COVID-19 RESOURCES PACK

There have been many articles and analysis published on COVID-19 from several important critical perspectives. The selections here represent a small range of ecofeminist, gender-justice, human rights, left and radical analytical lenses that help us to make sense of the context at hand. We have also made a conscious effort to profile African movement and activist contributions to this growing discourse, and we will continue to add more. 

1) Rural Women’s Assembly. 2020. Rural Women’s Assembly Update on COVID-19: Build Peoples to Peoples Solidarity.  

This report highlights a summary of some of the key issues that have emerged from extensive consultations and brief reports from our RWA country chapters in Southern Africa. More than ten countries have contributed their perspectives of the situation in the region. 

 2) Anumo, Felogene. 2020. Unchecked corporate power paved the way for COVID-19 and globally women are at the frontlines.  

An incisive article that outlines the impacts of corporate power on the environment and human rights. Corporations make up 71% of the world’s top economic revenue collectors and states tend to act as ‘hosts’ for the interests of capital and global elites who have control of resources, labour, information and finance. What does this mean for our movements now? 

 3) Feminist Alliance for Human Rights. 2020. A Call for a Feminist COVID-19 Policy. 

Endorsed by nearly 1300 individuals and women’s networks and organizations globally, from more than 100 countries, this statement demands States to adopt a feminist policy to address the extraordinary challenges posed by the COVID-19 pandemic in a manner that is consistent with human rights standards and principles. 

 4) Okech, Awino. 2020. Feminist Reading List on Care, Crisis and Pandemics.

This reading list reminds us that we have been here before and spotlights a wealth of African and feminist analysis on care, crisis and pandemics. Bringing together material that draws on feminist and critical gender studies frameworks to offer a holistic analysis of what it means to deal with crisis. The material ranges from reflections on Ebola, HIV/AIDS, post conflict societies, hostile contexts (also commonly referred to as closing civic space).  

5) APWLD (Asia Pacific Forum on Women, Law and Development). 2020. COVID-19 Highlights the Failure of Neoliberal Capitalism: We Need Feminist Global Solidarity, APWLD Statement.

This statement frames the moment of crisis we inhabit now as one of opportunity, emphasizing the need for activists and movements to galvanise our collective power to realise human rights and fundamental freedoms, especially our rights to quality public services including universal public healthcare services, universal social protection such as unemployment support, social housing and universal basic income. 

6) Cross, Hannah and Zelig, Leo. 2020. Pulverized: Capitalism, Africa and Covid-19. Review of African Political Economy. 

Strong analysis by Zelig and Cross that addresses the permanent crisis (as opposed to the idea of COVID-19 being a ‘novel threat) in Africa fuelled by Capitalism, which in turn is deeply linked to Covid-19, itself emerging from industrial livestock production, itself a defining feature of capitalism.  

7) Klein, Naomi. 2020. “Coronavirus Capitalism”: Naomi Klein’s Case for Transformative Change Amid Coronavirus Pandemic. Democracy Now. 

Short video by Naomi Klein on what this moment can mean for movements across the world. Also read a written analysis along the same lines. 

8) Angus, Ian. 2020. Ecosocialism or Barbarism: an interview. Review of African Political Economy. 

This piece locates COVID-19 in an analysis of the ecological and climate crisis in the Anthropocene. He touches on the key idea of the metabolic rift or rupture in nature which Capital creates. Like so many other analysts he locates COVID-19 in the Capitalist industrial monoculture agricultural model. See also article by GRAIN on this analytical conclusion. 

9) Shiva, Vandana. 2020. Ecological Reflections on the Coronavirus | One Planet, One Health – Connected through Biodiversity:From the forests,to our farms, to our gut microbiome. Jivad – the Vandana Shiva Blog.  

In this post, Shiva adopts a systems-thinking position which obliquely takes on the capitalist system which, alongside other related systems, reduces earth and its beings to raw materials for profit. She emphasises the interconnectedness of all living beings and it is the breaching of this connection that creates emergencies. She advocates deglobalisation and localised solutions. One striking piece of the analysis, “Over the past 50 years, 300 new pathogens have emerged as we destroy the habitat of species  and manipulate them for profits.”  

10) 2020. Out of Control: Crisis, Covid-19 and Capitalism in Africa. Review of African Political Economy. 

Brief writings by activists and researchers from Nigeria, SA, Burkina and Zimbabwe on how governments are using the virus as a cover for wider repression. While dated, the article offers useful perspectives. 

More libraries: 

The Centre for Feminist Foreign Policy, Data2x and WIDE+ are collating useful data, analysis and resources from explicitly feminist and gender rights perspectives.