Policy briefs

In this report, I examine the impacts of the pandemic and policy responses to it, focussing on Indigenous Peoples (IPs) in the Nilgiri Biosphere Reserve, which spans Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, and Kerala. The analysis reveals that the pandemic and accompanying lockdowns produced new forms of exclusions. It widened existing socio-economic fissures and brought into sharp relief social security systems which were already strained. For example, a widening of the existing digital divide that excluded Adivasi students from online education and homogenous policy interventions that often reproduce inequities based on caste, class, livelihoods, and gender. Policy interventions have, to some extent, engaged with the multiple risks and impacts COVID-19 placed on the poor and marginalised, but few of them attend to the structural inequities of IPs or speak to their differential experiences and vulnerabilities. By privileging the physical health aspects of the pandemic over socio-cultural and economic impacts, the policy response to COVID excluded and further marginalized vulnerable communities. The IP community’s socio-economic marginalisation as well as the developmental state’s inattention to social protection for these forest-dependent communities, has meant that the impacts of the pandemic have been especially crippling and acute for IPs in India.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.24943/PRCP12.2022

This policy brief aims to provide Peruvian stakeholders with recommendations for better preparation for future emergent health risks such as pandemics. Recommendations include key measures to strengthen food and health Indigenous systems, responses to face new health emergencies, and developing specific policies for Indigenous populations.  

This document has been produced collectively among community and policy Indigenous observers working with Peruvian researchers as part of a global program called the  COVID Observatories of Indigenous populations. 

The research teams have been working with IPs and decision-makers to document the impacts COVID-19 is having on indigenous communities and how people are responding. This policy brief has been worked with The Batwa Indigenous people in Uganda. The findings include key themes of COVID-19 epidemiology & knowledge, lived experiences (characterized under livelihoods, access to health facilities, food security, and sexual gender-based violence -SGBV), COVID-19 response, challenges faced and policy recommendations. This brief aims to help understand and communicate the unique context challenges, resilience factors, and needs of Indigenous communities for COVID-19 response and recovery, informing local and global decision-making now and in the future.