The following are things that need to be considered so that the handling of Covid-19 in Indonesia can protect marginalized groups who experience multiple vulnerabilities, and mitigate the potential for deepening and expanding social marginalization and exclusion in Indonesia.
1. Short term: inclusion through community resilience
There are three criteria that need to be met in order to ensure that pandemic response policies are truly beneficial for all, namely:
a. Inclusive registration to solve exclusion problems that lead to misrecognition - recording of multiple vulnerable groups as well as new vulnerable groups affected during a pandemic.
b. Inclusive participation in order to solve exclusion problems that lead to misrepresentation - actively, involving marginalized groups in planning pandemic preparedness and response activities. In this process of engagement, how to frame marginalized groups is important, especially in order to emphasize a sense of power.
c. Inclusive services to solve exclusion problems that lead to maldistribution - ensuring that the needs of marginalized groups are always identified and included in the design and recommendation of pandemic preparedness and response policies.
2. Long term: inclusion through transformative policies oriented towards social justice.
Because our experience of having the ability to face the challenges of a future pandemic has a lot to do with how strong our desire is to drive transformation in the following areas:
a. Citizenship rights, both the right to be recognized socio-culturally, the right to equitable welfare distribution, and the right to participate politically.
b. During the Covid-19 pandemic, there were several state leaders who actually tried to strengthen their power so as to widen the gap for abuse of power.
c. We are invited to reflect on what is essential for the survival of human life.
