“We must stop treating survival as a privilege”

Interview with Monica Geingos

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Monica Geingos: Executive Chairperson of the One Economy Foundation, and former First Lady of Namibia.

For Monica Geingos, this line explains the core argument of the new inequality-pandemic report she coauthored. COVID-19, like AIDS before it, protected those with resources and exposed those without. The global system that produced that outcome has not changed.

Geingos, a lawyer, former First Lady of Namibia and longtime adviser on AIDS policy and feminist economics, is one of three co-chairs of the Global Council on Inequality, AIDS and Pandemics. The report released this week argues that inequality is not a background condition to pandemics, but the force that decides how long they last, who dies, and who emerges more powerful. Because inequality exacerbates pandemics, it is a threat to the whole world. The other co-chairs — economist Joseph Stiglitz, epidemiologist Sir Michael Marmot, and the convenor, UNAIDS Executive Director Winnie Byanyima — bring academic influence, multilateral reach and economic authority. Geingos brings something different: the political memory of what happens when lifesaving technology is rationed by income and geography.

She describes inequality as both a public-health risk and a political one. “Inequality drives, deepens and prolongs pandemics. But it also delegitimises authority,” she says. “Anyone who is concerned about collapsing power structures should be concerned about inequality, because it is changing how people respond to power.”