Supporting Just Response and Recovery to COVID-19 in Informal Urban Settlements: Perspectives from Youth Groups in Sub-Saharan Africa

This project works with Slum Dwellers International and its Youth Federation members in six Sub-Saharan African cities to understand the inequalities and injustices associated with COVID-19 and associated responses in informal settlements. This will inform a normative analysis of how such injustices might be addressed in immediate response planning, but also in ways that create resilience to future outbreaks as well as to other risks faced by the urban poor. The medium is a series of video-diaries informed by ethical analysis and co-designed and produced with youth groups in the cities. These will be the foundation for a series of briefs shared through SDI with local authorities, in a two-way exchange of knowledge with the youth groups which will also include the dissemination of health information to vulnerable population groups. Cross-learning between the cities is aimed both to capacitate the youth groups in peer-to-peer exchange, but also reveal underlying ethical issues associated with the pandemic and its responses that occur out of different histories of pre-existing structural injustice and attempts to remedy those.