新冠疫情专刊 | 大流行病：折射出我们的脆弱性

与您第一时间分享联合国教科文《信使》杂志的最新文章。

Sharing the latest articles of the UNESCO Courier with you.

COVID-19疫情加剧了气候紧急状况，财富分配不均，社区、国家和地区之间的分歧，同时造成了所谓自二战以来最严重的全球危机。在全球进入COVID-19疫情紧急状态后，许多女性的呼吁都未被我们所听到。因此，教科文组织《信使》杂志在本年度第三期杂志（7-9月刊）以“一个全新的世界，源自女性的构想”为主题邀请全球的女性发出自己的声音，以帮助我们了解这场全球性的危机正在如何影响着我们的社会，又将带来什么后果：我们可以从中吸取什么教训？危机之后的世界又会是什么样子？

Adding to the climate emergency, unequal distribution of wealth, and ever-deepening divides between communities, nations and regions, COVID-19 has created what some are calling the gravest global crisis since World War II. The next issue of the UNESCO Courier, under the theme of “A Whole New World, Reimagined by Women” will give voice only to women, many of whom have gone unheard since the start of the COVID emergency, to help understand how this crisis is affecting our societies and explore the possible consequences: What are the first lessons we can draw? How will the world look like after?

印度宣布实施封禁，大批城市务工人员因此返回乡村。2020年3月，新德里。The announcement of a lockdown in India resulted in a mass exodus of migrant workers from the cities to their villages. New Delhi, March 2020.

大流行病：折射出我们的脆弱性

The pandemic: Mirroring our fragilities

社会不平等、性别暴力、居住条件恶劣、卫生系统溃败——一场卫生危机暴露出使各国社会产生分歧的道道裂痕。要改变这个世界，必须设法解决那些我们一直以来没能正面应对的挑战。 

Social inequalities, gender violence, poor housing, failing health systems – the health crisis has exposed the fractures that divide our societies. To change the world, we will have to address challenges that we have not been able to face up to so far.

卡尔帕纳·夏尔马 (Kalpana Sharma) 

驻孟买独立记者、专栏作者和作家

最新著作《沉默与风暴：印度暴力侵害妇女问题纪实》Independent journalist, columnist and author, based in Mumbai. The Silence and the Storm: Narratives of violence against women in India is her most recent book.

当你极目远眺，仅凭肉眼就可以望见远处地平线上的点点渔船时，你就知道事情有了变化。平时那些令人窒息的褐色云团消散了，空气清爽澄澈，天空恢复了久违的蓝色。 

When you can spot the speck of a fishing boat on the horizon with your naked eye, you know that something has changed. The usual suffocating brown cloud has lifted. The air is clear. And the sky is a blue that you have forgotten. 

2020年，这个世界变了。一种新型冠状病毒仿佛让地球上所有人都无法呼吸。每一天，我们都在与一种无法治愈——至少目前如此——的疾病作斗争，而与此同时，不确定性却每天都在加剧，关于死亡和感染的消息不断增多，对于工作和经济的焦虑情绪日益加重。 

The world has changed in 2020. A new coronavirus has literally knocked the air out of the world. Each day brings greater uncertainty, more news of death and infection, and increasing anxiety about jobs and the economy as we battle a disease that has no cure – yet. 

面对意料之外的事，无从准备是很正常的。但要说我们能从中吸取到什么经验教训的话，那就是在突发的卫生危机面前，那些投资建设卫生保健系统、向民众提供负担得起的便利卫生服务的国家，应对能力最强。 

Nothing can prepare you for the unexpected. But if there is one lesson to be learned, it is that those countries that invested in affordable and accessible health care are today best equipped to deal with an unexpected health crisis. 

鉴于这种新型病毒具有传染性和致命性，而且传播速度快，人们本以为世界各国及各国民众会团结起来，共同抗疫。但遗憾的是，我们只看到 COVID-19 将各国社会中既已出现的裂痕暴露无遗。 

Given the nature of this new virus – contagious, deadly and swift – one would have expected nations, and people within nations, to come together to fight it. Instead, tragically, we have watched how COVID-19 has laid bare the existing fault-lines in all our societies.

裂痕毕露 

Fault-lines exposed

病毒在感染谁、不感染谁的问题上根本不加选择，一视同仁，而同胞相轻、排斥“他者”——无论是信仰其他宗教的人还是出身其他种族的人——的态度却依然在我们的社会中根深蒂固。大流行病无法消除仇恨和偏见；可悲的是，疫情反而还会火上浇油。

At a time when a virus is not choosy about who it infects, our societies continue to discriminate against their own people on the basis of age-old entrenched attitudes towards the ‘other’ – be it people from another religion or another race. A pandemic cannot erase hate and prejudice; tragically, it tends to exacerbate them.

另一道被暴露出来的裂痕是不平等。危机之中，我们可以看到法国经济学家托马斯·皮凯蒂（Thomas Piketty）所说的“不平等暴力”百态尽显。在这场全球大流行病期间，那些为了生计而苦苦挣扎的，不是别人，正是那些没有任何安全保障的社会底层民众。

Another fault-line exposed is inequality. We can watch what the French economist Thomas Piketty terms “the violence of inequality” playing out in this crisis. Those at the bottom, without a safety net, are also the very people now struggling to stay afloat during this global pandemic.

为阻断COVID-19的蔓延，印度这个拥有13亿人口的国家在过去几个月里保持封锁状态，“不平等暴力”的悲剧随之以一种令人痛心的方式一幕幕上演。随着经济陷入停滞，成千上万为了打工和谋生奔赴城市的男男女女失去了工作。他们本就处在漂泊状态，没有钱，也没有安全保障，别无选择之下只能徒步数百千米返回农村老家。

In India, this “violence of inequality” has played out in a heartbreakingly vivid manner in the spring of 2020, as a nation of 1.3 billion people was locked down to stem the spread of COVID-19. Thousands of men and women – left adrift in cities where they had migrated, looking for work and sustenance – lost their jobs when the economy ground to a halt. With no money or safety net, they were left with no alternative but to set out on foot, walking hundreds of kilometres to reach their homes in the countryside.

他们在高温下艰难跋涉，缺吃少喝。一些人活了下来，但有许多人死在途中。农村外出务工人员大量返乡的这幅惨景说明，在目前这种紧急状况下，不公正的经济发展模式加剧了他们的苦难。

They trudged in the heat, with little food and water. Some survived, but many died on the way. The images of this exodus of rural migrants are testimony to how unjust patterns of economic development elevated their suffering in the event of such an emergency.

第三道潜藏于每一个社会，但在危机时刻格外凸显的裂痕，就是性别平等问题。女性与施虐者一起“被困围城”，几乎无路可逃。但该现象并未获得应有的重视。这难道是因为，即便在所谓的“正常”时期，世界各地也有数百万妇女的权利遭到严重侵犯，以至于人们都习以为常？

The third fault-line that runs through every society, but jumps out at times of crisis, is that of gender. Women are “locked down” with their abusers, with few avenues of escape. Yet this phenomenon is not getting the attention it deserves. Could it be because this gross violation of the rights of millions of women across the world occurs even in so-called “normal” times?

城市贫困

Urban poverty

在很多国家，城市是遭受 COVID-19 打击最严重的地区。由于城市贫民的生活环境拥挤，而且往往不卫生，这种疾病在他们当中迅速蔓延。在公共卫生设施薄弱的情况下，特别是在大多数较贫困国家，民众安然度过这次大流行病的机会极其渺茫。

In many countries, COVID-19 has struck hardest in urban areas. The disease has spread rapidly among the urban poor, who live in congested, often unhygienic, conditions. The chances of the people living in such conditions surviving this pandemic are slim – given the poor public health facilities, especially in most poorer countries.

事实上，恰恰是这些人在支撑着城市的正常运转——环卫工人，服务业、建筑业、小规模企业的工作人员，家政服务人员，护工等等。他们中的大多数人工资不高，住在人口密集的城市贫民区，那里不通自来水，缺少甚至完全没有卫生设施。

These people literally hold up our cities–  the conservancy workers, those in the service industry, in construction, in small-scale industries, domestic help, caregivers, and many more. Most of them are poorly paid and live in dense urban poor settlements, where there is no running water and inadequate to non-existent sanitation.

在这样的居住区，城市贫民没有充足的空间避开他人，因而无法通过保持距离来遏制 COVID-19 的传播。没有自来水，诸如经常洗手和给物体表面消毒等一些卫生措施也就根本无从谈起。 

In such settlements, the spread of COVID-19 cannot be controlled by way of physical distancing – because the urban poor have no space to escape each other. The lack of running water makes hygiene measures such as frequent hand-washing and disinfecting surfaces impossible.

建设这些人们可以负担得起的住房几乎从来都不是城市的优先发展事项，结果就造成了今天这种境况。无论在孟买还是纽约，绝大多数新增感染病例都集中出现在人口最密集的较贫困城区。

Affordable housing has rarely been a priority in our cities. The consequence is what we are witnessing today. The overwhelming number of new infections have occurred in some of the most densely-packed and poorer parts of cities – whether in Mumbai or in New York.

一丝好消息 

A whiff of good news

最后回到城市洁净空气的话题。今年4月，国际能源署（IEA）发布了旗舰报告《2020年全球能源评论》，其中指出今年的碳排放量大幅下降，降幅接近创纪录的8%。这的确是好消息。只不过，这并非切实应对气候变化取得的真正成就，而是不幸危机造成的侥幸后果。

And finally, coming back to clean air  in our cities. The Global Energy Review 2020, the flagship report of the International Energy Agency (IEA) released in April, noted a record annual decline in carbon emissions of almost eight per cent this year. This is good news. Except that it is a fortunate fallout of an unfortunate crisis, and not the result of addressing the very real dangers of climate change. 

COVID-19 改变了很多事，但也什么都没有改变。没有任何迹象表明，一旦危机过去，以往那种挥霍无度的生活方式不会卷土重来。至少我们没有看到任何有关整饬城市秩序的具体计划，例如，让穷人能够过上有尊严的生活，或优先发展生态友好型公共交通。

COVID-19 has changed many things, yet changed nothing. But once this crisis passes, there is little to indicate that things will not return to the old, profligate ways of living. We have seen little evidence of any concrete plans to permanently reorder our cities, for instance, so that the poor can live with dignity, or where eco-friendly public transport is prioritized.

有很多挑战摆在我们面前，首先是要彻底改革我们的卫生保健系统。凡是在这场危机中保持了较好状态的国家及国内州（省），无一不曾大力投资建设优质公共卫生系统。

There are many challenges ahead, starting with the fundamental overhaul of our health-care systems. Countries, and states and provinces within countries, that have come out well in this crisis are those that have invested in quality public health.

其次是要解决社会内部的不平等问题。社会若是不平等，即便最完善的系统也会失效。当然，这是一项长期工作，不可能一蹴而就。无论国家的经济实力如何，只要存在系统性不平等，那么一旦暴发危机，这种不平等就必然会显现出来，给本已受到损害的弱势群体致命一击。

The second is addressing the embedded inequities in our societies. Even the best systems fail in an unequal society. This is a long-term project, for sure, and cannot be addressed overnight. Irrespective of whether we live in countries with strong or weak economies, if there is systemic inequality, it will manifest during crises – by killing those who are already impaired and vulnerable.

圣雄甘地曾经说过：“世上的资源足以满足每个人的需求，但不足以满足每个人的贪欲。”然而，贪欲已经成为推动经济发展的动力——当全世界都在追逐永无餍足的消费主义欲望时，一切边界和界线都失去了意义。随着自然资源被无情吞噬，无法再生，地球的未来也受到威胁。

“The world has enough resources for everyone's needs, but not for everyone’s greed,” Mahatma Gandhi once said. Yet, it is greed that has fuelled our economies – as borders and boundaries have lost relevance in the global fervour to satiate consumerist appetites. It has also threatened the future of the planet, as natural resources are devoured, never to be replaced.

COVID-19 迫使我们放慢了脚步。但是，如果我们战胜了这场危机，会出现新的世界秩序吗？我们是否会意识到，就在我们当中，有数百万人的生存岌岌可危？一旦一切恢复如常，我们还能否听到女性和最弱势群体的声音？

COVID-19 has compelled us to slow down. But as and when we succeed in overcoming this particular crisis, will we witness a new world order? Will we recognize the precarious existence of millions among us? Will we hear the voices of the women, and the most vulnerable, once the noise of business-as-usual begins?

这些问题没有简单的答案，但我们可以问，而且必须要问。除此之外，或许我们还要心存希冀。

There are no easy answers. But we can, and must, ask. And, perhaps, hope.

新冠疫情专刊 | 一个全新的世界，源自女性的构想

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