Introduction: Derailing Development, Exacerbating Gender Injustice

Summary

The World Health Organization (WHO) declared on 11 March 2020 that the rapid and extensive spread of the coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 – better known as COVID-19 – meant that it should be regarded as a global pandemic. At that point, there were 118,000 cases in 114 countries and 4,291 people had died. Just 12 months later, in March 2021, the official death toll from COVID-19 had risen to 2,769,696, with 126,372,442 reported cases (WHO, 2021). By September 2021, with the pandemic still raging, COVID-19 had killed more people in the US than the 1918– 1919 flu pandemic (Milman, 2021). The global economic impact, as estimated in May 2021, was in the region of six trillion dollars (Liang et al, 2021).

Researchers and international policy-makers understood very quickly that COVID-19 was not only a global health emergency, but a multifaceted development crisis. Unlike the 1918– 1919 flu pandemic, COVID-19 quickly reached all corners of the world. As early as May 2020, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) warned that COVID-19 was set to undo three decades of progress in human development (UNDP, 2020a). Decline in every area of human development – broadly understood as a combination of education, income and health services – was already happening, just three months into the pandemic. According to the UNDP (2020a): ‘The world has seen many crises over the past 30 years, including the Global Financial Crisis of 2007– 09. Each has hit human development hard but, overall, development gains accrued globally year-on-year … COVID-19 – with its triple hit to health, education, and income – may change this trend.’

Even in the first few months of the pandemic, when the crisis was most acutely experienced in Europe and the Americas, it was recognized that the pandemic and the accompanying global recession would be felt hardest in countries in the Global South (IMF, 2020a). In June 2020, the World Bank (2020a) observed: ‘Economic disruptions are likely to be more severe and protracted in emerging market and developing economies with larger domestic outbreaks and weaker medical care systems; greater exposure to international spillovers through trade, tourism, and commodity and financial markets; weaker macroeconomic frameworks; and more pervasive informality and poverty.’