PHM-Exch> ENDORSE - Global Call to Action

[Claudio Schuftan]

From: Chris Grove <cgrove at escr-net.org>



In the spirit of International Workers’ Day and the recent Women’s Global
Strike involving members across all regions, we are writing with a Global
Call to Action
<https://escr-net.cividesk.com/sites/all/modules/civicrm/extern/url.php?u=14493&qid=353111>
in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, which has again revealed and
intensified the failures of our economic, political and social systems to
realize human rights and environmental protection.

*We hope that you will:*

*ENDORSE* the Global Call to Action, ideally by Friday, 15 May, when we
will publish and begin to use endorsements in advocacy. We are also
inviting endorsements from allied and aligned organizations. * your
endorsement* here
<https://escr-net.cividesk.com/sites/all/modules/civicrm/extern/url.php?u=14494&qid=353111>
.

*DISSEMINATE* the Global Call to Action via social media, using the
hashtag: #ReinventTheNormal. ESCR-Net has also issued a related press
release
<https://escr-net.cividesk.com/sites/all/modules/civicrm/extern/url.php?u=14495&qid=353111>,
which we welcome you to use in further media outreach.

[image: Home]
ESCR-Net Global Call to Action in response to the COVID-19
Publish Date:
Friday, March 20, 2020
*The Day After Tomorrow: Confronting Systemic Injustices, Advancing Human
Rights*

*prueba The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed and intensified grave systemic
injustices all over the world. *People are being required to stay at home
without secure housing, wash hands without access to clean water, and fill
gaps in failing public healthcare and social systems with disproportionate
impacts on women. Governments and corporations are imposing false choices,
such as between contagion and starvation, hazardous work and unemployment,
corporate bailouts and ruin, personal security and public health. As
resisting communities, social movements, human rights organizations and
defenders, we demand economic, social and political alternatives that make
human rights and social justice a reality for all. A return to the status
quo is not an option.

Communities in every part of the world have long resisted impoverishment
despite abundance, increasing levels of inequality, undue corporate
influence over public decision-making, and accelerating climate crisis and
repression amid deepening authoritarianism. Our Common Charter for
Collective Struggle
<https://www.escr-net.org/sites/default/files/charter_for_collective_struggle.pdf>
- led by social movement members and endorsed by fellow members across 77
countries - articulated these common global conditions. The Charter ties
these conditions to the dominant capitalist system—which prioritizes
profits over people and the planet—intertwined structures of oppression,
including patriarchy, racism and long histories of colonialism and
imperialism. Building on the Charter, member discussions over the past
several weeks concerning the pandemic have yielded analyses
<https://www.escr-net.org/collective-work> based on lived realities of
people and communities around the world and demands on a range of issues,
which provide the basis for this call to action.

*Impoverishment, dispossession and inequality *have worsened in the past
few decades. Neoliberal policy reforms have weakened labor protections,
increased extraction, facilitated capital to flow to wherever human rights
and environmental protections are weakest, privatized and commodified basic
necessities, undermined food sovereignty, built regressive tax systems and
imposed austerity on the majority while providing subsidized prosperity for
the elite few. These reforms have been imposed and manipulated for
corporate and financial interests, including by the International Monetary
Fund (IMF), World Bank and trade and investment agreements. Despite decades
of so-called corporate social responsibility, corporations commit
consistent abuses of workers’ rights and wider environmental and human
rights, refuse to pay their fair share of taxes and continue to capture
government institutions and public policy-making. The failure of
governments to urgently address the climate crisis is perhaps the most
glaring example of corporate capture. This has laid the groundwork for the
pandemic to spiral into devastating public health, economic and social
crises, as well as environmental deregulation.

The current focus on “saving the economy” instead of ensuring human rights
and environment protection is an alarming echo of longstanding trends,
including misguided approaches in response to the 2008 global financial
crisis. Despite recognizing the severity crisis, the IMF and World Bank
continue to largely operate as usual by offering emergency loans instead of
meaningful debt cancellation and long overdue reparations for decades of
policies that left people poorer and replaced colonialism with economic
imperialism. Undue corporate influence has led to states providing massive
corporate subsidies and bailouts with little oversight, rollbacks of
environmental protections, and redefinitions of essential business to
include mining operations and commercial construction companies, among
others. Corporations have secured clearance for controversial projects,
often amid repression of participatory rights of local communities and the
right of Indigenous Peoples to free, prior and informed consent. When
Indigenous Peoples exercise their recognized rights to self-determine their
own economic, political and cultural models, they continue to face
development aggression and criminalization.

Even as the pandemic has revealed what is truly essential work, those
performing it continue to be systematically undervalued. In many countries,
particularly in the Global South, most workers—including domestic and
agricultural workers—are employed in the informal sector with no access to
social security and employment insurance. Many workers are forced to work
in increasingly precarious conditions, without adequate protective gear,
paid sick leave and health insurance (in the absence of universal health
care), or risk losing their jobs permanently. Women, migrant and minority
workers in particular have experienced a disproportionate loss of jobs and
livelihoods due to being heavily represented in the informal sector and
precarious occupations. For some, the inability to work amid the closure of
local markets, fishing bans, movement restrictions, and other social
isolation measures threaten eviction, starvation, and impoverishment as
many governments have failed to ensure public provision of necessities.

Inequalities within and between countries make many public health
recommendations inherently discriminatory, as they require a certain
standard of living such as access to clean water and sanitation and
adequate housing. Furthermore, these recommendations often fail to take
into account intersecting forms of discrimination present in society. Many
groups with already limited access to adequate healthcare and other public
services--including refugees, internally displaced people, LBGTQI
communities, persons with disabilities, persons deprived of liberty, and
sex workers--face greater obstacles amid the pandemic. In some contexts,
evictions and displacement through house demolitions have continued in
informal settlements and conflict-affected areas. In addition, digital
solutions designed to ensure access to essential services, including
education, medical advice and work opportunities disproportionately exclude
groups with no internet connectivity and digital literacy.

Further, gaps in social protection systems have translated into intensified
care burdens for women, who bear the brunt share of unrecognized and unpaid
care work due to persistent gendered norms. This is worsened by increased
incidents of domestic violence and challenges in seeking remedy due to
restricted access to courts, as well as violence and harassment against
women healthcare workers.

In addition, marginalized and impoverished communities are frequently
located near polluting and extractive projects, leading to respiratory
health issues that make them more vulnerable to COVID-19. This
environmental injustice is heightened by narratives that celebrate
temporarily improved air quality and reduction of emissions, upholding
human versus environment paradigms that divert blame from our economic and
political systems while ignoring the  suffering of the impoverished,
migrants and Indigenous Peoples.

Many governments are using the crisis to repress dissent and target already
marginalized groups, including through emergency powers, anti-terrorist
legislation, religious fundamentalism, increased surveillance and
militarization. Human rights defenders have been attacked, as security
strategies are undermined by strict shelter-in-place mandates. Multiple
governments have targeted doctors, journalists, bloggers and HRDs who have
reported on the pandemic. HRDs and political prisoners have often been
excluded from prison releases that are inadequate regardless, with many
trapped in pre-trial detention by the closure of courts. These threats are
especially compounded in contexts of conflict and occupation, while being
facilitated by arms manufacturers that continue to fuel violence. The
rhetoric of ‘war’ in confronting the pandemic further intensifies the
climate of fear and praise for authoritarian responses, thereby drastically
limiting space for public scrutiny, participation and accountability. As
states are marshaling unprecedented resources to address the crisis, there
is a glaring lack of transparency and accountability around
decision-making, exemplified by grave limitations to access to information
in many countries. At the same time, they are using surveillance tools to
gather personal data, often in breach of the rights to privacy and security
and in close partnership with the growing technology sector.

*This is the moment for long-needed systemic transformations, building a
global struggle to make human rights and social justice a reality for all.*
Our Common Charter articulates a vision for systemic change focused on
reclaiming human rights as a shared framework for analysis and demands,
emerging from popular struggles for well-being, dignity, participation and
substantive equality. This vision centers the experience, analysis and
leadership of Indigenous Peoples, affected and resisting communities,
organized workers and grassroots human rights defenders. Further, in
confronting systemic injustices, the aim of reinventing the “normal”
requires articulating and advancing inclusive alternative models. These
have long existed among Indigenous Peoples, rooted in traditional
knowledge, care networks, and recognition of the interconnection of all
life. Other models of reciprocity, mutual aid and cooperation exist—often
developed out of necessity—in many impoverished urban, peasant and
fisherfolk communities and related social movements. Feminist movements
have long advocated alternatives based on principles of equality,
non-discrimination and respect for the people and the planet. While
confronting immediate human rights violations, our demands necessarily
address “the day after tomorrow” and insist on a future that prioritizes
the rights of people and nature over profits, radically rethinking our
economic, social, ecological and political relationships.

*Our Demands*

We call for COVID-19 responses to center human and environmental rights, in
line with principles of universality, participation, transparency,
substantive equality, and accountability. All such measures should be
designed and implemented with the meaningful participation of affected
communities and social movements and apply a feminist analysis in working
to overcome overlapping, structural inequalities and inequities. States
must utilize maximum available resources to carry out these measures and
fully realize economic, social, cultural, and environmental rights for all
people. Alternatives to the dominant status quo are viable and urgently
needed.

Just responses require states and international bodies to respond
immediately to the public health emergency (as outlined in our first three
sets of demands below); adopt interim measures to ensure a just recovery
and address the impacts of  measures imposed to contain the pandemic; and
take and support transformative actions that will lead us to a new normal:

*Ensure care*

   - Guaranteeing the universal, equal right to healthcare, including
   ensuring COVID-19 testing, treatment, and prevention are available to all;
   - Protecting healthcare and other essential workers with equipment,
   testing, training, relevant health advice, and paid sick leave;
   - Implementing full labor protections for all workers, including
   non-healthcare essential workers;
   - Recognizing, supporting, and redistributing unpaid care work and
   adopting family-work conciliation measures, as well as adopting urgent
   measures to stop the rise of domestic violence and femicides;
   - Halting evictions, land dispossessions, utilities cut offs, and
   related rights violations;
   - Ensuring dignified provision of universal basic income, food, water,
   housing, sanitation, and other necessities, especially for those in
   situations of heightened vulnerability, such as the unemployed, informal
   and low-paid workers and informal settlements residents;
   - Protecting human and environmental rights defenders and political
   prisoners, including by releasing those incarcerated for exercising their
   right to defend rights, and ensure an enabling environment for the defense
   of human rights;
   - Gathering disaggregated data, including by gender, ethnicity,
   socio-economic status, in relation to health, social and economic impacts
   of the crisis on different groups, making it available to the public and
   using it to develop responses that address the needs of all;
   - Ensuring national and international justice mechanisms (courts,
   commissions, national human rights institutions, special procedures, and
   others) are accessible--especially to those most vulnerable--and that they,
   on their own initiative (*suo moto*) and in processing cases, monitor
   and redress state and private violations, both with immediate remedies and
   with systemic guarantees to prevent recurrence and to fully realize human
   and environmental rights; and
   - Redistributing global wealth in line with human rights obligations of
   international cooperation and assistance, as well as respecting
   self-determination.

*Defend hard-earned rights*

   - Maintaining, enforcing, and strengthening—rather than suspending or
   revoking—human, environmental, and workers’ rights, including by holding
   corporations accountable domestically and extraterritorially;
   - Respecting Indigenous Peoples’ rights to self-determination and free,
   prior, and informed consent, as well as meaningful participation of broader
   communities;
   - Upholding internationally recognized sexual and reproductive rights,
   and blocking any attempt at curtailment
   - Ensuring transparency over resource allocation and decision-making
   over measures to address the crisis, including the use surveillance tools,
   and expanding, rather than restricting, access to information and freedom
   of expression to strengthen participation and accountability;
   - Ensuring personal data gathered be made anonymous and under no
   circumstances be shared publicly;
   - Preventing increased securitization and militarization and ensuring
   accountability for harsh treatment, arrests and abuse of surveillance
   related to lockdowns and emergency powers, including against racial
   minorities and impoverished and other marginalized communities; and
   - Ensuring any restriction of rights, including on the right to privacy,
   is strictly necessary, time-bound, lawful, reasonable, proportional, and
   compliant with international standards.

*Ban profiteering off the pandemic*

   - Prohibiting corporate capture of government institutions and
   policymaking, including through lobbying, image-washing donations and
   revolving door practices;
   - Prohibiting price gouging and other profiteering;
   - Upholding collective bargaining rights and workers’ meaningful
   participation in shaping employment policies;
   - Mandating that any COVID-19 testing, treatment, and vaccine be not
   subject to patent and ensuring fair and equal access among countries;
   - Ceasing all extractive activities and processing of permits that
   could  negatively impact the rights of communities, workers and the
   environment;
   - Honoring the global calls for cease fires, including by enforcing a
   moratorium on all arms sales;
   - Providing no assistance to polluters and other industries that violate
   environmental and human rights, while ensuring just transitions for workers
   and communities reliant on these industries;
   - Prohibiting any increase in commercialization or privatization in
   connection with the pandemic, including for technology companies providing
   digital services; and
   - Suspending negotiations of new World Trade Organization agreements.

*Provide for a just recovery*

   - Substantially taxing and ending subsidies for big corporations
   globally, eliminating illicit financial flows, introducing wealth taxes,
   and ending tax loopholes, havens, and holidays;
   - Canceling debts of low- and moderate-income countries and communities,
   and ensuring that all lending policies and safeguards of international
   financial institutions give primacy to human rights obligations and
   environmental protections;
   - Prioritizing human rights of people and environmental protections over
   the narrow interests of corporations in governmental and international
   economic recovery packages (including the G20 package), including by
   promoting care-based/regenerative economies that advance substantive
   equality and just energy transitions from fossil fuels to zero-carbon; and
   - Supporting an international legally binding instrument and national
   laws to regulate corporate power.

*Reinvent the “normal”*

   - Centering alternative models grounded on solidarity, cooperation,
   mutual support and participatory economies, which value the social
   contribution of care and other forms of work and the mutual well-being of
   people and nature, already envisioned and implemented by Indigenous
   Peoples; social movements; grassroots women leaders and feminist
   organizations; impoverished, peasant and other affected communities;
   - Justly transitioning economies in line with climate science, post-2020
   biodiversity standards, and human rights;
   - Nationalizing healthcare systems and supply chains, such as
   pharmaceuticals, in order to reverse the commodification of and guarantee
   the universal right to healthcare;
   - Ensuring food sovereignty, including by prioritizing public funding to
   support subsistence and sustainable farming and strengthening land rights,
   restitution and redistribution to address dispossession and inequality;
   - Guaranteeing the right to housing for all, including by providing
   resources towards building social housing solutions, regulating the private
   rental sector and eliminating financialization of the real estate market;
   - Creating universal systems for the public provision of care, ensuring
   its recognition and fair distribution to address gender inequality and
   discrimination, supporting responsive and sustainable community-based care
   networks;
   - Ensuring access to free, quality, public education at every level for
   all, including accommodations to address lost educational time and
   opportunities; and
   - Adopting comprehensive social protection systems, such as universal
   basic income, non-contributory schemes and other measures beyond emergency
   relief.



>> *Read the Global Call to Action in PDF* here
<https://www.escr-net.org/sites/default/files/attachments/escr-net_global_call_to_action_english.pdf>
.

>> *Read the Press Statemen*t here
<https://www.escr-net.org/sites/default/files/attachments/press_release_covid19.pdf>
.

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