Published Thursday, April 8, 2021

International News

Covid-19 has laid bare and exacerbated the systemic inequality, widespread repression and destructive policies that contributed to the Americas becoming the region worst affected by the pandemic, Amnesty International said upon publishing its annual report.

The Americas, Amnesty International Report 2020/21: The State of the World’s Human Rights documents how women, refugees, migrants, under-protected health workers, Indigenous Peoples, Black people and other groups historically forgotten by governments have borne the brunt of the pandemic, while some leaders have exploited the crisis to ramp up their assault on human rights.

“Over the last year we’ve witnessed certain leaders in the Americas respond to the pandemic with a mixture of denial, opportunism and contempt for human rights," Erika Guevara-Rosas, Americas director at Amnesty International said. "We cannot continue down the road to ruin, repeating the mistakes that left the region ravaged by inequality, discrimination and destruction, even before covid-19 struck,”

According to the report, the Americas has been the region worst hit by Covid-19, with over 54 million cases and 1.3 million deaths. The USA, Brazil and Mexico have the world’s highest absolute death tolls, after their governments, along with those of Nicaragua and Venezuela, issued confusing health messages, failed to implement policies to protect those most at risk, or failed to ensure full transparency.


The Americas began 2020 as the world’s most unequal region and this only worsened under the pandemic, with an additional 22 million people falling into poverty, while the number living in extreme poverty grew by 8 million, the organization said.
 
Covid-19 hit the region’s vast informal economy hard, while government measures frequently undermined the social, economic and cultural rights of those in the most precarious situations.

At least 10,558 health workers across the Americas had died from covid-19 as of March 5, with health professionals in almost every country complaining about their governments’ failure to provide safe working conditions and sufficient personal protective equipment. Those who spoke out sometimes faced sanctions, as in Nicaragua, where at least 31 health workers were dismissed after expressing their concerns.

According to the analysis, arbitrary arrests were common and often linked to the enforcement of covid-19 restrictions, with some countries forcibly quarantining people in state-run centers that failed to meet sanitary and physical distancing standards. As people continued to flee violence, poverty and the effects of the climate crisis, several governments detained refugees, asylum-seekers and migrants in conditions that left them at high risk of contracting covid-19, while others forcibly returned people without proper consideration of their asylum claims.

"Under the pretext of public health measures, US authorities summarily detained and deported almost all asylum-seekers on the US-Mexico border, expelling over half a million migrants and asylum-seekers from March 2020 through February 2021, including over 13,000 unaccompanied children as of November 2020," the human rights defender organization said in its report.

According to the report, covid-19 restrictions also impacted freedom of expression, which remained under threat in Bolivia, Brazil, Cuba, Uruguay, Venezuela and Mexico, which was the world’s deadliest country for journalists in 2020. Rights to freedom of association and peaceful assembly were also denied or unduly restricted by the police or military, with unlawful use of force recorded in more than a dozen countries.

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How should the study results improve the government's plans to guarantee humans right in the continent? We would like to know your thoughts on this story. Send your comments to news@amcostarica.com