Covid Collective Key Issue Guide: Informality and the Covid-19 Pandemic

Abstract

People living in poor and densely populated informal settlements struggled due to a lack of space, water, resources, and services, and were reliant on informal work which was severely affected by Covid-19 containment measures such as lockdowns (Farha 2020; UN 2020). Workers in the informal economy had no or limited access to social protection, with no economic security to take sick leave or cope with lockdowns when their work was halted due to the pandemic (UN 2020). Official responses were often inadequate and, as a result many informal communities had to rely on their own limited resources and support networks to respond to the pandemic (Wilkinson 2020). In this Key Issue Guide, we focus on some of the key issues and lessons that have emerged relating to informality during the Covid-19 pandemic.