This paper discusses the impact of COVID-19 on older people and people with disabilities. It draws attention to the violations of their human rights in the context of COVID-19 which in turn reveal the hierarchical social order of our society. Although statistics show higher deaths of older people in regard to COVID-19, these numbers co-exist with rampant discrimination towards these groups with underlying messaging that their lives are dispensable. The paper highlights violations at different levels—discursive, ethical, and everyday—and shows how they are underpinned by ageism and disablism which stereotype older people and people with disabilities with prejudicial messaging and actions by states and societal actors. At the same time, the paper also highlights the value of human rights discourses and instruments which are mobilized by the disability movement and groups upholding the rights of older people, to question these rights infringements in the context of COVID-19. The politics of these groups which call for principled equality and inclusion of older people and people with disabilities in times of COVID-19 exhibit a much-needed disruption of our social order, an undertaking that needs to be continued in COVID-19 times and after.
Vulnerability has long been accepted as an important factor in post-disaster recovery which affects the ability of the survivors to recover from multi-dimensional impacts. This comparative and cross-cultural study of the effects of tsunami on women in four countries looks more closely into the factors and processes that have led to the exclusion of certain groups of women from relief and recovery assistance. These include female heads of households, widows, the elderly and those belonging to marginalized groups such as migrants and stateless communities. Examining the current gender-neutral framing of social protection systems in the disaster areas and their operations, I show that vulnerability is not only an outcome of localized and individual dimensions like age, gender and marital status but that they have deeper relations with national and global powers who perpetuate institutionalized discrimination through such systems, and how they are unable to give these groups of women the much needed protection and assistance to live with dignity. A case is made for the recognition of compounded discrimination based on the fact that their vulnerable positions prior to the disaster have indeed led to their exclusion from relief and recovery activities, leaving them poorer and worst-off. Further, to redress this trend I propose a women's human rights strategy in disaster management which adopts as its Note: The empirical data used in the research article were collected and used to develop reports for ActionAid by the author when she was the Women's Rights advisor for Tsunami with Action Aid International. However, the analysis and conclusions in this article are the responsibility of the author alone and do not reflect the views of ActionAid.Acknowledgements: I am grateful to Everjoice Win for her insights on issues pertaining to women's rights and the tsunami response. I would also like to take this opportunity to thank the editors as well as anonymous reviewers whose comments enabled me to present a sharper analysis and findings from this study. core a combination of the recognition of vulnerability derived from identities with corresponding gender-based redistributive principles to be integrated in policies, practices and social protection systems. As a discursive construct, the women's human rights approach in disasters would not only reduce the vulnerability of disaster survivors but also create new gender-just post-disaster societies. The SettingThe tsunami of December 2004 left a tragic trail of loss of human life, injury and devastated property in six countries-India, Sri Lanka, Maldives, Indonesia, Thailand and Somalia. The affected habitations were mainly in coastal areas, with large parts of affected populations being people involved in fishing. Statistics indicate that women have been among the worst casualties of this natural disaster, giving rise to the likelihood that the distribution of the tsunami death toll might have been due to certain kinds of gendered vulnerabilities (Oxfam 2005).Given that this wa...
Contemporary academic debates on the history of the colonial Famine Codes in India--also considered to be the first coded and institutionalised normative frameworks for natural disaster response on the continent--generally are based on one of two perspectives. The first focuses on their economic rationale, whereas the second underlines that they constitute an anti-famine contract between the colonial masters and the people of India. This paper demonstrates that both of these viewpoints are limited in scope and that they simplify the nature of governance instituted through famine response practices in Colonial India. It links this reality to current disaster response policies and practices in India and shows that the discussion on the development of normative frameworks underlying disaster response is far from over. The paper goes on to evaluate the development of normative frameworks for disaster response and recovery, which remain embroiled in the politics of governmentality that underlies their development.
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