from South Africa arrive Cuba, Haiti arrive Lebanon, We have seen the biggest riots, protests and challenges to the government in decades. Many seem to be caused by the economic and social impact of the coronavirus and the government’s attempts to contain it.

Dr. Prabhat Jha, director of the Toronto Center for Global Health Research, called this a “perfect storm” of dissatisfaction caused by the COVID disaster.

Watch | Tunisian protests, the president of the country dissolves parliament:

Jha said, “COVID has exposed potential fault lines of anxiety and mistrust around the world,” especially between developed and developing countries.

“If you have unemployment, inequality, and governments fail to ensure that everyone is covered, and then more broadly, global governments fail to ensure that every country has a vaccine, and every citizen has a vaccine, then all these fault lines are indeed It heralds years of social unrest,” said Jia, who had worked on emergency epidemics in Sierra Leone and carried out projects in India.

Protests on the rise

Most parts of the world are already witnessing it.

Global data collected by ACLED, an American non-profit organization that tracks armed conflicts and unrest, show Last year, 49% of countries experienced political violence.

After a brief decline in demonstrations in the early stages of the pandemic-due to fear and alienation rules separating people-protests increased by 7% in 2020.

ACLED concluded that this was “not only because-but partly because-the pandemic.” It affects 58% of countries, the highest number in many years.

Researchers of the group Also found Since the arrival of COVID, this kind of national repression has intensified internationally.from Hungary arrive Hongkong ACLED said that in addition, governments have also used the “unique cover” of the pandemic to implement restrictions designed to consolidate authority, “it is a means to stifle the opposition and limit any challenge to power.”

In South Africa this month, the challenge to government power came from the streets. It was triggered by the imprisonment of former South African President Jacob Zuma on trial for corruption.

But the riots and robberies that lasted for more than a week-the most violent in the country in decades-are a pandemic that has pushed the unemployment rate in one of the most unequal societies in the world to over 30% .

Rita Abrahamson, who teaches African politics at the University of Ottawa, said: “The economic misery, lack of jobs, and income opportunities are part of the South African pandemic.” The level of anger.”

Vaccine shortage

Like all African countries, South Africa has been struggling to obtain enough vaccines. This fact does not help.Some of the most populous countries on the African continent—Nigeria, Ethiopia, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and Algeria—have Vaccination rate Take up to two doses per 100 people.

In South Africa, this number is 12 for every 100 people. In Canada, there are 128 out of every 100 people.

The virus is spreading in large parts of this continent of 1.2 billion people, as the third wave of infections has increased the number of deaths in many relatively low numbers of places. African observers worry that an outbreak of unrest may follow.

“We are on the cusp of a storm. It may go either way,” Kenyan writer and political analyst Nanjara Nyabola said in an interview with CBC News in Nairobi.

“I think there are many economic and social setbacks in many places [African] The country,” she said, “any trigger event can lead to resistance and political unrest. “

On the other hand, Niabola pointed out that many local and national opposition movements have stepped in to try to make up for the government’s shortcomings and promote health and safety during the pandemic, rather than protest.

In remote areas of Kenya, social action groups provide health advice in the local language through community broadcasts. Hand sanitizer and masks were distributed by activists.

In Senegal, the largest protest movement suddenly turned its efforts to public health education.Named after Y’en a Marre — “Enough” in French slang — the group is led by rappers and journalists.

Y’en a Marre has a history of organizing young people to take to the streets to fight the government, but now tells them to avoid the crowds. The organization promotes hand washing as much as social change in its latest music video. Fight against coronavirus.

Despite these efforts, Nyabola said that “risks still exist.”

“Because when there is a real reason, anger and protest are more attractive than organization.”

Turmoil in the West

Developed countries have also failed to avoid the wave of unrest.

In the United States, the group ACLED track The increase and decrease in the frequency of protests include the “Black People’s Fate” movement that has swept the world. It is worth noting that these figures “imitate” the peaks and troughs of the U.S. infection rate throughout 2020.

By November, the organization stated that 40% of all demonstrations were related to the pandemic.

This includes the violent attack on the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021. Zachariah Mamphilly said he was the co-author of the book. Uprising in Africa: popular protests and political change, He studied the global protest movement at the City University of New York.

“There is a really strong sense of COVID denialism in [those] Protests, I feel that COVID is the product of evil international forces-Bill Gates, George Soros and others,” Manfili said.

He said that the frustration of the pandemic—especially the way former President Donald Trump handled it—also stimulated the progressive movement in the United States.

“This dissatisfaction is fairly consistent across the country,” Manfili said, with some of the biggest places “fewer black people”, such as Portland, Oregon. “The protests surrounding police violence do contain greater dissatisfaction with the Trump administration.”

‘Despair’

Nonetheless, for those who have studied how pandemics can change society, the situation in Africa and other developing countries is worrisome.

“South Africa, Haiti, and Cuba have a sense of despair that you didn’t see in the Spanish flu, because COVID-19 not only makes people poorer, but also lasts longer,” said Frank M. Snowden, Yale University Medicine Honorary Professor of History.

Watch | Cubans protest against poverty and demand more freedom:

Poverty and epidemics converge in Cuba, creating an unbearable situation of people protesting in the capital on weekends. They demanded more freedom, and their president blamed the situation on US sanctions. 2:00

Snowden is also the author of this book Epidemics and Society: From the Black Death to the present, Said that although the COVID-19 pandemic is epidemiologically similar to the Spanish flu, “you don’t really see the kind of social unrest that we are experiencing today.”

Today’s inequality is turning “suffering into a sense of injustice and a [some countries have] Abandoned by the global north,” Snowden said.

He worries that if this situation continues, “this may be the first wave of social disintegration in parts of developing countries.”

He worried that this was just the beginning of something we had never seen before.