OAS Launches Practical Guide to Inclusive Rights-Focused Responses to COVID-19 in the Americas

(Organisation of American States Press Release, 7 April 2020) The Organization of American States (OAS) today launched the “Practical Guide to Inclusive Rights-Focused Responses to COVID-19 in the Americas.” The guide seeks to support OAS member states in responding to the pandemic, offering them a series of tools to consider responses that take into account the particular circumstances of groups in a situation of vulnerability.

The guide is available here in Spanish. The OAS will publish the English version soon.

“This pandemic affects all of us, directly or indirectly,” said the Secretary General of the OAS, Luis Almagro. “However, for people in situations of vulnerability, the reach of the impact is much deeper and could, very probably, increase the gaps in their access to their basic economic, social and cultural rights. We know that our political systems are going to suffer, that our social fabrics are going to suffer, but we cannot emerge from this situation either less democratic nor with fewer rights. Let us use this challenging moment to reinforce the values that we believe are indispensable for life and human development, and ensure that the people most excluded in our societies are neither left out nor left behind, not for a minute more.”

The Secretary General warned that the capacity to survive the pandemic “is much less likely” for people in situations of poverty and extreme poverty, as well as for groups historically discriminated against, such as women, indigenous peoples, afro-descendants, older persons, people with disabilities, migrants or refugees, lesbians, gay, bisexual, trans or intersex (LGBTI), children, adolescents, and people behind bars.

Read more at: Organisation of American States

Source: CARICOM TODAY