Development futures series: Secondary impacts of COVID-19: Closing civic space in fragile contexts Format In 2020, some already fragile states saw human rights weakened COVID-19 restrictions contributed to an increase in political violence in some nations, and provided an opportunity for autocratic regimes to further erode human rights and democratic institutions says a new paper. There was an increase in protests and riots in the majority of fragile statesin 2020 compared to 2019, according to “The pandemic has caused many nations to go backwards on hard won development gains. And extreme poverty has risen for the first time in decades,” says Klaus Kristensen, UNDP Programme Analyst and one of the authors of the paper. “However, our research shows that it also had a negative political impact as well. In some countries already facing instability because of previous conflicts, people took to the street to protest lockdown measures, human rights violations in enforcement of these measures, and the mismanagement of COVID-19.”