Addressing power asymmetries in global health: Imperatives in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic

In this article, we, a diverse, gender-balanced group of 13 public (global) health researchers, teachers, and practitioners (all born in, and 11 of 13 currently living in the so-called global South), outline our wish list for change in a post-pandemic world—at the individual (including among ourselves), and at the organisational level. [...]we pay attention in this article to the fact that every grouping has its own internal power hierarchies (as displayed in the Fig 1), with intersectional systemic disadvantages caused, among others, by race, caste, class, ethnicity, gender, and religion. [...]we must learn from Black, Indigenous, and feminist movements how to shift away from the coloniser’s model of the world, and to help us unlearn, unthink, and undo the logics and doings of coloniality [9,24]. Many marginalised groups (to which some of the authors of this paper belong)—e.g., Black, Indigenous, and people of colour (BIPOC), sex workers, migrants and refugees, women and girls, ethnic minorities, people with disabilities, and lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex, and questioning (LGBTIQ) people—are systematically denied platforms for political, social, and cultural reasons.