Perspectives and analysis
Civil society organizations are among the forgotten heroes of the Covid-19 pandemic in Southeast Asia. Across the region, CSO responded temporarily to the early days of the pandemic, offering food, blank water, physical care and resources to vulnerable populations at risk of falling. through the cracks of government efforts.
OSC as YASMIB in Indonesia, the Isaan Agrarian Reform Network in Thailand and the Youth Feminist Collective in the Philippines have focused their efforts on the immediate wishes of local communities. LAPAR in Makassar, Indonesia, and PACOS in Sabah, Malaysia, temporarily established coordination mechanisms with governments and other CSOs to provide food and protective appliances to people with less access.
Other civil society organizations, such as the Malaysian Centre for Human Rights and Community Security and the Myanmar Women’s Organization Network, have focused on providing important data for expression teams, such as displaced migrant workers. The Philippine National Coalition of Rural Women provided data to local governments on the plight of remote rural communities to ensure that these vulnerable populations are not neglected around the world, women’s teams intensified their efforts on behalf of women and women as domestic violence rates began to rise under the growing strain of closures and economic hardship.
Efforts like these have been repeated throughout Southeast Asia in recent months. For decades, civil society in Southeast Asia has filled gaps in local governance by providing critical facilities to the poorest and most marginalized communities. throughout the region have been operating since the first Covid-19 outbreak to lessen the effect of the pandemic. In many cases, they have responded to the crisis more agilely and better than governments.
At the same time, the fitness and economic crises caused by Covid-19 have raised new pitfalls for CSOs, which have had to creatively design their responses to adapt to the new realities of social estating in mobile phone or Internet access spaces. is limited or non-existent, CSO has faced even greater barriers, suffering to communicate with its constituents, namely indigenous groups, poor and remote rural communities, undocumented residents, refugees and women.
In March and early April 2020, scholars at the Asia Foundation offices in Southeast Asia interviewed 47 CSOs about the demanding situations of the pandemic and how they responded to them. The studies covered Cambodia, Indonesia, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Thailand and Timor-Leste. Their findings, reported in the inaugural edition of the new quarterly GovAsia, show that CSO is delivering essential facilities to vulnerable and marginalized communities across southeast Asia, in a position of government. But civil society itself is also suffering to deal with the pandemic, and for organizations whose project focuses on democratization and human rights, the political environment in many regions has become even more limited than before. pandemic.
Despite the old and new difficulties, CSO has been incredibly useful in Covid-19 lockdowns, serving both at heart and on the front. With the lockdowns resulting in sudden and catastrophic task losses, the first affected were low-wage staff, self-employed workers, casual workers and migrants. Working women are particularly affected, as many of them paint in precarious tasks in the informal economy or have to take care of young people who suddenly drop out of school. Without income, the new unemployed gained emergency assistance and life-saving CSO livelihoods. CSO has also played a very important role as very important intermediaries between vulnerable communities and local governments, i. e. for populations that feel they are threatening to interact with the authorities.
CSO is also calling on governments to be held accountable for their responses to the crisis. In some countries, they have questioned the accuracy of official knowledge about the pandemic and continue to pressure the government on the importance of updating official figures.
Making governments guilty of the pandemic also means making sure that the culprits do not forget human rights violations in the Covid-19 responses. Many countries have given their governments emergency powers to counter the pandemic. A ministerial decree in Thailand, for example, allows the government to clean up media reports for erroneous data, and hounds now face criminal convictions of up to five years for disseminating data that the government considers false. The Philippines has also imposed serious sanctions for disseminating false data on the pandemic, and anyone who has done so can face heavy fines and up to two months of penalty. Many CSOs have expressed fear that governments will use these emergency powers to silence critics, suppress freedoms, and strengthen control, not only now but also in the future.
As we enter its tenth month, the pandemic is obviously far from over. CSO wants sustained donors to continue their paintings and help their communities cope with the havoc of the pandemic, especially as poverty and inequality have already begun to increase. , social and economic closures have reduced the operational capacity of CSO, leading to the cancellation of events, reduction of wages and reduction of services. Concerns.
These effects, in turn, underlined the importance of donor flexibility in this time of crisis. To continue fulfilling the wishes of Southeast Asia’s most vulnerable populations, CSO will want to exceed the prices of new and adapted activities, adding the way to online work.
The Covid-19 pandemic highlighted the very important role of civic spaces, yet the pandemic came at a time when declining foreign investment and democratic decline in many parts of Southeast Asia have made it increasingly difficult. create colorful and open civic spaces. CSOs try to constitute the interests of citizens and contribute resources in this time of crisis, they are proving to be very important factors in the reaction of the whole society to the global pandemic, and they are preferably placed to repair the fabric of the social team spirit in a post-pandemic world. It remains to be seen if they will have a chance to do so.
Read the full report, “Civil Society in Southeast Asia the Covid-19 Pandemic,” on GovAsia Issue One. This essay first gave the impression, in a slightly different way, on the Devpolicy blog as a component of its Covid- 19 series and Asia.
Nicola Nixon is the Director of Governance Programs at the Asia Foundation. She can be contacted at nicola. nixon@asiafoundation. org. Nicola thanks the colleagues who contributed to this work: Sann Socheata, Mochamad Mustafa, Sunita Anandarajah, Sumaya Saluja, Patrick Bolaños, Arpaporn Winijkulchai, Chris Bantug, Justino Sarmento Amaral and Tran Chung Chau. The reviews and reviews expressed here are those of the Asia Foundation and not those of the Asia Foundation.
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