Editor’s Choice December 2020: COVID-19 in the Gulf

Johnson, Matthew (2020) Editor’s Choice December 2020: COVID-19 in the Gulf. Global Discourse Blog.

Abstract

As we might expect, this Editor’s Choice concerns COVID-19. Our focus lies on examining an underreported set of impacts on a region which has generally garnered coverage on account of human conflict: the Persian/Arabian Gulf. The legacy of resource scarcity and resource curses, socio-economic inequalities and sectarian and religious conflict has been to create significant vulnerabilities to communicable disease. As such, it was no surprise to see Iran, for example, a country long subject to international sanctions, particularly affected by the pandemic. Given that so much coverage of COVID-19 has focused on crises in Europe and the Americas, it is extremely important that we understand the nature of the pandemic in the Gulf insofar as it has both the possibility of exacerbating existing vulnerabilities and other, non-pandemic crises. This special issue stems from a series of workshops held in collaboration between Qatar University and Lancaster University which took place in the summer of 2020. The workshops occurred within the first six months of the Covid-19 pandemic and reflect on the short to medium term impacts of the pandemic on the Gulf. The special issue brings together scholars from a range of different disciplinary backgrounds and with a strong expertise on the Gulf area to articulate the complexity of on-going developments in the Gulf and their broader reverberations.