Articles

The outbreak of the pandemic could have spelled disaster for Venezuela, already two decades into a political, social, economic and health crisis. The combination of a collapsed national health system and economy, a complex humanitarian emergency, a continuous stream of migration, an internal political conflict with international ramifications, a population with high levels of malnutrition, has seriously hindered the development of a successful vaccination programme. Thus far,  Venezuela has administered the fewest number of Covid-19 vaccinations in relation to its population size of all the countries in South America.

Health inequality increased sixfold in South Africa under COVID-19, suggesting that the crisis affected the health of the poor far more than the relatively well-off. Race is not a significant predictor of vaccine hesitancy, but trusting social media as an information source is positively correlated with vaccine hesitancy. South Africa has pushed hard against opposition to the proposal for a waiver of IP for Covid-19 technologies at the World Trade Organisation (WTO).

The rate of COVID-19 vaccination in Israel is one of the highest in the world. However, vaccine rates are not evenly distributed among the different population groups. Arab citizens and the Ultra-Orthodox population, who have suffered the most from the pandemic, are vaccinated at lower rates than the general public. Moreover, social media disinformation campaigns that have characterized the COVID-19 pandemic in Israel, in general, and the vaccine, in particular, has been one of the causes of vaccine hesitancy.

US President Joe Biden is visiting Europe for the first time, on the occasion of the G7, NATO and EU-US summits. The opportunities for a new era of transatlantic cooperation are immense, but the window of opportunity to seize them is small.

The Covid-19 pandemic has become Chile’s most consequential public health challenge in a century. Chile’s measures included guidance regarding, among other items, education, health (sick leaves, diagnoses, hospital capacity, partial and spatially targeted lockdowns), mass events, border controls, supply and transportation. Since then, the evolution of the disease in the country has been similar to that of other countries around the world, with periods when cases increased followed by periods when cases declined, yet without ever declining to a point when one would assume the emergency was over.

Gendered disinformation is a form of violence particularly used against politically active women: the weaponisation of gendered stereotypes to attack and undermine women’s position in public life. How can we improve responses to gendered disinformation online? What can platforms do better? What government regulation may be needed, and are the current proposals on the table sufficient?

‘The safest place in the world to go online’. This is the ambition for the UK, set out by the Government in the 2019 Online Harms White Paper, and echoed over the next two years as the proposals evolved into the now Online Safety Bill: ‘a milestone in the Government’s fight to make the internet safe‘. While there has been scattered applause, many asked: what does it mean to be safe online?

Crises are moments when the hairline cracks and chips in the structures of our societies start to show. Whether the crisis is of an economic, public health, rule of law or climate nature: for bold responses to the crises of our times, strong and progressive alliances are needed now more than ever.