– Call for a feminist policy response to COVID-19

The following statement has been endorsed by nearly 1,500 women, networks, and organizations from over 100 countries around the world, calling on states to adopt a feminist policy to address the unique challenges posed by the COVID-19 pandemic while respecting human rights.

This initiative was launched by women from the South and marginalized communities in the North and was coordinated by the Feminist Alliance for Rights (FAR).

If you would like to support this request: http://tiny.cc/endorsenow

Statement by Feminists and Women's Rights Organizations from the Global South and Marginalized Communities in the Global North

We, the undersigned networks, organizations, and activists, committed to feminist principles and women's fundamental rights, call on governments to uphold human rights standards and act in accordance with these standards in their response to COVID-19, and to defend the principles of equality and non-discrimination, focusing their actions on the most marginalized people, including, but not limited to, women, children, older persons, persons with disabilities, persons in fragile health, rural populations, persons without shelter, persons in institutions, refugees, migrants, indigenous peoples, stateless persons, and persons living in war zones. A feminist policy recognizes and prioritizes the needs of the most vulnerable communities. Beyond the response to this pandemic, the adoption of a feminist policy is necessary for the development of peaceful, inclusive, and prosperous communities within states that guarantee human rights.

It is essential that governments adopt a human rights-based and intersectional approach to ensure that everyone has access to the information, support systems, and resources they need during the current crisis. We have identified nine key areas to consider in the context of the COVID-19 crisis. These are listed below, accompanied by a brief description of potential challenges and recommendations that take into account the experiences of people in vulnerable situations, particularly women and girls, who are disproportionately affected due to their sex, gender, and sexual orientation. The aim is also to guide policymakers towards solutions that do not exacerbate the vulnerabilities of these individuals or amplify existing inequalities, and that guarantee their human rights.

These guidelines do not replace the engagement of women and girls and other marginalized communities in decision-making; they offer an argument in favor of diversity in leadership.

Key areas of action for a feminist policy response to COVID-19

Food security. In countries that depend on food imports, we fear border and market closures and the inability to access food. This concern is exacerbated for people living in poverty and in rural communities, particularly women, who do not have easy access to city centers and large grocery stores and markets. This means that those who can afford to do so may buy large quantities of goods, limiting availability for lower-income individuals who are unable to do the same and who may face shortages when trying to replenish their food supplies.

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

• Increase—or create—food stamps and subsidies, both in terms of quantity for those who already receive them and by expanding access to include those who are becoming more vulnerable due to current circumstances.
• Encourage businesses to ration non-perishable food items in order to control stocks and increase access for those who, due to their income level, need to buy over a longer period of time.
• Send food supplies to rural communities to be stored and distributed as needed in order to eliminate delays in access to supplies in urban centers and guard against shortages due to shipping delays.
• Send food to people who cannot leave their homes (for example, people with disabilities living alone or in remote areas).

Healthcare. All countries expect massive pressure on their public health systems due to the spread of the virus, which may lead to a decline in maternal health and an increase in infant mortality rates. Rural communities often lack access to health services and medical products and supplies. Older adults, people with disabilities, and people with weakened or compromised immune systems are at high risk and may not have home support systems. Changes in routine and the spread of the virus can create or exacerbate mental health problems. This crisis has a disproportionate impact on women, who, according to the World Health Organization's March 2019 working paper entitled"Gender equity in the health workforce working paper," make up 70% of the health and social care workforce. It also disproportionately affects people who care for others.

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

• Ensure the availability of sex-disaggregated data and gender analysis, including differentiated infection and mortality rates.
• Increase the availability of health services, personnel, medical equipment, and medicines.
• Ensure women have timely access to necessary sexual and reproductive health services during the crisis, such as emergency contraception and safe abortion.
• Maintain sufficient stocks of menstrual hygiene products in medical facilities and community centers.
• Train frontline medical staff and social workers to recognize the signs of domestic violence and provide appropriate resources and services.
• Develop a database of high-risk individuals who live alone and establish a system and network to maintain regular contact with them and deliver supplies to them.
• Ensure the continued provision of non-COVID-19 health services based on unbiased medical research and testing for women and girls.
• Establish accessible systems to effectively respond to mental health needs, including telephone hotlines and videoconferencing (e.g., sign language, closed captioning), virtual support groups, emergency services, and medication delivery.
• Support rehabilitation centers so that they remain open to people with disabilities and chronic illnesses.
• Require all healthcare facilities to provide adequate services to all individuals, regardless of their health insurance and immigration status, and guarantee the rights of migrants and stateless persons, whether legal or illegal, and homeless persons to receive medical care without being subjected to discrimination, detention, or deportation.
• Ensure that healthcare providers and all frontline staff receive adequate training and have access to the necessary equipment to protect their own health and provide them with mental health support.
• Assess and respond to the specific needs of women health care providers.

Education. School closures are necessary to protect children, families, and communities and will help flatten the curve so that the peak infection rate remains manageable. However, they represent a major disruption to children's education and routines. In many cases, children who depend on school meal programs will face food insecurity. They also become more vulnerable to violence in their homes and communities, which may go unnoticed due to the lack of contact. School closures also place a disproportionate burden on women, who traditionally take on the role of caregivers.

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

• Ask educational institutions to prepare exams and assignments for children in order to keep them in school and prevent them from failing, and provide guidance to parents on how to use these materials.
• Create educational radio programs tailored to school-age children.
• Subsidize childcare for families who are unable to make other arrangements.
• Expand free internet access to increase access to online educational platforms and materials and enable children to participate in virtual classroom sessions that are accessible to persons with disabilities, where applicable.
• Provide laptops to children who need them to participate in online education.
• Take measures to ensure that they continue to receive food supplies by ensuring that they can be delivered or collected.
• Provide additional financial and mental health support to families caring for children with disabilities.

Social inequalities. These exist between men and women, citizens and migrants, people with regular and irregular migrant status, and also affect people with disabilities and neuroatypical people. There are other perceived dichotomies or non-binary differences, as well as inequalities between ethnic and religious groups. Existing vulnerabilities are further complicated by loss of income, increased stress, and unequal domestic responsibilities. Women and girls are likely to experience an increased burden of domestic tasks that will compete with (and possibly replace) their paid work or education. Vulnerable communities are further threatened when laws are passed or other measures introduced to restrict their movement and gatherings, particularly when they have less access to information or are less able to process it.

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

• Encourage the equitable sharing of domestic tasks explicitly and through the allocation of free time and compensation for all workers.
• Provide better access to sanitary facilities and emergency accommodation for homeless people.
• Implement a protocol and train authorities to recognize vulnerable populations and ensure their participation, particularly when new laws are enforced.
• Consult civil society organizations on the process of implementing legislation and policy.
• Ensure equal access to information, public health education, and resources in multiple languages, including sign languages and indigenous languages, in plain, easy-to-read language and accessible formats.

Water and sanitation. Not everyone has access to clean running water.                                 

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

• Ensure that infrastructure is in place to deliver piped drinking water to households, including in underserved areas.
• Do not disconnect anyone and waive all reconnection fees in order to provide everyone with clean, safe drinking water.
• Provide an immediate solution to unsafe water problems.
• Build public handwashing stations in communities.

Economic inequality. People are facing unemployment, underemployment, and loss of income due to temporary business closures, reduced working hours, and limited sick leave, vacation time, personal leave, and stigma. This negatively impacts their ability to meet their financial obligations, generates greater debt, and makes it difficult to acquire necessary supplies. Due to closures and the need for social distancing, there is also a lack of care options and ability to pay for care for children, older adults, and people with disabilities. This results in a shift of labor from the paid economy or gig economy to the unpaid economy as family caregivers.

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

• Implement moratoriums on evictions due to rent and mortgage arrears and on rent and mortgage payment deferrals for people directly or indirectly affected by COVID-19 and for people belonging to vulnerable groups.
• Implement moratoriums on disconnections of public utilities, including water, electricity, telephone, and internet services, regardless of inability to pay and payment histories.
• Provide a Universal Basic Income to people who have lost income.
• Provide financial support to homeless people, refugees, and women's shelters.
• Provide additional financial assistance to seniors and people with disabilities.
• Speed up the delivery of benefits.
• Change policies regarding sick leave, parental and care leave, and personal leave.
• Ask companies to invite their employees to work remotely under the same financial conditions as those agreed upon before the pandemic.
• Distribute packages containing essential items, including soap and disinfectants.

Violence against women, domestic violence/intimate partner violence. The rates and severity of domestic violence and intimate partner violence against women, including sexual and reproductive violence, are likely to increase as tensions rise. Restrictions on mobility (social distancing, isolation, extreme confinement, or quarantine) will also increase survivors' vulnerability to abuse and their need for protection services. It will be more difficult to escape, as the abusive partner will always be at home (see "Economic Inequality"). Children face particular protection risks, including increased risks of abuse and separation from loved ones. Access to protection services will decrease if extreme lockdowns are imposed, as public resources are redirected. Women and girls fleeing violence and persecution will be unable to leave their countries of origin or enter countries of asylum due to border closures and travel restrictions.

 To meet this challenge, we call on governments to:

• Create separate units within police departments and emergency hotlines to report domestic violence.
• Increase resources for non-governmental organizations that combat domestic violence and provide assistance, including shelter, counseling, and legal aid, to survivors, and ensure that those that remain open are accessible.
• Disseminate information on gender-based violence and raise awareness of available resources and services.
• Require designated public services, including shelters, to remain open and accessible.
• Ensure that protective services implement programs with emergency plans that include protocols to ensure the safety of residents and clients.
• Develop a protocol for the care of women who may not be admitted due to exposure to the virus, providing for safe quarantine and access to testing.
• Extend the duration of judicial protection measures so that they cover the entire mandatory period of confinement and quarantine.
• Make arrangements for victims of domestic violence to attend court proceedings via teleconferencing facilities.
• Require police departments to respond to all reports of domestic violence and connect survivors with appropriate resources.
• Ensure that women, girls, and other vulnerable persons are not turned away at the border and have access to the territory and legal asylum procedures. If necessary, they will have access to testing.

Access to information. Access to reliable information is uneven, particularly for people who experience structural discrimination and belong to marginalized communities. People will need to receive regular updates from national health authorities throughout 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 aimed at providing information to the public.
• Make information available to the public in plain language and through accessible means, modes, and formats, including the Internet, radio, and text messaging.
• Ensure that persons with disabilities have access to information through sign language, captions, and other appropriate means.
• Increase funding for non-governmental organizations that will ensure messages are translated and communicated through appropriate means to those who speak different languages or have specific needs.
• Establish and deploy a task force to share information and resources with vulnerable individuals, with a focus on homeless people, people with disabilities, migrants, refugees, and people with neurological disorders.
• Refrain from adopting measures that, under the guise of combating the spread of misinformation, would restrict journalists' reporting on the COVID-19 pandemic.

Abuse of power. People in prisons, administrative migration centers, refugee camps, and people with disabilities in psychiatric institutions are at greater risk of infection due to their conditions of confinement. They may also be more vulnerable to abuse or neglect due to limited external oversight and restrictions on visits. It is not uncommon for authorities to be overzealous in their law enforcement practices and in introducing new laws. During this crisis, people in vulnerable situations, particularly dissidents, are at greater risk of negative and potentially dangerous interactions with the authorities.

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

• Implement and enforce COVID-19 restrictions in accordance with the law. Any restrictions must be strictly necessary, proportionate, legitimate, and in the public interest.
• Ensure that restrictions imposed in the public interest do not result in gender-based harm and do not disproportionately affect women and girls who are already highly vulnerable and at risk of being deprived of their fundamental human rights.
• Support civil society organizations and national ombudsmen and ombudswomen, human rights defenders in regularly monitoring the situation within these institutions.
• Encourage law enforcement officers to focus on improving safety rather than making arrests.
• Train law enforcement officers, social workers, and caregivers to recognize vulnerabilities and make the necessary adjustments to their approach and engagement.
• Adopt human rights-based protocols to reduce the spread of the virus in detention centers and confinement facilities.
• Strengthen external monitoring and facilitate secure contact with parents, for example through free phone calls.
• Consult civil rights organizations, ombudsmen, and human rights advocates on amendments to existing laws.
• Commit to ending emergency laws and exceptional powers once the pandemic is over and restoring checks and balances.

To learn more about Equipop's position during this health crisis, you can also read "Adapting practices in response to COVID-19."