This weekly Covid-19 Conflict and Governance Evidence Summary aims to signpost DFID and other UK government departments to the latest evidence and opinions on Covid-19 (C19), to inform and support their responses.
This week, key focus issues and themes include: the impact of C19 in Latin America, as it now appears to be the epicentre of C19 cases; how C19 is deepening existing conflicts and crises in Yemen and South Sudan; and a range of organised crime topics – from the emboldening of criminal groups in Brazil to increased deforestation and organised crime.
This week’s addition features papers on: the specific vulnerabilities of youth and the need to include them in C19 responses, how West African states are exploiting C19 to repress opposition and manipulate elections, and a checklist for policy responses to target violence against healthcare workers, patients and facilities.
The summary uses two main sections – (1) literature: – this includes policy papers, academic articles, and long-form articles that go deeper than the typical blog; and (2) blogs & news articles. The articles in section (1) that are journal articles, or that explicitly state having been peer-reviewed, are highlighted in yellow. It is the result of one day of work, and is thus indicative but not comprehensive of all issues or publications.
Methodology
Due to the emerging nature of the Covid-19 crisis, this rapid weekly summary includes blogs, and news articles, in addition to policy and academic literature. The sources included are found through searches of Google Scholar, Google, and ReliefWeb with the keywords:
(“COVID-19” OR “coronavirus”) AND (“developing countries” OR “Africa” OR “Asia” OR “Middle East” OR “Latin America” OR “Pacific”) AND (“conflict” OR “peace” OR “violence” OR “resilience” OR “fragility”) OR (“authoritarian*” OR “democra*” OR “corrupt*” OR “transparency” OR “state legitimacy” OR “non-state actors” OR “state capacity” OR “state authority” OR “politic*” OR “state institutions”)
The searches are restricted to articles published in the previous seven days, in English. This is complemented by: a focussed Twitter search (using just the pages of a small selection of research organisations, and key scholars/thinkers, including those funded by the UK government’s Department for International Development (DFID)); and through email recommendations from DFID advisors and leading experts. This is trial and error approach, which will be refined and changed over the coming weeks. If you have literature to include in the weekly summary, please email – s.herbert@bham.ac.uk
Thanks to Priscilla Baafi for research assistance support, and Professor Heather Marquette for expert advice.