pandemic – RightsViews

COVID-19 in India: Violation of the Right to Health and the Collapse of Healthcare Infrastructure

May 17, 2021 by Larissa PeltolaNo Comments

By guest contributor, Ayush Kumar is a law student at Dr. Ram Manohar Lohiya National Law University, India. On the 13th of March, as a gesture of accountability, Jordan’s health minister resigned after six Covid-19 patients died due to lack of oxygen at a hospital ward. Accountability is the linchpin of a functional democracy as it compels a State to explain what it is doing and how it is moving forward in times of crisis. In the past few weeks, India has faced a massive oxygen shortage as the healthcare infrastructure collapsed like a house of cards due to exponentially rising cases of Covid-19. Alone in the capital city, twenty-five patients died due to the shortage of oxygen on 24th April. The government’s inadequacy in providing healthcare facilities to its people is a serious violation of their human right to health. Patna High Court’s division bench expressed strong displeasure over the deaths due to oxygen shortage and further stated that lack of adequate...

COVID-19 in Africa: Responses and Prospect for Recovery

March 19, 2021March 17, 2021 by Larissa PeltolaNo Comments

By Lindsey Alpaugh, staff writer, RightsViews, Human Rights MA student. On Wednesday, January 27th, Columbia University held an event examining the impact of COVID-19 on the African continent. Panelists included Belinda Archibong, an Assistant Professor of Economics at Barnard College, Pedro Conceicao, the director of the Human Development Report Office and lead author of the Human Development Report, UNDP HDR office, and Dr. Wilmot James, Senior Research Scholar in the Institute for Social and Economic Research Policy. This event followed a series in the fall looking at COVID-19 in Latin America and was sponsored by the Economic and Political Development concentration at SIPA, the Institute for African Studies at Columbia University, Center for Development Economics and Policy, and SIPA Pan-African Network. African countries were able to have a significantly smaller first wave than predicted due to the dramatic measures that countries took to prevent the spread, such as closing schools and limiting travel. While this had a very successful impact on combatting the...

Stranded in Near Statelessness: The Coronavirus and Nepali Migrant Workers

September 15, 2020 by Rowena Kosher1 Comment

By Kelly Dudine, staff writer for RightsViews Men, women and children spend days in an open field, hungry, thirsty, exhausted, and abandoned. Unable to stay in India due to job loss following the Coronavirus pandemic, and prevented from traveling back to their homes in Nepal amid fears of spreading the virus, these Nepali migrant workers and their families are stranded at the Nepal-India border in a form of temporary statelessness. “How many days can children go without food or water? How many days? This is a human rights violation,” says Maggie Doyne, Co-Founder of the BlinkNow Foundation. The non-profit is among many local and international organizations responding to the growing humanitarian crisis in Nepal, including the Nepalgunj Medical College, ODA Foundation, Mottey Gang, Nepal Red Cross, and NYEF - Kathmandu Chapter, among others. Stepping in where the State is failing to meet the needs of its people, relief efforts are establishing food distribution banks and providing essential care services to thousands of returning migrant...