GC Human Rights Preparedness

The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed shortcomings that countries are struggling to overcome.

You might be familiar with the old proverb about the butterfly effect. It’s the idea that tiny, unstoppable actions, like a butterfly flapping its wings, can cause a chain reaction in places on the other side of the world.

A global pandemic such as the one we are experiencing is one of those disruptive events that can generate momentum to revisit some of our basic assumptions and to delineate creative ways to shape the future(s).

The world is presently grappling with a pandemic that has restricted global travel. Now more than ever, as a human rights community, we are having to extensively rely on the capabilities of citizens to document the atrocities happening in their community to enable us to rise up in solidarity and demand justice.

Preparedness means more than being good at planning or having processes in place. It also means being good at predictions.

La humanidad es todavía algo que hay que humanizar: Humanity is still something to be humanised.

‘Punctuated.’ It’s not a widely-used word, and I can’t think of a time in the past when I considered it. Yet ever since the arrival of COVID-19, it feels about right.