In the year since the World Health Organisation declared the pandemic, 2.6 million people have died. On the day of the anniversary – 11th March 2021 – there were 118 million recorded cases, a figure that continues to rise by the hour, with more than 90,000 cases being in serious or critical condition around the world.

The loss of lives is clearly the most devastating impact of the pandemic. It has also upended economies, with many companies going bankrupt, many more downsizing, leading to rising unemployment. While millions of people have been able to make some adjustments by working from home, that has had a huge impact on workers servicing the now emptied offices, and many more workers, considered essential, have no choice but continue to go to work, exposing themselves to risks. Governments have used the opportunities to crack down on dissent and outlawed public protests, and minorities and women have been exposed to specific harms: ethnic minorities are more susceptible to the virus because many among them are essential workers and working from home is not always a practical option for women, who may live in hostile environment or have care-giving responsibilities.

What Covid-19 showed and taught us

Within a month of the WHO declaring the pandemic, IHRB published a report which foresaw many of these problems and organised a webinar on the human rights impact for businesses and the wider society, where we outlined that a rights-based approach to fighting the pandemic would need:

• a commitment to respect rights,
• be inclusive,
• ensure access for all,
• protect the vulnerable,
• focus on women,
• eliminate racism and xenophobia,
• deploy technology for good,
• limit restrictions on surveillance, and
• permit dissent.

Companies have struggled to cope with the new reality of collapsing demand and their obligations to workers, revealing the need for creative solutions that uphold human rights standards.

A year later, the report card does not make pleasant reading. In our Top 10 issues for business and human rights for 2021, the pandemic was the recurring theme, directly affecting five trends: the need for resilient supply chains as the world moves towards recovery that respects rights; the necessity of a protocol governing tracing and tracking technologies raising risks of surveillance; the crisis facing sailors  stranded at sea; the outrageous wage theft impoverishing migrant workers, with cancelled orders and unpaid wages; and the changed nature of offices, requiring new technologies.

It is clear that in many of these areas, there have been setbacks to human rights, overshadowing the modest gains made. Lockdowns have been applied harshly without much warning, as we noted in a report on the impact on internal migrant workers in India, arranged a webinar at the UN South Asia Business and Human Rights Forum, and in a five-part series of blogs my colleague Guna Subramaniam about the impact on migrant workers who travel overseas.

Bangladesh’s garment sector is an illustrative example – employing 4.5 million workers in more than four thousand factories, the sector earns a significant chunk of Bangladesh’s foreign exchange, and some 80% of the workers are women. The industry is beset with many problems, including safety concerns – remember the Rana Plaza disaster of 2013 – as well as low wages. The pandemic’s impact was significant, as we noted in a webinar early during the crisis. In a chapter in the forthcoming book, Covid-19 and Human Rights, in a paper jointly authored by IHRB research fellow, the University of California Berkeley professor Sanchita Banerjee Saxena, and UNDP specialist Harpreet Kaur and I, we have shown how companies have struggled to cope with the new reality of collapsing demand and their obligations to workers, revealing the need for creative solutions that uphold human rights standards (in a few weeks, we will be publishing a separate longer paper).

Corporate measures have alleviated some of the pain, but structural, strategic initiatives are needed so that the ‘next normal’ is not a return to the ‘old normal’, but a better normal, a ‘norms-based normal.’

As our friends at the Corporate Human Rights Benchmark showed in their Covid-19 study, many companies expressed the will to do right, but the actions of many were insufficient. The study found that:

• An effective response is possible and 90% of the surveyed companies established grievance mechanisms with respect to the pandemic
• Few companies assessed the impact of their actions beyond their operations – half had taken measures to prevent retaliation against workers, 63% had established physical distancing protocols, and only 14% were able to describe how they worked with their supply chain.
• Pitifully small number of surveyed companies had assessed human rights risks faced by vulnerable workers and communities.
• Only a small number of companies could show that they had made responsible purchasing decisions – only a quarter took mitigating steps to help their supply chain.
• Few companies took into account workers’ livelihoods – again, only a quarter described that they provided paid sick leave to affected workers.
• Companies that regularly conducted human rights due diligence were more likely to take responsible decisions.

There have been terrible practices, including mask profiteering, price gouging, fake products being advertised as cures or immunity boosters, and many other practices that undermined workers’ rights.

But to be sure, many businesses have tried to get it right. In an article for the Business and Human Rights Journal, I identified some promising practices. For example, some global brands did not invoke the force majeure clauses and abided by their contracts with their suppliers. Retail giants increased hardship pay for frontline workers. Hotels made their rooms available through innovative schemes for health-workers so that they would not have to commute during the pandemic. Other companies rejigged assembly lines to manufacture personal protective equipment or ventilators.

Since then, in a separate project, we learned how an Italian company, used 3D printing to create ventilators and made the technology available easily accessible. Merck joined forces with Johnson & Johnson to produce Covid vaccines. A non-profit organisation provided smart phones in slums to poor children who would otherwise have lost access to education. Graduate students have worked with IHRB to compile other cases of good practices by companies so that governments can meet their Sustainable Development Goals to safeguard economic, social and cultural rights, in a project with the Office of High Commissioner for Human Rights.

Taken together, these corporate measures have alleviated some of the pain, but structural, strategic initiatives are needed so that the ‘next normal’ is not a return to the ‘old normal’, but a better normal, a ‘norms-based normal.’

Businesses and governments must discard ‘vaccine nationalism’ which has led governments hoarding stocks, preventing trade, and imposing restrictions on the supply of vaccines, with the result that some countries are well on track to immunise their entire population within a year, and some may take up to three years before they can complete the process. That not only perpetuates existing inequities, it further deepens the global divide, as nationals of countries with inadequate immunisation may face travel restrictions, which may make it harder for them to travel across borders, as visitors or as workers, and reduce the nations’ potential to earn foreign exchange through tourism, as wealthier tourists avoid countries that are not fully immunised.

Our post-pandemic future should be an improved, humane, compassionate, and inclusive world, where everyone can enjoy their rights.

Addressing the impacts of the pandemic

In this changed world, what should companies do to ensure that they act in a responsible manner and respect human rights?

• Assess and mitigate adverse impacts on the vulnerable: Companies may have to redesign jobs and reimagine how they restructure operations. They should ensure that operational efficiency is not at the cost of equity, causing disproportionate impact on workers from vulnerable groups. Many workers in informal sectors are from minorities – religious, ethnic, linguistic, and sexual. Particular care should be taken to ensure that workers have access to reskilling programmes.
  
• Widen access to vaccines: Vaccine nationalism is dangerous and self-defeating. Without sufficient immunisation, those already vaccinated will have only partial immunity, and once virus variants emerge, they may become vulnerable. It is in the interest of better-resourced countries to make vaccines available easily and promptly at low cost to all countries. Pharma companies guarding their intellectual property should note that states and tax-payers made significant investments that enabled them to develop the vaccines they intend to profit from. The World Trade Organisation should intervene; its charter permits compulsory licensing during health emergencies. 
  
• Reverse the decline in women’s participation in workforce: There’s enough evidence that shows that there has been disproportionate impact on women. As many women bear care-giving responsibilities, companies should examine whether working from home is practical. Companies should ensure that women have all the tools they need to function effectively including offering childcare benefits, that should they need flexibility, their career paths are not jeopardized, and care is taken to retain women at work so that the trend of women quitting in droves is reversed.
  
• Use technology responsibly: In measuring temperature of incoming workers and visitors and tracking their movements, companies are gathering enormous data. They must establish protocols on data gathering and sharing. Tracing and tracking technologies pose different problems, such as generating false positives, and individuals can ‘game’ the tools to create misleading information. Companies should recognize those limitations. Governments deploying the technologies should note that not everyone has a smart phone, not everyone is tech-savvy, and mobile phone coverage has improved but is not comprehensive. The same technology that can track and infected person can be misused to track down dissidents and human rights defenders. Companies developing such technologies should establish rigorous safeguards, including ways to prevent sharing data widely.
  
• Improve residential facilities for migrant workers: Too many hostels are crammed and violate the emerging norms of social distancing. Companies must redesign the facilities and treat the workers by respecting their dignity. They should facilitate safe return of stranded migrant workers to their home countries, if they wish.
  
• Focus on mental health: With boundaries collapsing between ‘work’ and ‘home’, we are only beginning to understand the impact on mental health due to our distorted perspective of time. Pandemic workdays are longer, as workers increasingly work at odd hours, which too has an impact on well-being. Covid-19 also had a severe impact on children in special education. More girls had suicidal thoughts and younger people expressed heightened anxiety due to loneliness.  Companies should understand the issues better and facilitate open dialogue, so that socially-isolated employees do not lead an atomized existence.

The pandemic has changed the world as we know it. With the vaccine rollout, before long, we will live in a different world. That old normal thrived on inequities: of people doing truly essential work not being recognised or rewarded; of disproportionate adverse impacts born by women and minorities; and widening inequality. Our post-pandemic future should be an improved, humane, compassionate, and inclusive world, where everyone can enjoy their rights, and states regulate against the undermining of rights, and companies respecting and upholding their rights.

The story is unfortunately not over. We at IHRB will continue to observe, applaud those who do well, warn against those eroding rights, and cheer those who defend the rights of others.