COVID-19

As the 16 Days of Activism against Gender-Based Violence begins, Oxfam gender justice lead for Central America and LGBTQIA+ activist, Natalia Marsicovetere, spells out the Covid-19 pandemic’s impact on LGBTQIA+ people in Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador.

A new Oxfam report shows an undeniable increase in gender-based violence (GBV) during the COVID-19 pandemic around the world to which too many governments and donors are not doing enough to tackle.

The Covid-19 pandemic has shown that governments can take extraordinary measures to protect their citizens when spurred to action. We need to see more of this to address gender-based violence. We need to make the world safer for women, girls, and LGBTQI+ people. Here are five brilliant questions you asked about Oxfam’s recent report and our work on gender justice.

Gender-based violence is a global pandemic existing in all social groups across the globe, yet it has largely been ignored in the COVID-19 response and recovery plans. Barriers to achieving gender justice continue to exist, but progress made since the start of the 16 Days of Activism Against Gender-Based Violence Campaign show that there are solutions.

Before the Covid-19 pandemic 1 in 3 women experienced physical or sexual violence in their lifetime. With Covid-19 the situation got worse for many. Yet, nowhere near enough is being done to end it. Immediate action is needed now to fight gender-based violence. It starts with governments. It starts with social norms change. It starts with taking action.

In reaction to Pfizer’s announcement of voluntary licenses of its COVID-19 oral antiviral treatment Paxlovid to the Medicines Patent Pool, People’s Vaccine Alliance spokesperson and Oxfam America’s Senior Advocacy Advisor, Robbie Silverman, said: “Pfizer’s announcement to voluntarily licence the COVID treatment Paxlovid is welcome but is far from enough." 
 
 

New figures from the Peoples Vaccine Alliance reveal that the companies behind two of the most successful COVID vaccines – Pfizer, BioNTech and Moderna – are making combined profits of $65,000 every minute. The figures based on the latest company reports are released as CEOs from pharmaceutical industry meet for the annual STAT summit —the equivalent of a ‘Big Pharma Davos’— from 16-18 November.

In response to the announcement that AstraZeneca is to move away from the non-profit model for COVID vaccines, Anna Marriott, Oxfam’s Health Policy Manager and spokesperson for the People’s Vaccine Alliance, said: “AstraZeneca is breaking its repeated and celebrated public promises of a non-profit vaccine for all countries for the duration of this pandemic and to never to make a profit in any low- and middle-income country from this publicly funded vaccine."
 

An international coalition of human rights law groups, public health experts, and civil society organisations is taking legal action against the US, UK, Germany, Norway, and Switzerland, on the grounds that these countries are in violation of international human rights law by failing to intervene on what has been an inequitable and racially discriminatory rollout of the vaccine and other COVID healthcare technologies. 

In response to the announcement that the World Health Organisation (WHO) has granted emergency use license for the COVID-19 vaccine, Covaxin, developed by Bharat Biotech in India, People’s Vaccine Alliance spokesperson and Oxfam Health Policy Manager, Anna Marriott, said: "Another approved vaccine to fight COVID-19 is fantastic news. We strongly encourage Bharat Biotech to show pandemic leadership and do the right thing for humanity by agreeing to share the vaccine technology and rights with the WHO's COVID Technology Access Pool, so that more manufacturers around the world can produce them.