Inequality between the rich and poor worsened during the Covid-19 pandemic and poverty increased, for the first time in decades. Over the past 12 months, Covid-19 has deepened those inequalities, a view highlighted in February, by the UN’s labour-focused agency, ILO, which declared that the two billion people working in the informal sector were particularly exposed. In March, the agency followed up with projections which suggested that millions could be pushed into unemployment, underemployment, or the grinding condition of working poverty. “This is no longer only a global health crisis, it is also a major labour market and economic crisis that is having a huge impact on people”, said ILO Director-General Guy Ryder. The agency published recommendations on ways to mitigate the damage to livelihoods, which included employee protection in the workplace, economic and employment stimulus programmes, and income and job support. By April, the scale of global suffering became apparent, with a UN-backed report showing that poverty and hunger were getting worse, and that countries already affected by food crises were highly vulnerable to the pandemic. “We must keep critical food supply chains operating, so people have access to life sustaining food”, the study said, stressing the urgency of maintaining the delivery of humanitarian assistance “to keep people in crisis fed and alive”. From using public transport as food hubs, traditional forms of home delivery, and mobile markets, communities have had to find innovative ways to feed the poor and vulnerable, whilst coping with Covid-19 restrictions on movement. These are all examples of the ways that cities in Latin America rallied to support their populations, and reflect warnings from the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), that the health risk for many urban citizens is high during the pandemic, particularly the 1.2 billion who live in slums, and other informal settlements. “Women are bearing the brunt of the Covid-19 crisis as they are more likely to lose their source of income and less likely to be covered by social protection measures”. That was Achim Steiner, head of the UN’s development agency UNDP, noting the effect that the pandemic is having on women, pointing to data released in September. Progress in reducing child poverty also took a hit this year. The UN Children’s Fund, UNICEF, and the World Bank reported in October that some 365 million children were living in poverty before the pandemic began, and predicted that those figures were set to rise considerably as a result of the crisis. Extreme poverty deprives hundreds of millions of children of the opportunity to reach their real potential, in terms of physical and cognitive development, and threatens their ability to get good jobs in adulthood. “These numbers alone should shock anyone”, said Sanjay Wijesekera, UNICEF Director of Programmes: “Governments urgently need a children’s recovery plan to prevent countless more children and their families from reaching levels of poverty unseen for many, many years.” By December, the UN was predicting that a record 235 million people would require humanitarian assistance in 2021, an increase of some 40 percent in 2020 which is almost entirely a consequence of the pandemic.