Pandemic Inequality. Civil Society Narratives from the Global South

How might we think about the COVID-19 pandemic from the lens of inequality? How might such an analysis look when writing from Lahore or Abuja as compared to writing from London or San Francisco? How can it help us rethink our role as advocates and members of civil society, as well as our forms of solidarity?

This book explores these questions through the narratives of young human rights advocates from the global South—from Nigeria to the Philippines to India to Chile. The authors discuss the latent structural inequalities that the pandemic has deepened, exposed, or suppressed, as well as those that broke people’s already fragile trust in governments, the private sector, and civil society organizations. They also explore the strategies of resilience and creative social organizing that have helped confront the pandemic around the globe.

The contributors to this book, writing from different perspectives, invite us to consider what we can learn from the interplay between the pandemic and inequality in order to spur a creative reorientation of collective mobilization and advocacy toward the future.