Impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on people who have been marginalised

Effective pandemic responses and recoveries require a comprehensive understanding of both the impact of the pandemic on people who have been marginalised and the strategies used by communities to adapt to and manage these impacts. The COVID-19 pandemic built upon structural inequalities in our societies, disproportionately impacting people who have been marginalised, and exposed considerable gaps and bias in official data published and used by government agencies and public bodies that subsequently render many people and groups ‘invisible’ (in turn excluding them from national responses).

Data collected by communities and Civil Society Organisations (CSOs) can increase the visibility of people and groups overlooked by official data, improving understanding of their situations and coping strategies. We worked with the Civil Society Collaborative on Inclusive COVID-19 Data to document and share citizen-generated and CSO data, demonstrating the value of this data. The resulting report highlights that official data provide an inadequate picture of communities experiencing marginalisation in the COVID-19 pandemic and indicates the enormous challenges that people who have been marginalised have had to respond to, often without adequate support from governments. The report highlights five common issues and impacts for people who have been marginalised: access to health; income and livelihoods; food insecurity; education; and violence, abuse and discrimination.

Following the report, a new Citizen Data Collaborative was established, anchored in the UN Statistics Division to explore the added value of citizen-generated data for global development monitoring and policy planning, with the goal to formulate a global framework on citizen-generated data use.