This Novel Corona Virus-19 (Covid-19) crisis has turned into a lived experience for all, not just in Southeast Asia, but throughout the world. As of this writing, in our region alone, infected cases had reached thousands, with deaths rising by the day, in almost all countries. Furthermore, Covid-19 challenges, not only our public health systems, policies and practices, but also ways that governments, civil society, and private sectors respond to political, economic and social downturns. This has also affected peace processes and efforts to address conflicts within and amongst marginalised and vulnerable populations.
We are gravely concerned by the suspension of rights and freedoms brought about by lockdowns and quarantines imposed at the moment. This is on top of dismal progress on mass testing, that may help determine actual information on infections and access to effective treatments. Furthermore, based on recent scientific forecast, cases will continue to rise in the coming weeks/months, which may not only exhaust public health workforces and systems, but may also aggravate inequalities, conflicts and human rights violations.
SHAPE-SEA, in its pursuit to increase knowledge on human rights and peace and to promote academic-activism on various relevant issues in the region, has been inviting researchers, scholars, students to write and share original and evidence-based opinion pieces on the impact of Covid-19 on human rights and/or peace at the local, national, and regional levels in Southeast Asia. Our goal is to provide academic, students, researchers a platform to share their voices, reflections, expertise and/or analyses on various themes and realities related to the crisis.
Submissions should be 300 to 700-words long (excluding title, name/affiliation of author/s, and references) and written in English. You may write them individually or as a group. You may send as many opinion pieces as you want.
Kindly send your opinion pieces (MS Word format) to joel.shapesea@gmail.com.
Our team will be editing/proofreading your work (though, we would gladly welcome any volunteer editors/proofreaders.)
As this is an on-going crisis, submissions, editing, proofreading and uploading will be done on a rolling/regular basis.
