Food insecurity under COVID-19

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The coronavirus pandemic has had a catastrophic effect on the nutritional health of the UK’s poorest citizens with as many as one in 10 forced to use food banks, and vast numbers skipping meals and going hungry, according to the government’s food safety watchdog.  Food insecurity in England, Wales and Northern Ireland was experienced by about 16% of adults – equivalent to up to 7.8 million people. 
This figure more than doubled under Covid-19 and has remained stable over the first four months of the pandemic.  Food bank use has remained high, with one in 10 people reporting they had accessed one in June. Separate figures published by Food Standards Scotland found 5% used food banks. Prior to Covid-19 best estimates put UK food bank use at about 2% of adults. Despite the surge in numbers using food banks since lockdown, the FSA’s qualitative study noted that many of the struggling people interviewed said they had avoided food charity because they felt too ashamed at being unable to provide for their family, and would rather cut meals rather than accept handouts.
Food insecurity has shot up even further since lockdown as people’s income reduced, the Food Standards Agency (FSA) said, heightening the risk both of malnutrition and obesity as struggling families adopted highly restrictive “basic sustenance” diets that largely cut out healthy foods.
Food during the Covid crisis was “a continual source of concern and worry” rather than nourishment and security for many families, it found. “Many quickly cut calorie intake and reduced the quality of the food eaten – with far-reaching physical and emotional impact. Many children went without.”
Increasing food prices meant some doubled their food spend, even though they ate less. Many struggled to afford food used to manage their health – such as gluten-free. Birthday meals and Sunday lunches were cancelled. “There was little sense of social sharing when serving toast for the second ‘meal’ of the day.”
The FSA is concerned that many people in food insecurity reported regularly eating food beyond its use-by date such as bagged salad, cheese and smoked fish. Over a quarter said they drank milk that was past its use-by date. “Stretching out” food in this way put them at risk of food poisoning.
“Our research shows our food habits changed rapidly in lockdown and that food insecurity has become an issue for many people,” said the FSA’s chief executive, Emily Miles.
Food insecurity is broadly defined as experiencing hunger, the inability to secure food of sufficient quality and quantity to enable good health and social participation, and cutting down on food because of a lack of money. 
For the better off, Covid-19 has for many provided nutritional benefits, the FSA noted, with its tracker survey showing more people cooking at home from scratch using healthy ingredients rather than having takeaways or buying processed meals, as well as enjoying more family meals together.
These benefits were largely denied to people in food insecurity, whose diet narrowed sharply and was biased towards cheap carbohydrates like rice and pasta. One man, the FSA study found, “ate mostly tinned peas on toast; another woman mostly bread.” Many showed “early signs” of malnutrition. Others put on weight.
The FSA’s independent Covid-19 expert advisory panel had identified food insecurity as a “prioritise and act” issue – echoing the findings of the recently published National Food Strategy, which concluded that post-lockdown recession many more families will struggle to feed themselves adequately.
The FSA said its independent Covid-19 expert advisory panel had identified food insecurity as a “prioritise and act” issue – echoing the findings of the recently published National Food Strategy, which concluded that post-lockdown recession many more families will struggle to feed themselves adequately.
“These reports speak of the brutal reality of being too poor to put a meal on the table and how debilitating this is for households with children,” said Anna Taylor, executive director of the Food Foundation thinktank. “All scenarios point to a worsening of this bleak situation…”

The Wealthy Few

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$13,000,000,000. That’s how much Jeff Bezos, the wealthiest man alive, made in one day while the companies he owns denies paid sick leave, hazard pay and a safe workplace to hundreds of thousands of his workers.
$21,000,000,000. That’s how much the Walton family, the richest family in America, made over the past 20 weeks while US taxpayers continue to subsidize the starvation wages at Walmart, the largest private employer in America.
The three wealthiest people in America owning more wealth than the bottom 50%, the top 1% owning more wealth than the bottom 92% and 45% of all new income going to the 1%.
$731,000,000,000. That’s how much the wealth of 467 billionaires increased since the Federal Reserve started taking emergency actions to prop up the stock market in March.
 The top 0.0001% – are using a global pandemic as an opportunity to make outrageous profits after receiving a de facto bailout by the Federal Reserve.
A 60% tax on the wealth gains made by just 467 billionaires in America would raise over $420bn. That’s enough money to empower Medicare to pay all of the out-of-pocket healthcare expenses of every American in this country, including prescription drugs, for an entire year.  Healthcare would be extended to everyone in America through Medicare and no one, regardless of their coverage, would have to pay any out-of-pocket medical bills over the next 12 months.  Even after paying this tax, these 467 billionaires will still come out ahead by $310bn.

Re-Discovering Aborigine History

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Archaeologists say they have found ancient banana farms once managed by Australia’s Indigenous peoples.

The agricultural system reflected the local regional diet at the time which included staples such as yams, taro and bananas.
“Our research shows the ancestors of the Goegmulgal people of Mabuyag were engaged in complex and diverse cultivation and horticultural practices in the western Torres Strait at least 2,000 years ago,” lead researcher Robert Williams said.
“Food is an important part of Indigenous culture and identity and this research shows the age and time depth of these practices,” said Mr Williams.
Historians have argued that the British denied evidence of Indigenous agriculture systems so they could claim the land was unsettled and unoccupied.

Paying the Privileged.

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Companies are using millions of dollars in jobkeeper payments designed to keep Australian workers employed during the coronavirus crisis to help pay increased dividends to shareholders.



 Stock exchange disclosures show that over the past week retailers Adairs and Nick Scali, and dental chain 1300 Smiles, increased their dividend payouts after receiving jobkeeper funding, and market observers expect additional shareholders to reap similar benefits as more companies report their results over the coming fortnight.



 Shareholders pocketing big dividend payments include Nick Scali managing director Anthony Scali, who will collect about $2.5m, and 1300 Smiles founder Daryl Holmes, who is to receive a $1.8m payout – the same amount the company received in jobkeeper.



 Peter Morgan, a former fund manager at Perpetual who is now an independent investor, said jobkeeper was supposed to keep employees in their jobs but there was “obviously money going out the door on a short-term basis, not only to reward shareholders but in a couple of cases there are principals who are clearly quite well-off”.



  Peter Whish-Wilson, the Treasury spokesman for the Greens told Guardian Australia that “Australians will see this as a rort. And they are right – this is corporate welfare, which is neither fair nor affordable.” 



 One market observer said the jobkeeper program was “an invitation to abuse” that was amplified by the lack of transparency.



 https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2020/aug/11/companies-using-millions-in-jobkeeper-payments-to-pay-increased-dividends-to-shareholders

Dehumanising the Desperate

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Nearly half of the British public have little or no sympathy for asylum-seekers making the desperate journey across the Channel from France. Half of the British adults surveyed felt the UK does not have a responsibility to help protect migrants are arriving in England from France. Again approaching half of Britons believe that in comparison with other EU countries, the UK has “done more than our fair share to accommodate refugees” even though data shows that, in 2019, Germany received 165,600 asylum applications – the largest of any EU country, followed by France with 128,900, Spain with 117,800, Greece with 77,300, and the UK with 44,800.



 The survey suggested that many among the British public may favour such increasingly hardline measures. Some in the public sphere accusing those making the desperate journey of being “economic migrants” rather than refugees.



 Of course, such prejudices don’t arise in a political or media vacuum. 



 A group of Tory MPs and peers led by John Hayes insisted  that arrivals were “invading migrants” being put up in “expensive hotels” and enjoying “immediate access” to financial help.



 Britain’s television news broadcasters have been criticised by campaigners over their coverage of migrants crossing the Channel, with claims that some of their reports dehumanise those taking the risk to make the journey. Stephen Farry, the deputy leader of Northern Ireland’s Alliance party, said it was not ethical journalism. “It is voyeurism and capitalising on misery. Media should be seeking to hold the Home Office to account, and the dark forces fuelling this anti-people agenda.”



 BBC presenter Carrie Grace mistakenly claimed that “the rules state, around refugee and asylum status, that asylum-seekers should apply in the first state country they reach”.  There are no such legal restrictions on asylum-seekers.



 Baraa Halabieh, a Syrian actor, interpreter and refugee living in the UK told the BBC explains, that the main reasons asylum-seekers come to the UK are that they speak English or have a family connection in the UK, and because the UK’s family reunification programme is faster than other countries. If it was for the “generous” state benefits that they were coming for, he points out, “If they were after the financial support, they would stay in other European countries where the financial support is way higher than the UK – they are not coming to the UK for £37 a week.”

The government was warned nine months ago that its own policies were “pushing migrants to take more dangerous routes” across the English Channel in an official report by MPs on the Foreign Affairs Committee, among them now Home Secretary Patel. The report called for the government to increase legal routes to seek asylum, improve “dire” conditions in French camps, and address the root causes of migration.



 “These are people who are desperate, who have seen violence in countries, they are fleeing from places like Afghanistan, Syria and Iraq,” Gulwali Passarlay, who wrote an acclaimed book about escaping Afghanistan when he was a 12-year-old boy. Responding the group of 25 Tory MPs discussing “invading migrants”, Mr Passarlay told the BBC on Tuesday: “They have to look at themselves and have humanity and have decency.”



 https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/migrant-channel-crossing-yougov-uk-france-asylum-refugee-a9666041.html



https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2020/aug/11/bbc-and-sky-accused-of-dehumanising-people-trying-to-cross-channel




Supping with the devil

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In presidential election, stopping Trump appears to many liberal and progressive activists to be the most pressing point: a new right-wing is on the ascendancy and are stronger now than they have been in a generation. The new conservative coalition is one of the most serious prospects American citizens confront today. Economic and social crises always have a falling-out-among-thieves as different sectors of capitalists seek to gain long-term advantage for themselves in the working out of capitalism’s common problems. Today a number of mainstream movements such as the Lincoln Project are trying to rally against Trump. And in doing so they are providing Biden with the fig–leaf of respectability. In short, voting for Biden because one is appalled by Trump’s policies is far from reasonable given that Biden largely shares many of them.  

The American electoral system works by an array of tricks to keep working-class voters, mainly African Americans and other minorities, from voting. America’s electoral farce often affirms the Marxist understanding that capitalist democracy masks the dictatorship of the capitalists over the workers. With various forms of voter suppression the corrupt nature of the U.S. electoral system has been exposed before the eyes of the working class here and internationally. Corporate lobbyist give politicians donations but they are not really contributions. They are investments or bribes with an expectation of the favors being returned with business-friendly policies.  

The ritualized media circus between Democrats and Republicans reflect differences within the ruling class, but always the two parties are united in defending the interests of the masters at the expense of the wage-slaves. As socialists, we support no side in this November 3rd election. Biden, like Trump, is a loyal servant of the capitalist class. But the Democrats, unlike the Republicans, rest on a base of minority voters and organized labor. The unquestioning support of the Democrats by the labor union leadership as well as African-American and Latino leaders is exactly the reason Clinton/Obama got away with all of their attacks on workers and the oppressed. That is why Biden couches his speeches in conciliatory language, mobilizing his constituencies upon identity politics but never encouraging struggles that will threaten the capitalist system. Tragically, many workers, all colors, are being misled into supporting Biden despite the fact that he represents the enemy class as his and the Democratic Party’s record demonstrates. Capitalism offers no future for workers of any color. There was no choice for workers in this election. It is the responsibility of the World Socialist Party of the United States (WSPUS) to teach that workers have the  power and should not rely on either benevolent saviors or so-called lesser evils. The WSPUS appeals to fellow-workers who already sneer at the capitalist parties and disdain the voting booth that real answer to their powerlessness and desperation lies in forming a socialist party to combat the rule of the capitalist parties in class warfare. Our strength is in collective struggle to bring down this wretched system of exploitation and oppression. Such a party as our own is dedicated to overthrowing both the capitalist economic system and the coercive state that defends it. Those of you who see the need to get rid of capitalism must join us today if we are to win greater numbers of workers to our banner tomorrow. 

People are taught not to vote FOR what they believe but AGAINST a personality. But we should recall the advice of Eugene Debs, “It is better to vote for what you want and not get it than to vote for what you don’t want and get it.”

Socialists from the Impossiblists tradition do not advocate running electoral candidates for the sake of winning elections, or harbor illusions about how much having members in elected positions can reform and alter the status quo. We support participation in elections because running candidates who represent working class views and interests augments fellow-workers consciousness. Election campaigns result in substantially more media and public attention, and thus have more movement building potential.

 Chomsky and others portray support by activists for Biden as a necessary but harmless tactic that can be undertaken without illusions and without affecting their commitment to building future strong social movements. They declare principled political stands as “sectarian” and “dogma.” Yet the WSPUS claim –that Democrats’ and Republicans’ disagreements are largely over secondary questions, whereas on primary ones they largely agree is a valid one. Rather than being a benign practical pragmatic policy it detracts from building a viable socialist movement undermining working class power.The “lesser evil” bandwagon contributes to the disempowerment of the working class. When activists unconditionally guarantee their votes to Democrats they are beholden to the Democratic Party.  Voting “lesser evil” is a slippery slope down which even the best intentioned “lesser evil” supporters slide. To justify their support, many of them exaggerate the differences and minimize the similarities with Republicans, avoiding any protest against Democratic politicians’ policies. There is no such thing as voting “without illusions,” because this act entails the illusion that we are better off getting a “lesser evil” elected than in creating independent working class resistance, including an effective socialist party. The WSPUS cannot afford to let our fellow-workers wander down a mistaken path without challenge. 


When Marx urged workers of the world to unite, he meant with one another not with the politicians of our masters.

Australia needs immigrants

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“Australia’s entire economy is based on immigration,” says Liz Allen, a demographer at the Australian National University.
Migration is the major driver behind Australia’s population growth, which in turn has driven economic growth. The dramatically reduced numbers of international students coming to Australia has already hit the higher education sector. But Allen says that’s just the tip of the iceberg.
“Migrants contribute to demand and supply sides of the economy and bolster the socioeconomic wellbeing of this nation in ways many don’t realise,” she says. The food we eat, homes, towns, hospitals all rely on migrants, and businesses depend on them.
“Without migrants, Australia’s future feels less certain, because the grim reality is that the economy needs the inputs of migrants to ensure our standard of living doesn’t decline,” she says.
Chief economist for the Australia Institute, Richard Denniss, says, “Slowing population growth will lead to slower economic growth. Full stop. No debate about that at all…” 
Abul Rizvi, a former deputy secretary of the immigration department, agrees that migration and the economy normally “follow each other very closely”, though “which drives which is a chicken and egg question”. Slowing the population’s ageing improves per capita economic growth, he says. Australia’s migration program targets people from about 20 to 35, and because of their relative youth, migrants will have disproportionately more children in the future. Migration has made Australia among the youngest developed nations on the planet, with a median age of 37. That means that a fall in migration will decrease the birth rate and accelerate the Australian population’s ageing, he says.
“Those are just almost givens now,” Rizvi says. “That will hurt us.”
Unemployment is now predicted to exceed 9% by Christmas. Some suggest this means we should be slow to welcome migrants back, lest they take jobs Australians could fill. Nor is it the criticism of the right-wing.  Labor’s home affairs spokeswoman, Kristina Keneally, argues Australia should “shift away from its increasing reliance on a cheap supply of overseas, temporary labour that undercuts wages for Australian workers and takes jobs Australians could do.”
Rizvi and Allen explained that migrants don’t tend to take jobs Australians would otherwise do, because they’re either bringing skills Australians lack or doing low-skilled jobs that Australians don’t want to do.
“Australia’s migration scheme is demand-driven, meaning migrants aren’t stealing locals’ jobs,” Allen says. “Migrants do more than fill jobs locals can’t or won’t do. Migrants help build consumer sentiment and so have a bit of a turbocharge impact on the economy.”
“We have a chronic undersupply of housing generally, which is one of the reasons Australian housing is so expensive,” says Michael Fotheringham, the executive director of the Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute. Because the construction sector generally keeps pace with a growing population and demand for residential construction, the fall in migration will leave that sector with spare capacity, Fotheringham says and that could lead to unemployment and underemployment. Fotheringham suggests the construction of social housing as a solution that would help both the construction sector and those who are struggling to afford accommodation.

A War for Oil in Libya

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In August 2011, as Libya’s rebels and Nato jets began an assault on Tripoli, Gaddafi delivered a speech calling on his supporters to defend the country from foreign invaders. 
“There is a conspiracy to control Libyan oil and to control Libyan land, to colonise Libya once again. This is impossible, impossible. We will fight until the last man and last woman to defend Libya from east to west, north to south,” he said.
Nine years on, Gaddafi’s proclamation is not far from the truth with regional powers has descended on Libya in a showdown over control of Libya’s oil wealth. 2020 has  brought an escalation in Libya’s conflict, and LNA-controlled Sirte – along with oilfields south of the city – could trigger unprecedented clashes between foreign powers on Libyan soil.
In violation of an international arms embargo, the city of Sirte and its surrounding area has been flooded with weapons and fighters in recent weeks as forces loyal to the government in Tripoli mobilise on one side of the frontline, and those fighting for General Khalifa Haftar, appointed by the rival parliament in Tobruk, line up on the other.  Tripoli is desperate to dislodge Haftar’s forces.
At stake is Libya’s greatest treasure: the largest oil reserves in the entire African continent. The majority of the country’s oilfields are in the Sirte basin, worth billions of dollars a year. Haftar’s forces, who are in control of Sirte, imposed a blockade on oil exports in January, causing revenues to plummet as daily production dropped off from around 1 million barrels to just 100,000 barrels a day.
Libya’s Government of National Accord (GNA) is officially recognised by the UN as Libya’s legitimate government.   The GNA’s main allies are Turkey and Qatar, and to some extent Italy, which relies on the GNA to stop the flow of migrants crossing the Mediterranean to its shores.
Haftar is supported by leaders of the UAE, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Jordan, who view political Islam as a threat to their own power, and by Russia.  France also backs Haftar and a secular-led Libya to ensure the safety of its troops further south.
The fighting is further complicated by tribal dynamics, the proliferation of drone warfare and an ever-expanding presence of foreign mercenaries: Russia’s state-linked Wagner group has provided key tactical support to the LNA since last year. The mercenaries acting on behalf of Moscow and Abu Dhabi are consolidating their presence at al Jufra airbase to the south of Sirte, deploying at least 14 MiG-29 and Su-24 fighter jets from Syria, and have reportedly also taken control of the country’s largest oilfield, El Sharara, and the exporting port Es Sider.
About 10,000 Syrians – their own proxy war still raging – are also now fighting on both sides of the war, lured by higher salaries than they can earn at home. Both the GNA and LNA’s backers face accusations of recruiting men from Chad, Somalia and Sudan to work as security guards or in support line units, who instead find themselves deployed on Libya’s frontlines as cannon fodder.
“In many ways, you can think of the wars in Syria, Ukraine and now Libya as equivalents to the Spanish civil war back in the 1930s,” said Peter Singer, a specialist in 21st-century warfare and senior fellow at the New America foundation. “It is not just that various powers are fighting proxy wars there, through a mix of official and hired forces, but that they are also using the conflicts as a kind of test ground for both what works and what they can get away with. Just like the 1930s, we will see the ripple effects of this for years to come.”
At the end of last year Haftar was close to seizing Tripoli after a months-long campaign that killed more than 3,000 people and displaced up to 500,000 civilians from their homes. In January Turkey took dramatic action to prevent the capital from falling, following up a declaration of overt military support for the GNA by sending Turkish troops, drones, air defence systems and Syrian fighters to drive the renegade general’s forces back. The move paid off: in the space of a few months, Turkey turned the tide of the war, and Haftar was forced to retreat from much of western Libya.
The GNA has since begun a steady march eastward in the hope of pressuring Haftar to give up control of the Sirte oil basin. To counter Turkey, last month Egypt’s parliament also declared open military intervention in Libya, warning that if pro-GNA forces advance on Sirte, Cairo will respond with “direct action”.
“Even as military build-up in Sirte continues, the situation is basically deadlocked and the only non-military way out of this is an agreement on sharing oil revenues,” said Claudia Gazzini, a senior Libya analyst with International Crisis Group. “Unfortunately, neither side is likely to give up such important assets. Players in Tripoli would rather not march on the city, and it would be dangerous for Turkey to risk an outright conflict with the Russians, or the Egyptians, but the status quo isn’t sustainable. As long as Haftar sits on the oil and no revenue is going Tripoli’s way, he is nominally still in control.”

The Pandemic and Women

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Natalia Kanem, executive director of the UN Population Fund, is among experts warning about disrupted health services and a surge in gender-based violence.  Fears are increasing about the effect of the pandemic on women’s and girls’ sexual and reproductive health and their access to care. 



 Natalia Kanem told The Lancet that she was concerned about the effect COVID-19 was having on women and girls. “In a word, it is devastating. There are many women in situations of desperation right now and all this tallies up to devastating health and social consequences for that woman, for that girl, for that family, for that community”, she said. “We were doing okay, we still needed to accelerate progress, but now here you have a situation where we could actually go backward. It’s unacceptable.”



  Clare Wenham, assistant professor of global health policy at the London School of Economics, London, UK, said we can look to lessons from the west Africa Ebola virus disease outbreak, which showed that the biggest threat to women’s and girls’ lives was not the virus itself, but the shutdown of routine health services and fear of infection that prevented them from going to health facilities that remained open.



  Many countries implemented tough lockdowns and travel restrictions in a bid to slow transmission. In doing so, some governments did not heed WHO’s advice, and instead forced sexual and reproductive health services to close because these services were not classified as essential. These services include abortion or even, as Human Rights Watch has reported in Brazil, contraception. This decision not only denied women and girls access to time-sensitive—and potentially life-saving—services, but also further distanced them from already difficult-to-access sexual and reproductive health care. Vinoj Manning, chief executive officer of the Ipas Development Foundation, an organisation that is focused on the delivery of comprehensive abortion care, said that while the Indian government classified reproductive health as an essential service—albeit, 3 weeks into lockdown after protest from doctors—the policy did not trickle down to the ground level. The effects of travel restrictions, closure of health services, economic hardship, and gender-based violence are already evident.



 UNFPA predicts there could be up to 7 million unintended pregnancies worldwide because of the crisis, with potentially thousands of deaths from unsafe abortion and complicated births due to inadequate access to emergency care. 



 Kanem added that she was particularly concerned about “the skyrocketing of gender-based violence”, which she said was a “pandemic within a pandemic and it’s very much on my mind”.



  Marie Stopes International (MSI), which works in 37 countries, predicts that the closure of their services would result in up to 9·5 million vulnerable women and girls losing access to contraception and safe abortion services in 2020. That disruption could result in as many as 2·7 million unsafe abortions and 11 000 pregnancy-related deaths. 



 For example, countrywide lockdowns in Nepal and India forced clinics operated by MSI—the largest provider of family planning services in India outside of the public sector—to close. The governments of Nepal and India both ordered tough national lockdowns for several months and because of mobility restrictions, neither providers nor clients could reach MSI clinics, forcing the clinics to close. MSI Nepal’s contact centre had a huge increase in the number of calls from women seeking abortion services since the start of lockdown. In India, millions of women living in hard-to-reach areas have been unable to access contraceptive services.



 The Foundation for Reproductive Health Services India estimates that the disruption caused from lockdowns could leave up to 26 million couples in India unable to access contraception, leading to an additional 2·3 million unintended pregnancies and over 800 000 unsafe abortions, which is the third leading cause of maternal deaths in India.



 The Indian public health-care system is on the brink of collapse. “Public health-care facilities have been repurposed for COVID-19. Facilities which offered services for women had to be repurposed too and accredited social health activists [community health workers] have been allocated to COVID-19 prevention, identification, and treatment instead of offering family planning services”, Vinoj Manning said.



 Additionally, many private clinics had to shut down because of transport shortages, provider unavailability, and a lack of personal protective equipment. Almost three-quarters of abortions in India are medical abortions, for pregnancies up to 7 weeks. Research from Ipas has found that the closure of pharmacists, the disruption of the supply chain, and travel restrictions had prevented millions of women from accessing medical abortions during lockdown.



 There are now many women who are now in their second trimester of an unwanted pregnancy and who, if given the opportunity, would like to terminate it. A major barrier is that many women do not know that abortion is legal up to 20 weeks, except in cases of rape, incest, or when the mother is a minor, when abortion can be done up to 24 weeks.



  “India is not good at providing second trimester abortion even though it’s legal; it’s not that available even in normal times. Now is the time to look at that cohort of women who require a different sort of service. How do we best handle that? We need a specialised effort.” Manning said that this effort would require the public and private sectors to work together to close the gap, improve the referral system, and raise awareness.



 There is also concern that the disruption in global supply chains for contraception could result in more sexually transmitted infections, including HIV. “The adolescent girl was already at the highest risk of contracting HIV, so am I worried? I am absolutely concerned”, Kanem said. “The risk of sexually transmitted infections, in particular HIV, going in the wrong direction could be catastrophic.”



 There is also growing anxiety about the increase in gender-based violence, with international and national organisations warning of a dramatic surge in cases of violence against girls and women. In Colombia, for example, reports of gender-based violence during lockdown increased by 175% compared with the same period last year, according to Plan International. “Gender-based violence has distinguished the pandemic [from other crises] because of the lack of movement and people being trapped in abusive situations”, Kanem said. “The hotlines, the shelters, the counselling that is required has been increasing dramatically. It has happened in developed and developing countries.”



 https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(20)31679-2/fulltext?dgcid=raven_jbs_etoc_email

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