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COVID-19, Gender, and Intersectional Discrimination: Can the Promise of International Human Rights Meet the Moment?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 March 2021

Amanda M. Klasing
Amanda M. Klasing*
Affiliation:
Interim Women's Rights Co-Director, Human Rights Watch, www.hrw.org.
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Extract

Human rights documentation around the world has shown that crises disproportionately or distinctly impacts women and girls, whether conflict or natural disaster-related. This is true for disease outbreaks as well. Human Rights Watch has raised the concerns about the gendered impacts of the Ebola virus outbreaks in West Africa, or the human rights dimensions of the Zika virus impacts in northeast Brazil. The COVID-19 pandemic and response are no different. We are already seeing the disproportionate and gendered ways government responses to the pandemic are generating harm to women and girls and reinforcing longstanding gender inequity.

Type
COVID‐19 Part II: Understanding the Disparate Impact on Marginalized Communities
Information
Proceedings of the ASIL Annual Meeting , Volume 114 , 2020 , pp. 377 - 381
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of The American Society of International Law.

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References

1 See, e.g., Human Rights Watch, West Africa: Respect Rights in Ebola Response: Protect Health Workers, Limit Quarantines, Promote Transparency (Sept. 15, 2014), at https://www.hrw.org/news/2014/09/15/west-africa-respect-rights-ebola-response; see also Human Rights Watch, Neglected and Unprotected: The Impact of the Zika Outbreak on Women and Girls in Northeastern Brazil (July 12, 2017), at https://www.hrw.org/news/2017/07/12/brazil-zika-epidemic-exposes-rights-problems.

2 Many of these gendered impacts generate harm, regardless of a person's gender identity. Transgender and gender non-binary and non-conforming individuals may also face additional risk of abuse, and they may also face particular challenges in accessing services aimed at cisgender women. While I use the term “women” throughout my remarks, this language is not intended to exclude transwomen, pregnant and birth people, people who can become pregnant and need reproductive care, and gender non-conforming or non-binary individuals.