At the height of the pandemic, nearly 1.5 billion children were out of school due to closures of educational institutions in at least 160 countries, exacerbating an already dire learning crisis in low- and middle-income countries and diminishing economic opportunities for the next generation.[i] A culture of fear, censorship and misinformation flourished across mass media, intensifying political tensions in many societies. COVID-19 compounded the impacts of fragility, conflict, mass violence and food insecurity, pushing an additional 88 million people into extreme poverty in 2020.[ii] Those groups on the margins of society—namely, women, LGBTQIA+, older persons, youth and children, persons with disabilities, indigenous populations, refugees, migrants, those in rural areas, minorities and those with these intersecting identities—experienced the highest degrees of vulnerability.[iii] Women, in particular, who constitute 70 percent of the health and social sector’s workforce, disproportionately experienced employment and wage loss and were at higher risk of intimate partner violence and other forms of domestic violence, homelessness and maternal mortality.[iv]
COVID-19
COVID-19 changed how people live, work, interact and educate. It is not possible to reflect on the state of truth in the world in 2023 without acknowledging the pandemic’s profound and long-lasting influence on human security, human rights and transitional justice.[i] In late 2019, the Wuhan Municipal Health Commission first reported on a cluster of pneumonia cases in Wuhan, Hubei Province, China, sounding the alarm on what the World Health Organization would soon classify as a global pandemic.[ii] The novel coronavirus (COVID-19), an infectious disease caused by the SARS-CoV-2 virus, would spread throughout the world rapidly, infecting at least 663 million people and killing more than 6.7 million[1] within three years.[iii] The geopolitical, economic and social disruptions of COVID-19 fueled the largest global recession since the Great Depression, while leading to widespread food and supply shortages.[iv] Under waves of restrictions intended to curb the virus’s transmission, tens of millions of people were pushed into extreme poverty, reversing developmental gains across all regions, but particularly in South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa.[v] The case studies referenced here and throughout this report illuminate how the pandemic shaped memory, justice and education, reflecting key challenges and opportunities in how we reckon with the past.
Recent Developments
At the onset of COVID-19, the governments of all nations featured in this report introduced some form of lockdown regulations to contain the virus, including but not limited to social distancing, restrictions on transportation and other forms of intra- and inter-state movement, closures or adjustments to the functioning of key institutions, curfews, state of emergencies, restrictions on gatherings and deployment of security forces.[i]
With limited resources, public attention and donor funding diverted, albeit temporarily, from transitional justice and peacebuilding to the public health crisis, governments in China, Colombia, Myanmar, South Sudan, Sudan, Sri Lanka, Ukraine and elsewhere exploited COVID-19 restrictions to curtail political activities or violently crack down on insurgents, protesters and perceived political opponents.[ii] Governments enforced emergency measures as a pretext for power consolidation, as in Mexico, Sri Lanka and Venezuela. Voter registration witnessed a decline and elections were postponed in the Central African Republic, Ethiopia and Sri Lanka. Indeed, the pandemic amplified existing fractures in societies and triggered a host of new human rights violations.
There were also moments when collective grief and the need for healing propelled new levels of engagement in activism and social movements. Deteriorating trust in public institutions opened space for global conversations around critical human rights issues such as systemic discrimination, access to health care and economic inequality.[iii] In the United States, for instance, the pandemic highlighted stark disparities in health outcomes for Black people, while the lack of protections for lower-income workers exposed and exacerbated systemic racism and economic inequality.[iv] Black and brown Americans grew seriously ill and died at significant higher rates than did white Americans, due to intergenerational lack of access to adequate medical care and vaccines, inferior standards of care, ongoing weaknesses in the U.S. health insurance system and the greater likelihood that Black and brown people would hold “essential worker” positions that exposed them to greater risks.[v]
Memory
COVID-19 restrictions imposed many obstacles to remembrance, conditioning the ways in which the right to memory was exercised.[i] Individuals interviewed for this report expressed concerns over being unable to congregate, visit family members and sick loved ones in hospitals or observe culturally specific burial or funeral rites due to the pandemic and lockdown measures. Fearing contagion, civil society organizers limited the numbers of those who could attend formal and informal gatherings out of caution. In some cases, communities innovated with grassroots memorials, oral history projects, virtual spaces for bereavement, virtual exhibits or remembrance initiatives and other new platforms for healing and action in difficult times.
One emblematic incident occurred in Wuhan, China, following the death of Dr. Li Wenliang, a whistleblower who attempted to warn the public about the COVID-19 outbreak in December 2019. Chinese authorities accused Li and seven others of spreading false information and allegedly threatened to prosecute him.[ii] Despite the government’s initial attempt to silence Li, he was regarded as a national hero when he succumbed to the virus himself, with the public showing their dissatisfaction with the government’s handling of the pandemic on social media and holding a virtual national memorial in his honor.[iii] Given the public outcry, the Chinese government retracted its accusations against Li nearly six weeks after his death.[iv] Nearly three years on, he is still a symbol of courage and dissent.[v]
Often, where the pandemic closed physical spaces for memory, memorialization efforts continued online. In Lebanon, the physical installation of “Empty Chairs, Waiting Families,” an exhibit displaying symbolic empty chairs where families would paint memories of those who went missing during armed conflicts in Lebanon since 1975, was canceled due to COVID restrictions. The memorial was published online instead, adding to ongoing efforts to create an exhaustive database of the disappeared, conduct investigations and raise awareness about the missing and disappeared, particularly among the youth.[vi]
Justice
Rule of law declined globally during the pandemic.[i] As institutions closed or reduced their operations, peace negotiations and the implementation of transitional processes stalled. Tribunals and truth and reparations commissions that had already been formed suspended their activities.[ii] This led to increased case backlogs and extended proceedings, as well as caused delays in outreach, investigations, hearings, victim support and reparations distributions. Restrictions on movement also limited victims’ accessibility to certain justice mechanisms. Members of vulnerable groups—women and children at risk of violence, detainees, migrants and asylum seekers, persons with disabilities, the elderly and those living in rural areas—were acutely affected.[iii] Almost immediately, victims of human rights violations found themselves isolated from support systems, which had both practical and psychological harms.[iv] The pandemic also spawned new demands in specific justice areas and institutional reforms to respond to increased gender-based violence and discrimination and to redress human rights violations.[v]
To meet these needs, some formal justice mechanisms rolled out awareness-raising campaigns through the media. Authorities created hotlines to support victims, hearings were held virtually or social distancing measures were adopted within the parameters of existing mechanisms. To compensate for disruptions to public hearings and events, Colombia’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission redefined itself, releasing a remarkable number of live-streamed podcasts, TV broadcasts, concerts and chats on an ambitious reparations plan for indigenous survivors.[vi] The Mexican National Search Commission created dedicated forensic cemeteries to preserve cadavers for future identification, since morgues were overcrowded with the remains of COVID-19 victims.[vii] Nevertheless, many victims expressed that these alternate platforms failed to make up for physical outreach and raised questions about the credibility and legitimacy of related processes.[viii]
Some governments took advantage of pandemic restrictions to further delay justice, such as in Guinea, where a trial initially expected to occur in 2020 for the 2009 stadium massacre by the elite Presidential Guard was postponed until September 2022.[ix] In Afghanistan, the High Court in Kabul continued to hold hearings, but lower courts vastly reduced services due to the pandemic. Civil servants with Afghanistan’s Ministry of Justice worked from home but were limited by lack of equipment, internet connectivity and access to files.[x] Meanwhile in Mexico, when the Movimiento por Nuestros Desaparecidos was forced to suspend search operations, families resorted to social media to keep enforced disappearances at the forefront of public attention.[xi]
Education
The pandemic had an overwhelmingly negative impact on education, affecting staffing levels, student absenteeism and learners’ psychological well-being, behavior and nutrition. The closures of educational facilities that were initially supposed to be temporary occurred in waves—in some cases over nearly two years.[i] When schools did reopen, many children did not return.[ii] Even where schools opted for remote instruction, educational outcomes reflected socioeconomic disparities and the digital divide.[iii] The decline in school enrollment after COVID-19 also demonstrated significant gendered inequalities that were not present before. For instance, 7 percent of Rohingya boys in the Cox’s Bazar refugee camps reported continuing their education, compared with less than 1 percent of girls.[iv]
Refugee children’s education was disproportionately affected by the pandemic. In Syria, humanitarian groups had difficulty ensuring that Syrian children had regular access to education due to COVID-related interruptions, ongoing attacks on schools and the forced displacement of students and instructors.[v] Children from Al Hol, Roj and Areesha camps in northeast Syria could not access learning programs or receive reliable remote training. The lack of access to education in Syria could detrimentally affect the country’s future reconstruction after 11 years of war.[vi]
Recommendations
States, CSOs, the judiciary and other stakeholders should prepare for potential future widescale disruptions to truth initiatives by undertaking collaborative efforts at the state and global levels to understand which pandemic-driven adaptations to memory, justice and education initiatives were successful and why.
Government strategies for responding to COVID-19 or other crises that cause movement restrictions or disruption of activities should include emergency legal services, psychosocial and medical support, guidance on how to access social protection benefits, access to legal documentation and assistance for community reintegration.
States should take steps to mitigate the impacts of COVID-19 and other health emergencies on access to justice and legal proceedings, such as funding for the legal aid system and support for victims, witnesses, defendants, counsel and justice system personnel to access information about cases and participate in legal proceedings remotely.
Notes
Download the notes for this chapter here.