COVID-19, Inequalities and Building Back Better - Policy Brief by the HLCP Inequalities Task Team

The United Nations Secretary-General has described inequality as the defining challenge of our era – one that the Covid-19 crisis has thrown into even greater relief. This October 2020 policy brief from the High-level Committee on Programmes (HLCP) Inequalities Task Team – a collaborative effort of 22 UN system entities to strengthen the UN system’s leadership, coordination and visibility on reducing inequalities – describes how the Covid-19 crisis is widening disparities between people. It puts forward high-level policy guidance and concrete recommendations for UN system entities and their leadership, as well as governments and the UN Country Teams that support them, to seize this once-in-a-generation opportunity to ‘build back better’. The brief sets out pathways leading from the current state of crisis towards transformed economies and more equitable, gender-just societies, that can allow everyone to enjoy the full range of their human rights, without discrimination.

About the HLCP Inequalities Task Team

As part of the implementation and operationalization of the shared United Nations system framework for action on equality and non-discrimination, and in follow up to the conclusions of HLCP’s 38th session, the HLCP Inequalities Task Team (ITT) was established to strengthen the United Nations system’s leadership, coordination and impact on reducing inequalities.