This piece is a call for intimacy and to centre all of our work in a “politics of trust, empathy, love and care.” We know those emotions to be real, human, and to matter. Accepting that charges us with this: reconceiving how we address inequity and inequality (which remain the core mission of the problematic global institutions that we both still….love) through trust, and care, and love. How can we weave these ideas into everything that international institutions do? How do we get all the staff, workers, and seemingly inanimate ‘programmes’ to let our messy, warm humanity be the focus of our work, rather than the technocratically convenient, and theoretically bloodless numerical success of ‘ending poverty’?
Laura Bailey
#BuildaBridgetoBetter: Recommendations to Drive Pandemic Responses
Disasters have a way of focusing the mind, focusing our energies, and harnessing attention. The unfolding disaster that is the coronavirus pandemic is no different: the world is united in our focus on this singular enemy. What is different is that this pandemic is not a one-off event; this is not a storm that we will easily ‘ride out’. There is no clear blue sky on the horizon.
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