Threats, Victims or Allies? Migrant Communities in Kuwait s COVID19 Response
January 12, 2021 Share
This article is part of the series on “COVID-19 in the Middle East and Asia: Impacts and Responses”. Read more .
Sometime in mid-March 2020, just as the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic gained momentum across the world, a rather unusual group of individuals in Kuwait logged on to a Zoom call to coordinate their response to what would most certainly be devastating and uncertain times ahead. In attendance were local migrant community organizers, human rights activists, health care professionals, private sector executives and representatives from the International Labor Organization (ILO) and the International Organization for Migration (IOM). For anyone familiar with grassroots community activism and current best practices in humanitarian and development aid, this scene is hardly unique or interesting. Yet in the context of Kuwait, the fact that these individuals were i