<div dir="ltr"><div class="gmail_default" style="font-size:large"><br></div>From: <b class="gmail_sendername" dir="auto">Chris Grove</b> <span dir="auto"><<a href="mailto:cgrove@escr-net.org">cgrove@escr-net.org</a>></span><br><div class="gmail_quote">
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<table class="m_-7293563667749606714vb-container m_-7293563667749606714fullpad" style="border-collapse:separate;border-spacing:18px;padding-left:0;padding-right:0;width:100%;max-width:570px;background-color:#fff" width="570" cellspacing="18" cellpadding="0" border="0" bgcolor="#fff">
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<td class="m_-7293563667749606714long-text m_-7293563667749606714links-color" style="text-align:left;font-size:12px;font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;color:#000" align="left"><br><p style="Margin:1em 0px">In the spirit of International Workers’ Day and the recent Women’s Global Strike involving members across all regions, we are writing with a <a href="https://escr-net.cividesk.com/sites/all/modules/civicrm/extern/url.php?u=14493&qid=353111" style="color:#3f3f3f;color:#0000ee;text-decoration:underline" target="_blank">Global Call to Action</a> 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.</p><p style="Margin:1em 0px"><b>We hope that you will:</b></p><p style="Margin:1em 0px"><b>ENDORSE</b> 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. <b> your endorsement</b> <a href="https://escr-net.cividesk.com/sites/all/modules/civicrm/extern/url.php?u=14494&qid=353111" style="color:#3f3f3f;color:#0000ee;text-decoration:underline" target="_blank">here</a>.</p><p style="Margin:1em 0px"><b>DISSEMINATE</b> the Global Call to Action via social media, using the hashtag: #ReinventTheNormal. ESCR-Net has also issued a related <a href="https://escr-net.cividesk.com/sites/all/modules/civicrm/extern/url.php?u=14495&qid=353111" style="color:#3f3f3f;color:#0000ee;text-decoration:underline" target="_blank">press release</a>, which we welcome you to use in further media outreach. <br></p><br><div class="gmail-container"><div class="gmail-navbar-top gmail-row"><img src="https://www.escr-net.org/sites/all/themes/escr2014/logo.png" alt="Home">
<form class="gmail-search-form gmail-clearfix gmail-navbar-search gmail-navbar-search-elastic gmail-hidden-phone gmail-small" action="/news/2020/escr-net-global-call-action-response-covid-19" method="post" id="escr-net-search-form"><div><div class="gmail-form-wrapper gmail-form-group" id="edit-basic"><input class="gmail-small gmail-search-query gmail-form-control gmail-form-text" type="text" id="edit-keys" name="keys" value="" size="40" maxlength="255"></div></div></form></div></div><div class="gmail-container"><div class="gmail-navbar-top gmail-row"><form class="gmail-search-form gmail-clearfix gmail-navbar-search gmail-navbar-search-elastic gmail-hidden-phone gmail-small" action="/news/2020/escr-net-global-call-action-response-covid-19" method="post" id="escr-net-search-form"><div>
</div></form><font size="6">ESCR-Net Global Call to Action in response to the COVID-19<span id="gmail-custom-title-icon"></span></font></div></div><div class="gmail-main-container gmail-container"><div class="gmail-row">
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</div></div></div></div></div></div><div class="gmail-main-container gmail-container"><div class="gmail-row"><div class="gmail-region gmail-region-content"><div class="gmail-ds-bs-layout-8-4 gmail-node gmail-node-news gmail-view-mode-full"><div class="gmail-row"><div class="gmail-col-sm-8"><div class="gmail-field gmail-field-name-field-pub-date gmail-field-type-datetime gmail-field-label-inline gmail-clearfix"><div class="gmail-field-label">Publish Date: </div><div class="gmail-field-items"><div class="gmail-field-item even"><span class="gmail-date-display-single">Friday, March 20, 2020</span></div></div></div><strong>The Day After Tomorrow: Confronting Systemic Injustices, Advancing Human Rights</strong><div class="gmail-field gmail-field-name-body gmail-field-type-text-with-summary gmail-field-label-hidden"><div class="gmail-field-items"><div class="gmail-field-item even"><p><strong>prueba The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed and intensified grave systemic injustices all over the world. </strong>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.</p>
<p>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 <a href="https://www.escr-net.org/sites/default/files/charter_for_collective_struggle.pdf">Common Charter for Collective Struggle</a>
- 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 <a href="https://www.escr-net.org/collective-work">analyses</a>
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.</p>
<p><strong>Impoverishment, dispossession and inequality </strong>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.<strong> </strong>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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. </p>
<p>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.</p>
<p><strong>This is the moment for long-needed systemic transformations,
building a global struggle to make human rights and social justice a
reality for all.</strong> 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.</p>
<p><strong>Our Demands</strong></p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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:</p>
<p><strong><em>Ensure care</em></strong></p>
<ul><li>Guaranteeing the universal, equal right to healthcare, including
ensuring COVID-19 testing, treatment, and prevention are available to
all;</li><li>Protecting healthcare and other essential workers with equipment,
testing, training, relevant health advice, and paid sick leave;</li><li>Implementing full labor protections for all workers, including non-healthcare essential workers;</li><li>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;</li><li>Halting evictions, land dispossessions, utilities cut offs, and related rights violations;</li><li>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;</li><li>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;</li><li>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;</li><li>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 (<em>suo moto</em>) 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</li><li>Redistributing global wealth in line with human rights obligations
of international cooperation and assistance, as well as respecting
self-determination.</li></ul><p><strong><em>Defend hard-earned rights</em></strong></p>
<ul><li>Maintaining, enforcing, and strengthening—rather than suspending
or revoking—human, environmental, and workers’ rights, including by
holding corporations accountable domestically and extraterritorially;</li><li>Respecting Indigenous Peoples’ rights to self-determination and
free, prior, and informed consent, as well as meaningful participation
of broader communities;</li><li>Upholding internationally recognized sexual and reproductive rights, and blocking any attempt at curtailment</li><li>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;</li><li>Ensuring personal data gathered be made anonymous and under no circumstances be shared publicly;</li><li>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</li><li>Ensuring any restriction of rights, including on the right to
privacy, is strictly necessary, time-bound, lawful, reasonable,
proportional, and compliant with international standards.</li></ul><p><strong><em>Ban profiteering off the pandemic</em></strong></p>
<ul><li>Prohibiting corporate capture of government institutions and
policymaking, including through lobbying, image-washing donations and
revolving door practices;</li><li>Prohibiting price gouging and other profiteering;</li><li>Upholding collective bargaining rights and workers’ meaningful participation in shaping employment policies;</li><li>Mandating that any COVID-19 testing, treatment, and vaccine be not
subject to patent and ensuring fair and equal access among countries;</li><li>Ceasing all extractive activities and processing of permits that
could negatively impact the rights of communities, workers and the
environment;</li><li>Honoring the global calls for cease fires, including by enforcing a moratorium on all arms sales;</li><li>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;</li><li>Prohibiting any increase in commercialization or privatization in
connection with the pandemic, including for technology companies
providing digital services; and</li><li>Suspending negotiations of new World Trade Organization agreements.</li></ul><p><strong><em>Provide for a just recovery</em></strong></p>
<ul><li>Substantially taxing and ending subsidies for big corporations
globally, eliminating illicit financial flows, introducing wealth taxes,
and ending tax loopholes, havens, and holidays;</li><li>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;</li><li>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</li><li>Supporting an international legally binding instrument and national laws to regulate corporate power.</li></ul><p><strong><em>Reinvent the “normal”</em></strong></p>
<ul><li>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;</li><li>Justly transitioning economies in line with climate science, post-2020 biodiversity standards, and human rights;</li><li>Nationalizing healthcare systems and supply chains, such as
pharmaceuticals, in order to reverse the commodification of and
guarantee the universal right to healthcare;</li><li>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;</li><li>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;</li><li>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;</li><li>Ensuring access to free, quality, public education at every level
for all, including accommodations to address lost educational time and
opportunities; and</li><li>Adopting comprehensive social protection systems, such as universal
basic income, non-contributory schemes and other measures beyond
emergency relief.</li></ul><p> </p>
<p>>> <strong>Read the Global Call to Action in PDF</strong> <a href="https://www.escr-net.org/sites/default/files/attachments/escr-net_global_call_to_action_english.pdf">here</a>.</p>
<p>>> <strong>Read the Press Statemen</strong>t <a href="https://www.escr-net.org/sites/default/files/attachments/press_release_covid19.pdf">here</a>.</p>
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