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Re-Imagining Aid: Applying a Fresh Covid Tinted Lens to a Tired Critique
For the first time in our lifetimes, we have experienced a collective crisis that affects every country and every person on the planet — albeit to varying degrees. Life, as it was known, ground to a halt and despite its recent resumption we are yet to fully comprehend the trajectory of the path we are on. We don’t know enough about a Covid resurgence. We don’t know when a vaccine will be available. And we don’t know the extent of the economic fallout and its snowballing humanitarian consequences.
Some things, about the ways in which society and its godlike systems did not work for far too many people, are being realised — resulting in a growing reluctance to return devotedly to them. However, at the same time, as once dystopian futures quickly became the new normal, so too will the eventual post crisis reality become normal, whatever changes are assimilated. This window of opportunity and momentum for reflection then is unique — but may indeed be brief.
For humanitarians, where haste and panic create the fertile soil for short memories, the rush to respond in the aftermath may quickly override this rare moment to reflect. Yet it would be a great shame for this to happen, given how revealing this exercise — at exactly this point in time — might be.
