Whistleblowers, human rights advocates, journalists, activists, artists, lawyers and researchers denouncing abuses and wrongdoing in the course of the COVID-19 crisis and beyond.

BEHIND THE MASK presents acts of whistleblowing in times of the coronavirus and exposes practices dangerous to public health during the pandemic. In the context of the Disruption Network Lab programme on the relations between technology, politics, and society, we invite experts that have been speaking out to save other people’s lives by denouncing misconducts and corruption in healthcare systems. Alongside, we focus on forms of retaliation suffered by whistleblowers during the pandemic, and on the stories of those forbidden from speaking out publicly about the coronavirus. The conference and the programme around it also present new forms of collective care, social justice and resistance to foster accountability and literacy, and to defend human rights at a global scale.

The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted power asymmetries and injustices that already existed in society, but which are now impossible to ignore. Together with people who lost friends, family or jobs, and who suffered violence during the lockdown, are also the ones who never had a job or a home, and who suffer violence almost every day. The work of whistleblowers and those who speak out in times of crisis becomes incredibly important to produce global awareness….WHISTLEBLOWING DURING THE PANDEMIC