’education Et L’integration Socioprofessionnelle, Sojfep

Sonke Gender Justice

Soroptimist International

SPACE UNJ

Spatium Libertas AC

Spinifex Press

Stop au Chat Noir

Studentato universitario San Giuseppe

Success Capital Organisation

Suppressed Histories Archives

T’ruah: The Rabbinic Call for Human Rights

Tag a Life International (TaLI)

Tanzania Home Economics Association

Tarangini Foundation

Tata Institute of Social Sciences

TEDS TRUST and DAWNS

The Center for Building Resilient Communities

The Citizens’News

The Gender Security Project

The Institute for Gender and Development Studies, RCO

The Queer Muslim Project

The Story Kitchen

The Well Project

Todos Ciudadanas, AC

Toponomastica femminile

Trannational Decolonial QTPOC

Transgenders Fiji Network

Transnational United Front against Fascism

UBC

Ukrainian Association for Research in Women’s History

Unchained At Last

Union Women Center Georgia

United African Diaspora

University of Namibia

US Human Rights Network

Vida Reavivida AC

Visible Impact

Visthar

VOICE

Wave – Women against violence Europe

WE-Change Jamaica

Welfare Rights Organization

WESNET

WIDOWS DEVELOPMENT ORGANISATION

Widows Rights International

WILDAF-AFRIQUE DE L’OUEST

Wokovu Way

Women Advocates Research and Documentation Center

Women Against Rape(WAR) Inc.

Women against Sexual Violence and State Repression

Women Against Violence

Women and Girls of African Descent Caucus:Descendants of Enslaved Persons brought to the Americas During the Transatlantic Slave Trade Era

Women and Health Together For The Future (WHTF)

Women and Law in Southern Africa – Mozambique

Women Enabled International

Women Entrepreneurs Association of Nigeria (WEAN)

Women for a Change

Women for Peace and Gender Equality Initiative

Women for Peace and Unity Growth Initiative

Women for Women’s Human Rights – New Ways

Women Foundation of Nigeria WFN

Women Health Together for Future

Women in Distress Organisation

Women Liberty and Development Initiative

Women March Lampung

Women Transforming Cities International Society

Women Working Group ( WWG)

Women’s Earth and Climate Action Network (WECAN)

Women’s Global Network for Reproductive Rights

Women’s Human Rights Education Institute

women’s initiative “One of Us”

Women’s Legal and Human Rights Bureau, Inc. (WLB)

Women’s Rehabilitation Centre (WOREC) Nepal

Women’s Resource and Advicacy Centre / WOMEN 2030

Women’s All Points Bulletin, WAPB

Women’s Probono Initiative(WPI)

Women’s rights and health project

World Pulse

Y Coalition

Young Feminist Europe

Youth Action Nepal

Youth Changers Kenya

Youth Development Center

YUWA

Yuwalaya

Zamara Foundation

422. Zimbabwe Women’s Resource Centre and Network

Individuals [1156]

Aanu’ Rotimi
Abigail Edem Hunu
Abimbola Junaid
Abiola Akiyode
Adewoye Eyitayo
Adjoa Aiyetoro
Adriana Bautista
Adriana Labardini Inzunza
Adriana Sanchez Zarate
Afina FZ
Agata W
Agnès Théry
Agnieszka Gados
Agnieszka Kotwasińska
Agnieszka Piskozub-Rynkiewicz
Agnieszka Skowronek
Agueda Hortencia Castro López
Aída Marín Acuapan
Ailynn Torres Santana
Ajita Rao Dalit Feminist
akiteng isabella
Alda Facio
Alejandra Gabriela Lio
Alejandra Isibasi
Aleksandra Lipczak
Alessandra Di Muzio
Alessandra Montanini
Alessandra Perrotta
Alexandra Abello Colak
Alexandria Murphy
Alice Vergnaghi
Alicja Molenda
Alimatul Qibtiyah
Alina Poland
Alina Potts
Alinne Castillo
Alissa Trotz
Allicia Rolle
Allison Burden
Alma Colin
Altagracia Balcacer
Amal Bint Nadia
Amalia Gamio
Amanda Lucia Garces
Amani Aruri
Amber Peterman
Amel osman
Amie Bishop
Amina Mama
Amita Pitre
Amrita Chhachhi
Ana A Chavez
Ana Gabriela de la Torre Ríos
Ana Joaquina Ruiz Guerra
Anastasia Kiki
Andrea Carlise
Andrea De La Barrera Montppellier
Andrea Quinones
Andrea Vremis
Angela Fogliato
Anindya Sinha
Anita Cheria
Ankit Khirwadkar
Ann Clendenin
Ann Wright
Anna Belli
Anna Davies-van Es
Anna J. Brown
Anna Maria Ribet Ratsimba
Anna Thieme
Anna-Klara Bratt
Annamaria Rivera
Anne E. Lacsamana
Anne Murray
Anne-christine d’Adesky
Annet van der M
Annette Mukiga
Annick Wibben
Annina Plummer
Anouk Guiné
Antonella Visintin
Anuj petter Rai
Anya Heise-von der Lippe
Anya Victoria
Ardra Manasi
Argentina Casanova
Asa David Chon
Asanda Benya
Asha Herten-Crabb
Assunta Martone
Ayisha Osori
Azza Ghanmi
Barbara Bonomi Romagnoli
Barbara Harrington
Barbara Jimenez
Barbara vantslot
Bartolacci Giovanni
Béatrice Rettig
Beatriz Cavazos Siller
Beatriz do Álamo Machado Costa
Beatriz Lacerda Ratton
Beatriz Zebadua Yanez
Begoña Dorronsoro
Bejaoui Amel
Belen Montanez
Beniamina Nefesh
Beretta Federico
Betsy Spaulding
Betty Edwards
Beverly Bucur
Bianca Pomeranzi
Bianca Wagner
Blanca Luévano
Blanca Saavedra
Bolatito Adeonojobi
Bonnie Britt
Bonnie Friedman
Bonnie Gorman RN
Bridget osakwe
Brigitte P Y
Britt Baatjes
Caitlin Shannon
Camilla Cracchiolo, RN
Carisma Tucker
Carla Pochini
Carli Paola
Carlos Idibouo
Carmen Chamorro
Carmen Rojas
Carolina de Olazarra
Caroline Pugh-Roberts
Carolyn Seaman
Caterina Marassi
Caterina Pizzimenti
Catherine Mue
Catherine Nyambura
Cecilia Luna
Cecilia Babb
Celeste
Celina Romany
Chaari
Chandra Talpade Mohanty
Charlotte Bunch
Charlotte Coleman
Cheryl Park
Chhaya Datar
Chiara Guida
Chiara Sacchet
Chiseche Mibenge
Christelle Bay Chongwain
Christen Dobson
Christine Shahin
Christine Silva
Cinzia Italia
Cissy Nalusiba
Claire M. Cohen
Clara Alemann
Claudia Angeletti
Claudia Giorleo
Claudia Herrmannsdorfer
Claudia Salinas
Claudia Stella
Claudia Thomas
Clelia Degli Esposti
Colleen Glynn
Consiglia De Coro
Cristiana Crisi
Cristina Fiordimela
Cristina Renaud
Cucu Saidah
Daillen Culver
Damairia Pakpahan
Daniela Fusari
Danielab It
Danielle Gibson
Danila Baldo
Danna Aduna
Danuta Radzik
Dapor Ni
Darrion Smith
David Gutiérrez Castañeda
David Kirimania
Davide Lano
De luna
Debbie Caysons
Deborah Holland
Denise Nepveux
Desari Strader
Desti Murdijana
Deviyani Dixit
Deyanira González de León
Diana Young
Diane Serre
Dinah Musindarwezo
Dini Ind
Dipika Ind
Dominique Bourque
Dora Bognandi
Dora Cardaci
Dorota Seweryn-Stawarz
Dorothy Njemanze
Dorsaf Zouari
Dosia Calderon-Maydon
Dudu Manuga
E. Vanessa Bethel
Ebi Emezue
Ebru Kongar
Edelaweiss
Edith Pineda Hernández
Eduardo Salazar
Elaine Gorman
Eleane Proo Méndez
Eleazer Aderibigbe
Elena Campedelli
Elena Estavillo
Elena Schnabl
Ellen J Ferranti,MD
Ellen K Foster
Elsa Gomez
Elsa Soussan
Elvira Risino
Emanuela Arena
Emanuela Cos
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A View From Ireland on the Corona Threat

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Details

Published on Sunday, 05 April 2020 17:35

Correspondence: ‘Test Test Test’ should mean Mass Testing!

Belfast Plebeian

28 March 2020

As all manner of right-wing Governments take on emergency powers to control the virus pandemic, powers that they may never relinquish, the alternative to police State lockdowns is being ignored, the orderly testing of the population beginning with health workers and proceeding to the most vulnerable at risk from developing serious illness. We know that testing for the presence of the virus is the best solution short of a vaccine because of the experience of the small town of Vó north of Venice. Helped by researchers from the University of Padua and volunteers of the Red Cross the town made up of 3,300 people were all tested without exception. When the social experiment began on 6th March some 90 people were known to be infected, as of now the increase has been stopped by isolating those with the virus. Mass testing worked!

The researchers discovered the real problem set by the corona virus was that no one could know how far and how fast the infection had spread to the population. After mass testing, it was discovered that at least six people, ‘super spreaders’, were infecting others because they were not sick, they were asymptomatic. We also know that some people are pre-symptomatic, not sick but likely to be in three or four days’ time. It fits with common sense to believe that this is how the virus is spread, after all if someone is showing signs of sickness you take steps to avoid them, if they seem fine then you carry on as normal when in contact with them especially if they are family or friend.

Yet in most countries including Ireland and Britain testing has been small enough to be called non-existent. To date in the North of Ireland only 2,989 people have been tested and in the South about 10,000. The front line health workers are crying out to be tested and still it is not happening. The evidence is clear that health workers are being infected more often than any other group, and they have reason to be worried because of greater exposure, a larger viral load often results in worse outcomes, 24 Italian doctors have already died working with corona patients.

Speaking in the Assembly on Monday last the health minister Robin Swann said there is not enough capacity to carry out mass testing here at this time. He professed the incapacity of the health department in a context where at least two local companies Randox Laboratories and Biopanda Reagents have developed testing kits that are being sold to private businesses and some States around the world, the recent scandal in England over some private doctors asking for £300 per test were said to be using the kits purchased in the North of Ireland by Randox Laboratories.

When the company sales manager was asked on the Nolan radio show about the testing capacity of Randox he was told that they have two large facilities in Antrim and Donegal that could do much more testing than they were currently doing. The sales manager said they had not been approached by the NI Executive or the NHS about acquiring their help with testing. What became clear though was that cost was a prohibitive factor, Randox was charging £112 per test. Also Biopanda sales manager is quoted in the Daily Telegraph “there has been a huge demand for the tests, however there have been no orders from the NHS.”

If the reason why we can’t mass test is that some private companies are charging too much for the NHS to reasonably pay then we have the solution, take control of the private companies and increase the testing! To hell with their shareholders!

From the website of Socialist Democracy

The Current Covid-19 Crisis in India: Radical Socialist Statement

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Published on Saturday, 04 April 2020 13:23

Criminal Negligence, Criminal Intent

            The current Modi Government has shown both criminal neglect and criminal intent in how it has dealt with this pandemic. Let the facts speak for themselves as we simply lay down the time sequence of what the Government did do as well as what it did not or refused to do.

The Medical Response

            Take first the fact that we have extremely inadequate stocks of Personal Protection Equipment (PPE), ventilators, sanitizers, and testing kits. These are our first necessities to protect our doctors, nurses and other health workers and to treat patients.

Jan.30, 2020–first Covid-19 case in India

Jan.31 – Ban on export of all domestic-made PPE; raw materials for PPE manufacture can still be exported.

Feb.8 – Previous order amended to permit export of surgical masks and gloves.

Feb.25 – Eight more PPE items are added to the permissible export list.

Mar.19 – Export of PPE and raw materials for their manufacture are finally banned.

Mar.24 – Exports of ventilators and sanitizers banned.

Mar.28 – 35 lakh sterile surgical gloves cleared for export to Serbia (Source: Cochin Customs).

 

The General Response

            Now let us look at the more general course of events and Government behaviour.

Mar.10 – 50 known Covid-19 cases emerge from 11 states/Union Territories.

Mar.13 – Central Government officially declares that there is not a health emergency.

Mar.18 – Modi says the Parliament Budget Session will carry on till April 3.

Mar.19 – Modi makes his first national address declaring a one day “Janata Curfew” from 9am to 9pm on Sunday Mar.22. He makes a point to ask for participation in a social ritual – collective clapping or banging of pans to show appreciation for health workers. There is no call for ‘social distancing’. Nor have all the required export curbs on PPE and medical equipment, to enable health workers to carry out their job safely, been imposed. [Why did Modi not enforce a lockdown on Mar.20 or Mar.21? The most plausible explanation is because the MP state assembly had to meet so as to allow for the BJP to show its majority on the floor and replace the Congress as the ruling party.]

Mar.23 – Parliament closed because of the health crisis.[This act shows how unplanned and reactive the government is to the ongoing situation and contradicts his statement on Mar.18—See entry above.]

Mar.24 – Modi calls a full 21 days lockdown till April 14. He calls for all to stay at home and when going out for essential services to maintain social distancing. [Between Mar.13 and 24, Modi’s Government realises that indeed this is a health emergency calling for proper measures and he resorts to this massive lockdown and social distancing which only the upper/middle classes could hope to carry out. No concrete mitigating or preventive or welfare enhancing measures are announced. No consideration is given to the reality that hundreds of millions, especially in towns and cities, live in densely packed slums and highly congested locales where necessary municipal services (water, electricity, garbage collection, sewage, etc.) are either non-existent or over-stressed. In short, the This shows his the Government’s contempt and unconcern for the poor and the overwhelming majority (93%) labouring in the informal sector.]

Mar.26 – Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman finally announces a Government relief package of 1.7 lakh crore. [The scale is inadequate and the details are missing. Nothing is spelt out about how material benefits will be delivered in timely fashion to the targeted population. In fact, most of it is a repackaging of existing schemes. Worst of all it offers very little to those most in need, namely migrant workers, daily wagers, marginal farmers.

Mar.28 – The Yogi Adityanath state government announces that 1200 buses will be provided to help transport migrants to their homes in UP. [From the previous three days a massive internal migration has been underway – the largest mass migration in India since Partition. There is massive overcrowding at bus depots where tens of thousands of the poor are put at risk and forced to ignore physical-distancing guidelines. Most migrants, however, cannot even board buses and start walking to their homes, women and children in tow, even hundreds of kilometres away.]

Mar.29 – The UP announcement is reversed and all state borders are sealed to prevent inter-state migration. [Migrants are now rounded up, and in the name of being quarantined, are incarcerated in stadiums, empty building and other make-shift structures in ways that make a mockery of any possibility of maintaining ‘safe’ social distancing.]

April 3 – Modi makes another national address telling the listening public that on Sunday April 5 to shut for 9 minutes their electricity at 9pm and instead light a candle.

This pattern of action in the last few weeks is disastrous enough without taking into consideration the longer term reality that India under different Governments has followed a neoliberal economic path that by its very nature rejects the building of a public health system that provides free and quality health care for all. Instead over 80% of health needs are met by the private sector and the miserable overall situation is that Government health expenditure is around 1.25% and availability of hospital beds is 0.7 per 1000 people. This is a long standing structural problem that has severely weakened Indian capacity to deal with the current Covid-19 pandemic.

What to Make of This Dismal Record

            The Modi Government’s criminal negligence is obvious. What about its criminal intent? This comes across in the following ways:

1.      How it responded to the predictable mass migration. After a completely hands-off approach, an iron fist is being used. Priority now is not being given to help migrants reach their homes or to address their food, shelter and health needs, but to ruthlessly and rapidly contain them. In one case a large group of migrants suffered direct chemical sprays to ‘sanitize’ them. The aim seems to be to prevent area-wise spread even if chances of infection among migrant workers is increased as a result of such containment. Clearly the already poor are expendable!

2.      Economic Policy bias towards capitalists. At a time when all sources of funding should be tapped and directed to bailing out the poor and indigent, that is, prioritising fiscal policy measures like raising taxes on the rich, penalising big business payroll cuts, cutting the military budget---on Mar.19 this Government shamelessly signed a deal with Israel to buy Rs. 880 crores worth of Light Machine Guns---and diverting funds thereby released to health and welfare, this Government has done the reverse. It has pursued monetary policies to infuse greater liquidity into the share market and reassure big businesses by cutting interest rates throughout the economy through lowering the repo rate or the rate of interest paid by commercial banks for their borrowings from the RBI. The financial health of the rich is more important than the material well-being of the poor.

3.      Using the current health crisis to somehow advance the Hindutva political agenda.

(a)    Communalising the Tablighi Jamaat Markaz affair: 4000 Muslims from all parts of India, and from countries abroad, had gathered at the Markaz premises in New Delhi for a residential religious programme from Mar.13 to 15.As a result a large number of persons were infected and some died. Moreover, as many then dispersed to their home states the infection spread. This programme should have been called off well beforehand.

           Recall that on March 13, the BJP Central Government did say there was no health emergency. But the Markaz certainly violated the AAP Government of Delhi’s ruling on that very date when it announced that there should be no on gatherings of more than 200 people. Apart from this, given the scale of the pandemic worldwide even before the beginning of March, going ahead with the programme was wrong and condemnable.

           It does not excuse the Tablighi Jamaat Markaz to point out that other religious bodies also engaged in wrong and condemnable actions: e.g., some 40,000 visitors thronged to the Tirupati Temple in South India on Mar.17 and 18 before the Temple was closed on Mar.19.These were also reprehensible lapses. The Modi Government has deliberately sought to dramatise and highlight the Tablighi Jamaat affair as if it was, or is, the single most important reason for the spread of the Corona virus in the country. The Sangh Parivar is here actively pushing the message that Muslims are once again the main threat, thereby diverting attention away from the Government’s own criminal failures. This is criminal intent.

(b)   J&K Domicile: At a time when everybody’s attention is focused on this health crisis, the Central Government has quietly introduced new laws on domicility in J&K. The principal effect of this new law is to help change the general demographic pattern, whereby Muslim overall are in a majority in the region. Some sections of the public (primarily non-Muslims) residing in J&K will now, because of these changes in law, be able over time to become permanent domiciles.

(c)    Promoting the cult of Modi as the country’s “Supreme Saviour”: Just his record on the COVID-19 crisis reveals a PM utterly bereft of the capacity to think deeply and seriously about practical policies. Prominently on display, however, is his authoritarian mind-set that works only along the narrowest political lines. His concern is to project the Modi image everywhere, have one-sided media monologues with the Indian public, engage in theatrics and promote spectacles of mass involvement through direct appeals i.e. establishing a direct, if one way relationship between himself as India’s ‘Chief Executive’ and the public. He believes---not without merit--- that this does enhance support for him irrespective of the ups and downs of his own party. Furthermore, these direct appeals also serve as cover ups for his policy absences, failures and iniquities. It is an obscenity that ‘Modi’ promotion is happening even in the midst of this emergency. The call for public money contributions for the current crisis will go to the newly established Government Fund called---you won’t be surprised to know---“PMCares” which was set up to push public money into private hands and it seems to facilitate hawala transactions. Indian ambassadors following Modi dictates have urged donors to contribute to this fund and not to the longstanding PM’s National Relief Fund because that body continues to have the President of the Congress Party on its managing committee.  Also, food packets distributed by the BJP have on their side labels (printed no less!) marked “Modi Tiffin”. Spectacles of empty social solidarity – banging pots and pans or lighting candles – are being offered instead of plans to get PPE to health workers, medical equipment for the sick, transport for migrants trying to get home, and food for the poor across the country.

Some Necessary Steps

Among the things that this Government has not done but needs to do immediately are the following:

·         Provide cereals, pulses, edible oils, soap, hand wash, spices for all through the PDS.

·         Ensure availability of drinking water for all.

·         All private hospitals to provide tests and treatment for Covid patients free of charge.

·         Free all under trials, those on low term sentences or soon-to-be-completed sentences, as well as all political prisoners.

·         Army to use its massive network of motor vehicles of all kinds to help transport migrants to their homes safely.

 

When this crisis finally recedes, you can be sure that the forces of Hindutva will shamelessly, dishonestly and yes, criminally seek to take credit for a successfully negotiated emergency. They must never be allowed to get away with this. Now and later they must be exposed for what they are. Hence this statement by our organisation, Radical Socialist, to let the facts speak for themselves!

April 4, 2020