Covid Collective Key Issue Guide: Impacts of the Covid-19 Pandemic on Decision-Making, Accountability and Empowerment
Abstract
The unpredictable, fast-moving and high-risk
decision-making environment during the Covid-19
pandemic challenged policymakers around
the globe. The shortcomings of global and
national collective action and accountability
mechanisms have been exposed. Covid-19
responses have provided new opportunities for
corruption, fuelled waves of disinformation, and fed
into pre-existing authoritarian trends. Top-down
approaches during the pandemic have ignored
people’s lived realities and agency, and exacerbated
social and economic inequalities. Risks of prolonged
securitisation of the Covid-19 response and
shrinking civil space are heightened in fragile
and conflict-affected settings. At the same
time, from the start of the pandemic, local mutual
solidarity and community-led groups and actors
have stepped in to meet people’s needs, including in
places with widespread poverty and vulnerability.