Fake News and Gendered Public Labor: Burundian Peace Activists Combat COVID-19 Disinformation

Disinformation during a public health crisis imposes a disproportionate burden on caretakers and first-line responders, who are most likely to be women. We know little about how feminist activist groups have responded to misinformation or “fake news” regarding COVID-19. To address this gap, we examine a Burundian women’s peace organization in exile, Mouvement Inamahoro: Femmes et Filles Pour la Paix et la Securité (Inamahoro), that pivoted from its usual peace promotion work to address the social and humanitarian consequences of the pandemic in Burundi and within Burundian refugee communities. Inamahoro diverted its resources to combat disinformation among vulnerable populations despite its mandate, which did not include providing public health information, taking on another form of uncompensated emotional labor.1 COVID-19 had a differential impact within the already vulnerable Burundian refugee community. Women with precarious work were more likely to become unemployed during lockdowns; those with refugee status were vulnerable to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugee’s cuts to their rations; girls were more likely to be pulled out of school due to reduced familial resources; and some women and girls faced unwanted pregnancies and domestic violence. COVID-related illness and death left caretakers with increased responsibilities but with reduced financial capacity to cope, particularly for those of lower socioeconomic status. For these reasons, as well as the fact that Inamahoro is comprised solely of Burundian women and girls, most of whom are refugees in East Africa, COVID-19 compounded an already dire situation for the organization. In June and July of 2021, we conducted thirty-six interviews virtually with Inamahoro members and reviewed an archive documenting the organization’s activities. In this forum, we focus on three ways in which Inamahoro’s sought to combat disinformation on COVID-19. First, it publicly called on the Burundian government to acknowledge the pandemic and take steps to stem its spread. Second, Inamahoro issued gendered calls to action via radio and social media directed at Burundian women to fight misinformation in their families and communities. Third, it trained community advocates to provide public health information about COVID-19 in Burundian refugee communities. Inamahoro’s efforts to dispel misinformation were prompted by Burundian authorities understating the existence of COVID-19 cases within Burundi’s borders for an extended period of time (Human Rights Watch 2020; Paviotti 2021). During most of 2020, Burundian officials implemented few measures to contain the spread of the virus and advised in public speeches that God would protect Burundi from COVID-19 (Human Rights Watch 2020). Some speculate that the government pursued this course of action to ensure that the 2020 presidential election would not be postponed; the ruling party held large public rallies leading up to the election in May 2020 (Mouvement Inamahoro 2020). The misinformation persisted after the election, and Burundi would be one of the last countries in the world to accept vaccines in July of 2021 (Kaneza 2021). The lack of attention to COVID-19 by Burundian authorities was disastrous in terms of public health and freedom of expression (Human Rights Watch 2020; Paviotti 2021). Members claimed that those who wore masks in Burundi were treated “like deviants” by the ruling party-sponsored militants. Members also stressed that COVID-19 was “decimating Burundians” due to a lack of accurate public health information circulated by the government and that Burundian women—whom members described as pillars of the family and community—were left to deal with the resulting sickness and death. Moreover, Burundians who tried to raise awareness of COVID-19 were threatened with violence by the government. Faced with a government intent on enforcing its narrative among the population, Inamahoro decided that as an organization tasked with promoting positive peace, it was obliged to combat the government’s misinformation. Since most of Inamahoro’s members are refugees and members of the diaspora who do not live in Burundi, they felt a sense of obligation to speak for those who could not. Thus, in 2020 and 2021, Inamahoro embarked on a campaign to raise awareness of COVID-19 prevention measures in Burundi and among the Burundian refugee community in Rwanda. The first aspect of the campaign was transmitting messages to Burundi via exiled Burundian radio stations in Rwanda and via social media. Some messages were directed at the Burundian government and encouraged them to stop spreading misinformation and protect the population from COVID-19. A number of messages included calls, such as the following: “COVID-19 is indeed present in our country; it strikes and takes whomever it reaches! Denial, minimization, disguising the truth or simply lying would be a way of perpetuating the political and criminal irresponsibility Burundi has been undergoing!” (Mouvement Inamahoro 2020 ). Other messages addressed the Burundian people directly. These messages encouraged Burundians to protect themselves. Many of these messages urged Burundian women to assume a position of leadership in the fight against COVID-19. Addressing women directly reflects the view of the vast majority of Inamahoro’s membership that women are more likely than men to undertake the burden of educating others about COVID-19. Calling on women, some of the messages transmitted via social media advised women to “teach children to follow the rules to fight the pandemic and remind adults what health authorities are teaching us” (Mouvement Inamahoro 2021). These gendered calls to action reflect the emotional labor that falls to women during crises as caretakers in the home and community. Inamahoro also executed an awareness-raising campaign targeted at Burundian refugee communities in Rwanda, as misinformation about COVID-19 from Burundian officials was rampant on social media (see Paviotti 2021). For this effort, Inamahoro provided known community leaders with correct information about COVID-19 and personal protective equipment to disseminate in person. As an Inamahoro member remarked, “We had a chance to attend a training about COVID prevention. After studying this, we went to teach our communities about this. The Burundian community here in Kigali, we taught them how to protect themselves against COVID” (Interview 15, July 5, 2021). We find that fake news during COVID-19 added to the gendered public labor performed by civil society groups such as Inamahoro. Inamahoro’s efforts to combat the Burundian government’s disinformation campaign during a public health crisis were conducted with limited resources, but possible in large part because of its close ties with ordinary Burundians, both in refugee camps and in Burundi itself, to its transnational membership (including members throughout Africa, Europe, and Canada), and to international organizations and international nongovernmental organizations. Communication was facilitated via its use of technologies, such as radio, television, internet, WhatsApp, Zoom, and Mobile Money/World Remit (through which it raised and distributed about $17,000 USD to some of the poorest refugees during a lockdown) (Anderson and Eskandari 2023). Decisions made by state authorities (namely the Burundian government) and international organizations (UNHCR in this case) increased the burden on a civil-society organization already operating with minimal resources. Feminist conceptions of emotional labor during public health crises should be expanded to include the burden of mitigating the consequences of disinformation. Future research should consider how other feminist groups are responding to harmful “fake news” globally and the gendered costs associated with it; how variation in organizational structure influences the capacity of feminist organizations to counter disinformation; and how states and international organizations might work to support the efforts of feminist grassroots organizations during public health crises. As in the case of Burundian women living in exile in Rwanda, this forum highlights several cases that illustrate marginalization compounded due to cross-border migration during the pandemic. Our findings resonate with two papers in this forum: Sri Lankan women returnee tea plantation workers, for example, faced newfound precarity, unable to afford school fees for their children. Esli Chan reports of young, racialized women in Canada facing online gender-based violence and their difficulties in accessing reliable online education during the COVID-19 pandemic. Throughout this forum, and specifically in the Burundian case, marginalization and agency coexist; however, Katrina Leclerc and Panthea Pourmalek, for example, illustrate how women peacebuilders worldwide have sought to pick up the pieces (providing social, health, and information services) left by authorities that have persecuted, marginalized, and/or neglected vulnerable populations.

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