COVID-19 in West Africa: Interrogating the Gap between Policy Communities and Internally Displaced Persons.

The coronavirus pandemic triggered a number of specific vulnerabilities throughout the world, but it disproportionately affected over 36 million forcibly displaced persons (IDPs) in conflict-ridden regions of Africa, representing 44 percent of global displacement. African countries also have the highest displacement rates relative to total population where many IDPs endure protracted displacement with social, environmental, and health-related challenges. Their extreme vulnerability to the pandemic underscores the inadequate attention by policy communities considering how studies and national policy responses on vulnerable populations in West Africa marginally capture the conditions of internally displaced persons. Evidently, they were isolated from people pre-COVID-19 with limited resources from the humanitarian community to meet their massive needs and further alienated by containment measures and seemingly exclusionary national policies during the pandemic. While the COVID-19 emergence globally generated substantial innovation in research collaboration, unprecedented humanitarian services and novel approaches in policy implementation, it appears that pre-existing inequalities were amplified by policy communities through selective coverage of vulnerable populations in West Africa. Although, the sub-region recorded low fatality rate during the pandemic compared with other global regions notwithstanding its weak infectious disease surveillance systems and general poor state of the healthcare sector, the dual consequences of COVID-19 and armed conflict regenerated further threats in a sub-region with one of the world’s largest humanitarian crises. Drawing on an extensive secondary data review, this study seeks to expand the contribution of social sciences to COVID-19 scholarship by providing critical insight into how the pandemic shaped the role of humanitarian organizations and policy communities in the context of internally displaced persons and how identified gaps can be addressed in other health emergencies.