Their Voices Matter – Community Responses to Covid-19 Measures: Week 2

Community Responses to Covid 19 Measures: Week 2

In the second week of the COVID-19 lockdown in Zimbabwe, the Zimbabwe Human Rights Association (ZimRights) members continued to speak out on their experiences at community level. Two more deaths were recorded in the week under unclear circumstances. This raised concern about government’s preparedness to test, treat and manage the disease. It was also this week that reports of police brutality targeting citizens filtered in with at least one person being killed in Bulawayo.

There were reports of partisan aid distribution, and selective listing of beneficiaries of the government funds to cushion those in the informal sector. At national level, doctors, lawyers and media practitioners resorted to litigation to force government to act on human rights concerns raised during the lockdown. In this report, we capture how ordinary Zimbabweans interacted with these developments from a human rights perspective and discuss
possible remedies to their concerns.

Information Management in Times of Crisis
When confronted with an invisible enemy like the COVID-19 pandemic, a lot depends on how the information is managed. This helps society appreciate the magnitude of the problem, identify hotspots and inform communities on the approaches at both national level and community level. In countries like the United Kingdom, journalists are treated as an ‘essential service’ to allow them to disseminate accurate information.

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