Following the conclusion of the four-part Symposium on COVID-19 and International Economic Law in the Global South, Afronomicslaw.org is pleased to announce three follow-up webinars to continue the conversation

The debate to what extent the societies are willing to allow the relativization of human rights and the democratic mechanisms is essential to bring what Boaventura de Sousa Santos calls “a novel clarity” that according to him: “[…]pandemic clarity and the apparitions it brings to light. The things it allows us to see and the way in which they are interpreted and assessed will determine the future of the civilization in which we live”.

The main goal of the international HRWS is to prioritise universal access to safe, affordable, accessible, adequate water and sanitation, including hygiene services. The human rights framework also has procedural requirements to ensure non-discrimination, public participation, transparency and accountability and the extraterritorial obligation to do no harm in the governance of WASH services. Water is understood as having diverse characteristics being simultaneously an economic, social, cultural, political and ecological good. This multiplicity of framings complicates the localization and mainstreaming of the HRWS in relevant institutions at various levels of governance, from the international to the local.

The coronavirus reminds us of our shared humanity, but at the same time its fallout has increased our economic inequalities. It affects and infects people, regardless of class, socio-economic status, gender, and race. At the same time, however, it reinforces inequalities among people and nations by forcing developing countries into the arms of richer nations in the West.

The recruitment process for some key positions for the African Continental Free Trade Area Secretariat is now opened.

Enforcement of socio-economic rights in Kenya, with minimal success rate, has proven quite problematic. In almost all petitions on socio-economic rights, the government always pleads progressive realization, inadequate resources and the doctrine of separation of powers. Enforcement of socio-economic rights such as the right to adequate housing requires allocation of resources for their realization.

International law constructed along the voluntarist orthodoxy doesn’t help in the time of pandemic. It leaves the poorer at the good will of the mighty, for it largely ignores the actual power relations between states. The inter-state deals struck “voluntarily” and the policy choices thus fixed reflect the bargaining power of the States. This being the case, the international law is likely to reinforce and perpetuate inequalities, rather than being a check against the use of political power. As the post-corona crisis is likely to strike the poorest nations hardest, the bright future for some may mean dim prospects for others.

It is not the Corona Virus that brought troubles to and exposed the inadequacies of county public health services.  Before Covid-19, county governments were widely criticized for their lack of hospital beds capacity, quality of health care and the treatment of healthcare workers.  Discouraged by poor conditions of work and remuneration, and after a prolonged nationwide strike, healthcare givers left county public healthcare service in droves

Since the early 2000s, Zimbabwe has faced a tumultuous period which has seen the country go through dislocating economic challenges. These economic challenges have harmed the country’s institutions with the health sector suffering the most. Several outbreaks such as the 2008 Cholera Outbreak clearly demonstrated that the country’s health sector had all but collapsed. That has not been very different for Zimbabwe’s politics that have been dominated by two political parties Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front (ZANU PF) and the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) who serve as the ruling party and the opposition respectively.  

The COVID-19 crisis is likely to make countries in the global south accumulate more debt in a global economic environment where repayment of current debt will be difficult. The speech by Thomas Sankara on the morality of debt repayment asks us very difficult questions which humanity must collectively confront if debt crises are to become relics of past economics. The collective inability by the global south to assert itself on negotiating tables and to recreate itself in the aftermath of various global crises has been a sad misuse of crises.