La pandemia de enfermedad por coronavirus (COVID-19) y las narrativas de la política social en Costa Rica: historia de una (breve) oportunidad

La pandemia de enfermedad por coronavirus (COVID-19), ¿potenció ideas favorables a la política social inclusiva en América Latina? Este artículo aborda esta pregunta a través de un análisis del programa de transferencias monetarias de emergencia implementado durante 2020 en Costa Rica. A partir de debates legislativos y entrevistas a jerarcas y analistas, mostramos la presencia, muy acotada en el tiempo, de ideas favorables a extender la protección social no contributiva. El nuevo programa se vio rápidamente limitado por un discurso que asimilaba la responsabilidad fiscal a la reducción del gasto social, antes que a la ampliación de los ingresos. Evitando generalizaciones simplistas, los hallazgos invitan al análisis contextualizado del impacto de la pandemia en procesos específicos de formación de política y a considerar el papel de las ideas en los debates sobre la política social. Si existe un riesgo para la política social inclusiva, este es el discurso dominante de austeridad.

Seizing the opportunity to do things differently: Feminist ideas, policies and actors in UN Women’s ‘Feminist Plan for Sustainability and Social Justice’

Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic early in 2020, we have heard global leaders, public intellectuals and civil society activists speaking of a crisis that requires not just "building back better" but rather a radical reconstruction of the pre-pandemic world. Among these, the United Nations Secretary General has called for a "New global Deal" and a "New social contract" rooted in global solidarity.

A diagonal and social protection plus approach to meet the challenges of the COVID-19 syndemic: cash transfers and intimate partner violence interventions in Latin America.

Latin America has been particularly hard hit by the COVID-19 syndemic, including the associated economic fallout that has threatened the livelihoods of most families. Social protection platforms and policies should have a crucial role in safeguarding individual and family wellbeing; however, the response has been insufficient to address the scale of the crisis. In this Viewpoint, we focus on two policy challenges of the COVID-19 syndemic: rapidly and effectively providing financial support to the many families that lost livelihoods, and responding to and mitigating the increased risk of intimate partner violence (IPV). We argue that building programmatic linkages between social protection platforms, particularly cash transfers, and IPV prevention, mitigation, and response services, creates synergies that can promote freedom from both poverty and violence.