DUBLIN — As Ireland’s data protection authority was closing in late last year on its first major penalty against Facebook over alleged privacy abuses, the agency — a key global enforcer of data protection rules — reshuffled its top team, replacing a senior official in charge of its most high-profile cases.

Dale Sunderland, a soft-spoken deputy commissioner who was overseeing the agency’s investigations into Facebook, as well as others targeting Apple and Google, moved into a new supervisory role.

In his place three regulators — Anna Morgan, John O’Dwyer and Tony Delaney — took on shared responsibility for these blockbuster cases that have become a bellwether in Europe’s effort to rein in how Big Tech collects, stores and makes money from personal data.

The yearlong restructuring, which culminated last fall, capped a lengthy transformation for the watchdog from bit player to the Western world’s first line of defense against misuses of people’s data. As many Silicon Valley companies have international headquarters in Dublin, the country’s regulator has overarching powers to enforce the European Union’s tough privacy standards.

But the agency’s face-lift also contributed to confusion about its ability to enforce the law, according to more than two dozen current and former Irish data protection officials, other countries’ European privacy regulators, tech company executives, data protection lawyers and privacy campaigners. Many spoke to POLITICO on the condition of anonymity due to their ongoing relationships with Ireland’s Data Protection Commission (DPC).

“When you deal with them, you don’t get the sense that they are there to vindicate data protection rights” — Fred Logue, a privacy lawyer in Dublin

The internal changes were not well communicated outside the DPC, leaving some across the bloc in doubt over who was in charge of high-profile cases, according to officials at other EU agencies. People who had filed complaints with the regulator went months without a response, raising questions about how officials were enforcing the rules. Other European watchdogs began to voice concerns in public that the region’s flagship privacy standards were not being enforced.

“Nothing has really changed,” said Fred Logue, a privacy lawyer in Dublin who has filed multiple cases on behalf of clients with Ireland’s privacy watchdog, adding that months would go by without hearing from officials. “When you deal with them, you don’t get the sense that they are there to vindicate data protection rights.”

The agency’s restructuring was the latest headache for the regulator two years after Europe’s landmark privacy overhaul, known as the General Data Protection Regulation, or GDPR, came into force in late May 2018.

Over that time, Helen Dixon, the agency’s head, and her staff of more than 140 regulators have yet to complete any of their investigations into Big Tech. Europe’s new laws allow officials to impose fines of up to 4 percent of a company’s global revenue, or potentially billions of euros, for failures to protect people’s personal information. They’ve become the de facto global standard from Colombia to Japan, an achievement Brussels is eager to promote.

Yet discussions with both advocates and critics of Dublin’s oversight reveal a picture of an agency struggling to come to terms with a powerful new regulatory weapon, with little experience or training about how to wield it. Last year, the agency received more than 7,000 data protection complaints, a record high. It’s working through a backlog of cases as EU agencies are still trying to figure out how best to enforce the rules.

“We’re dealing with a new framework,” Dixon told POLITICO at the agency’s Georgian townhouse headquarters in central Dublin, just a stone’s throw from the country’s parliament, in early March. She rejected claims her agency had been slow to act. “We are now on a pathway where we are going to resolve, one by one, as fast as we can with as many resources as we can, these very entrenched issues.”

Pressure on Ireland

With the two-year anniversary of Europe’s privacy standards coming next Monday, Dixon is under mounting pressure to show that her agency can act.

Significant fines and orders for change against both Facebook and Twitter are still expected by early summer, almost a year after the enforcement actions were originally expected.

It will be a make-or-break moment for the privacy regulator — and for Europe’s boasts that it’s the global trendsetter on privacy.

For the agency defenders, its slow pace in taking on cases, putting together bulletproof investigations and figuring out how to enforce Europe’s new data protection laws is a sign that Dixon and her team are taking their beefed-up role seriously. The bloc’s revamped privacy regime, advocates insist, does not give enough detail on how to implement the rules, particularly for policing multinational tech giants, It has been left mostly to the Irish to fill in the gaps.

“It’s 10 times more complicated, and regulators aren’t ten times as big,” said Eduardo Ustaran, global co-head of the privacy and cybersecurity practice at Hogan Lovells, a law firm, in London. “Nothing really could have prepared them for the size of GDPR.”

“If a train never gets moving, less locomotives don’t cause further delays” — Max Schrems, an Austrian privacy campaigner

Others disagree. They point to multiple delays in even straightforward cases, including probes into publicly-disclosed misuse of social media data, as a sign that Dublin is not taking its role seriously.

Privacy advocates and some EU regulators grumble that despite Ireland’s backlog of complaints, it is still dragging its feet on investigations that stretch back years, giving companies too much leeway in enforcing the rules and fostering a too close relationship with those it oversees.

“If a train never gets moving, less locomotives don’t cause further delays,” said Max Schrems, an Austrian privacy campaigner who has become the Irish regulator’s quasi-bête noire after pushing them to take action, mostly against Facebook, since the early 2010s.

Struggling to keep up

In discussions with Irish regulators, European counterparts and others involved in Europe’s new privacy regime, POLITICO pieced together how Dublin struggled to cope with its expanded role.

A major stumbling block has been creating watertight legal cases needed to levy hefty fines because, under the bloc’s previous privacy regime that dated back to the mid-1990s, Dublin did not have the authority to issue financial penalties for wrongdoing. Under Irish law, it did gain lengthy litigation experience around privacy violations. But without a track record of financial enforcement, regulators have been racing to get up to speed just as pressure to act becomes ever more acute.

That left some within the agency anxious to avoid procedural mistakes — particularly when dealing with untested, new privacy standards — that could be unpicked in eventual appeals. Irish law provided little breathing space for such legal missteps, according to several local privacy experts.

For outsiders, the delays proved frustrating.

“You don’t hear anything about cases transferred to Ireland,” said Johannes Caspar, head of Hamburg’s data protection regulator, whose agency is the first port of call for privacy complaints about almost all U.S. tech firms in Germany. “What goes on, what type of information was exchanged, we don’t get any of that. We’re here just standing and waiting.”

Graham Doyle, a spokesman for the Irish authority, said other regulators could ask Dublin for updates on the ongoing cases during monthly meetings of EU privacy agencies.

Difficulties began soon after Europe’s new privacy rules began in May 2018.

Days into the new regime, the regulator was flooded with requests, both from locals and people abroad who wanted to take advantage of the new privacy protections to land major complaints.

Some, like those lodged by Schrems, garnered international attention and focused on Big Tech’s data collection practices. Currently, Dublin has 23 open cases into the likes of Microsoft, Apple and Facebook, which is under investigation for everything from mundane data breaches to complex probes into how the company makes money from Europeans’ personal information. The social networking giant declined to comment for this article.

The influx of work represented a challenge for a staff that had grown from just 29 when Dixon took over in 2014 (when the agency was mostly based over a small convenience store in a Portarlington, a small town in central Ireland) to a team of roughly 175 by the end of this year, spread over three different locations. Some complaints took months to garner responses, as different units divvied up tasks and regulators juggled to keep people in the loop on how investigations were proceeding, according to those involved in the some of ongoing cases.

Last year, amid a record number of complaints, the agency said it had sent people’s cases for enforcement, or closed others’ complaints, in just over 80 percent of the 6,904 cases it had received last year, according the DPC’s annual report. Roughly 4,500 were concluded without specific enforcement, while 1,100 are now waiting potential fines and other remedies.

“When the spotlight is on you, you have to be seen to act” — Daragh O’Brien, Irish data protection consultant

Currently, the watchdog has just under 2,500 open complaints filed since Europe’s new privacy rules came into effect in 2018. Dixon, the Irish regulator, said that many cases had been resolved before reaching the need for a formal investigation, and that her team was in regular contact with those who had submitted complaints.

Yet Daragh O’Brien, an Irish data protection consultant who filed multiple complaints on behalf of himself and mostly domestic clients, said that months would go by before receiving confirmation the agency had received his requests. Case workers would be replaced by someone new, often without explanation, and few, if any updates, would be sent out to those who had submitted cases. Schrems also said he had yet to receive an update from Dublin on his cases against WhatsApp and Instagram since he filed them almost two years ago. The regulator sent its initial findings to him in those cases earlier this week.

“When the spotlight is on you, you have to be seen to act,” said O’Brien.

Ireland pushes back

Just as Dublin was plowing through the increased regulatory work, European counterparts piled on the pressure.

At regular monthly gatherings of the region’s privacy agencies, officials would ask for updates on the high-profile cases involving Facebook and other tech giants, and urged Dixon and her colleagues to move faster on enforcement, according to several officials involved in the meetings. Some, including French and German regulators,  moved against these companies on their own, with Paris fining Google €50 million — a then-record penalty — in early 2019 for privacy violations. The search giant is appealing that decision.

Officials at several EU data protection authorities told POLITICO that cases they had sent to Ireland for investigation sat in an internal IT system for Europe’s data protection agencies for months with few, if any, updates to the case work. Some, including Hamburg’s Caspar, felt they had been left in the dark over how cases involving their citizens were unfolding, despite monthly calls between Ireland and French and German regulators. Ireland recently joined forces with Spain as part of its investigation into Verizon Media.

Those inside the Irish watchdog pushed back against those claims. Officials said they would go months without receiving the necessary information from other EU agencies to push investigations forward despite other regulators chiding Dublin for not moving fast enough. At the regular meetings of the bloc’s privacy authorities to update on its case load, the Irish would ask others to lend a hand — requests that often went unmet.

Irish officials also questioned others’ intentions in criticizing their work. They pointed out that few, if any, EU watchdogs had successfully brought enforcement actions against international companies, like banks and other global financial institutions, which fell under other countries’ own jurisdictions.

Ireland’s data protection watchdog “will eventually come out with a few big decisions and everyone will calm down,” said Johnny Ryan, chief privacy officer at Brave, a mobile browser, who filed a complaint against Google with the agency, but has yet to receive an update on his case. “But they’re taking more than enough time.”

Internal changes

Amid this political wrangling, the restructuring of Ireland’s privacy watchdog was well underway, with several senior managers leaving the organization late in 2019 just as Dublin was preparing its first blockbuster enforcement action against Facebook.

Officials like Donna Creaven, former head of supervision and engagement with multinational tech companies, took senior roles in other public sector bodies, according to data from LinkedIn. As part of a recruitment push, the agency said it would hire several senior lawyers and data protection experts for its ongoing investigations. But the benefits package — maximum salaries for positions posted earlier this year topped out at €83,740 — has put off possible candidates, according to four local privacy experts who had considered applying. In response, an Irish official told POLITICO they had been inundated with applications.

Irish regulators have acted as a bellwether for how European authorities tackle Big Tech companies like Apple | Daniel Leal-Olivas/AFP via Getty Images

Just as the watchdog’s revamp was winding down in late 2019, Helen Dixon got some bad news.

Last fall, she had asked the Irish government for an extra €5.9 million, or an almost 40 percent bump, to top up the regulator’s annual budget. The request was both to hire investigators and create new internal structures to reduce the agency’s reliance on the justice ministry for back-office functions like IT and human resources support. All EU privacy agencies have been pleading for more resources to handle the increased workload under the region’s new rules.

But the answer was no.

In October, Irish lawmakers instead doled out an additional €1.6 million, an 11 percent annual rise, for the agency’s war chest. It was enough to hire up to 40 more employees, but remained well below what many inside had hoped for.

“Governments all signed up to this law,” Dixon told POLITICO, adding that she was satisfied with the budget increase her agency was given. “If you want to meet those expectations, additional staff are going to be required.”

The budget decision came at a delicate time.

Ireland’s regulators had expected to announce their first major decision against Facebook by the end of 2019. It would be the culmination of years of work and a symbol that Dublin was able to fulfill its role as the West’s first line of defense against data protection abuses.

But amid legal delays, the decision — linked to how Facebook failed to explain to users how their data would be shared between WhatsApp and the social network, the internet messenger’s parent company — stalled. An announcement was postponed well into 2020.

For Dublin’s supporters, the delay was unavoidable. Better to wait and build cases that would hold up in court, they insist. “We want to create sustainable solutions to problems that have been around in data protection for a long time,” Dixon said when asked about why no enforcement action against tech companies had yet to be published. She did not comment on any specific case.

But for those already losing patience with Ireland, the country’s inability to bring Silicon Valley to heel almost two years after Europe’s new privacy regime began had started to wear thin.

“I won’t say they did a good job,” said Caspar, the German regulator, in reference to the Irish privacy watchdog. “To do a good job, they would need to issue draft (enforcement) decisions.”

Vincent Manancourt contributed reporting from Brussels, Elisa Braun contributed reporting from Paris.

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The European Union’s new head of Arctic policy has watched Russia build up its military presence and China plant its economic ambitions in Arctic states. While others see the countries’ growing influence as a new frontier for international conflict, Michael Mann says climate change is still the biggest threat to the high north.

“Climate change is a real thing that is happening that brings with it certain threats,” Mann, the former EU ambassador to Iceland, said in an interview Monday. “I would like to sort of play down the idea of tension building up. It has been a very successful period for cooperation in the Arctic.”

The ambassador-at-large for the Arctic notes that countries worldwide view the region as an arena for oil and gas development, rare earth mineral extraction and faster transportation due to shipping lanes created by the rapidly accelerating Arctic ice melt. Many countries fear that nations will butt heads in bids to exploit these types of natural resource development.

“Where the Arctic was [historically] reserved for the Arctic states, now it’s very much seen as an international area of interest, and I don’t see that as being a problem as long as it’s well-handled,” said Mann, who took on his current role on April 1.

A senior U.S. State Department official in a briefing late last month characterized this era as the “the return of geopolitics” in the Arctic, and warned “we can expect … the rapidly changing Arctic system to create greater incentives for the Kremlin and the [People’s Republic of China] to pursue agendas that clash with the interests of the United States and our allies and partners.”

Russia and the EU have their differences, which is “clear” to Mann, though it’s historically been a place where the two entities have cooperated, he said. “I think one should avoid looking for flare-ups and tension where they don’t exist. That’s not to say that there won’t be in the future, but at the moment, things are running smoothly in my opinion.”

The EU’s Arctic chief cited the Northern Dimension policy, a joint framework between EU, Russia, Norway and Iceland that promotes cooperation, economic competitiveness and sustainable development in Northern Europe as an example. Also, a new international fisheries agreement, ratified by Norway on Sunday, is an “absolutely amazing achievement” that’s a “sign that people are able to agree on things,” he said.

Mann noted that Russia and the EU are both part of the Barents-Euro Arctic Council, a forum to discuss issues in the Barents region — the stretch of land that runs along the Barents Sea.

Many non-Arctic countries in the EU, and elsewhere, are now shifting to design their own Arctic strategies, something he said is a welcome move. Arctic policy has normally been left solely to the Arctic nations to hash out.

“New players are playing a very serious role in the Arctic now, well at least China. That wasn’t the case perhaps four years ago,” Mann explained. The concern about new Arctic activities “depends on the country,” but he did not point out a specific area of unrest.

U.S. and British warships sailed to the Barents Sea this month for the first time since the 1980s, sparking buzz about what the operations meant in a militarized Arctic. However, a Navy spokesperson said in a statement the operations were routine and are “the latest in a series of ships operating in the Arctic Circle in recent years.”

Mann stressed that “it’s worth underlining that the Arctic has been, and currently is, a place of peaceful cooperation … [which] has been rather good. One of the EU’s main goals in Arctic policy is to promote multilateral cooperation and keeping it an area of peace.”

New commercial opportunities that arise alongside the Arctic’s sea ice melting is a main driver of growing interest in the region, but the northern sea lanes and how much new traffic there is increasing are “being slightly overplayed,” he said.

The apparent rise in tensions has led international officials to call for a body or forum for nations to discuss security issues, which Mann agrees may not be a bad idea.

The Arctic Council, composed of the eight Arctic states, is a forum for discussion on cooperation in the Arctic, though it’s not required to discuss security matters and instead focuses on work in environmental and sustainable development, and support for indigenous communities.

“Any forum that comes together where dialogue is possible, is going to be a good thing. I can’t tell you now what form that should be,” he said.

The young filmmaker Hassan Akkad landed in London in late 2015, ending a harrowing journey from his war-torn home of Syria — footage from which would go on to win a BAFTA award. Quite a welcome party. Several years on, Akkad has hit pause on his life in his adopted home and stepped in to work as a cleaner in his local hospital. In between cleaning shifts, he’s made portraits of the workers around him who are helping battle the coronavirus pandemic. He spoke with POLITICO last week about his experiences, and what it feels like to be thrown back into a crisis upturning everyone’s lives. Keep up with Hassan’s work on his Twitter feed. The captions to the portraits below are Hassan’s, as posted to social media.

Tell us a little about how you’ve been spending your days since this all started.

The people at the front lines of this crisis amaze me every day with their resilience, care and professionalism. It’s my honor to be able to share their stories.

As I’m sure you can imagine, my daily rhythm has changed entirely. My shift starts at 7 a.m., so I’m up as the sun is rising, preparing for the day at work. I do an eight-hour shift, which includes mopping, scrubbing and disinfecting high-touch surfaces throughout the COVID-19 ward. Typically, I finish around 3 p.m. and go home to my fiancée. She’s currently working full time as well, from home. It’s busy, but we always try to carve out some time for each other. She’s been incredibly supportive of me and my work. I find the biggest challenge is unwinding at the end of the day, especially when it’s been an intense shift.

Perlita is a nurse on my ward. She’s been a nurse for more than 30 years and has been working for the NHS in for the last 18 years. She’s from Manila, in the Philippines. Her signature dish is noodles. She has a big family — two sons and two daughters. One daughter works as an ITU nurse and one works in computer science. One of her sons works in hotel management, the other, Jericho, works as a student nurse at Whipps Cross. Today our ward was short on staff, so she rang Jericho. He worked alongside his mom all day. “I rely on him,” she said. “He’s a super son.” Perlita and Jericho are NHS heroes.

Why did you feel compelled to get involved in this way? Was it just a matter of “let me help, in any way I can?”

Nearly two months ago, when the virus was declared a global pandemic but no measures were in place yet in the U.K., I felt similar to how I felt at the start of the revolution in Syria back in 2011. An uncertain, major shift was taking place. As the virus started spreading in the U.K. and the number of cases announced on the news grew exponentially, it became clear to me that life could not continue as “normal.”

For me, this meant temporarily stepping away from my work as a filmmaker and photojournalist, and finding a way to make a more direct contribution to my community. I applied to the NHS volunteering scheme, and for seasonal work in agricultural fields outside London, but didn’t get a response. So I did some food shopping deliveries for my neighbors instead. After a few days of trying to make myself as useful as possible, I came across a call for cleaners for my local hospital, Whipps Cross. They called me back the day after I submitted an application.

Meet my colleague Giby. Giby has been a nurse for more than 20 years. She moved to the U.K. from Kerala, India. Her parents still live there, so she constantly worries about and misses them. She lives in London with her teenage daughter and son, who she raises with her husband, a pastor. She’s a kind, sensitive person — the hardest part of her job, she says, is having to tell friends and family bad news about their loved ones. Yesterday, it made her cry, but she continues her work on the ward with compassion, diligence and care. Giby is an NHS hero.

What are you seeing in the halls and rooms of the hospital currently? Are the workers who have been going non-stop for weeks finally getting a chance to breathe, or are things just as frantic as ever?

I started during the peak. That was 45 days ago. The ward has 18 beds and during that time we never had an empty one. All the staff were working long hours. I could see the exhaustion on my ward manager, Pilar’s, face. I could see it on everyone’s face. But everyone was going above and beyond to keep my ward — Birch ward — running.

The intensity in the ward has lessened in the past couple of weeks due to the reducing number of COVID-19 cases. We have been able to take days off to breathe and to reflect. We’ve started talking about the intensity of what we witnessed during the peak and are trying to prepare for the uncertainty of the future, because uncertainty has come hand in hand with this virus. No one really understands it but we were, and still are, working really hard to combat it.

Today, on International Nurses Day, I want to celebrate my colleague Pilar. Sister Pilar is my ward manager and my boss. She has worked as a nurse for the past 12 years, and she goes above and beyond to protect her patients and staff. I was quite nervous on my first [day] in the COVID-19 ward. Sister Pilar called us all to a meeting in her office to say that no one steps foot in the ward without full PPE, even cleaning staff. Sister Pilar is from northern Spain, and has lived the pandemic twice — once, remotely, through worry for her family and friends back home — and now on her ward in east London. I’m not exaggerating when I say she holds us all together. Today I am thinking of the nurses like Sister Pilar around the world keeping their patients safe. Thank you for your care, professionalism and compassion. You are health care heroes. Lots of love, Hassan.

While we are past the peak, there is still a lot of suffering. There are still patients, who I have become friends with, who are not getting better and who are unable to be physically close to their loved ones. That doesn’t get any easier. If anything, the emotional toll that comes with having time to reflect is just as heavy as the shift work.

Whipps Cross hospital is an incredible operation. I see porters constantly getting things where they need to be — from patients in beds, to supplies, to PPE and chairs. I see the catering staff and ward hosts getting the food from the kitchen and prepping it for the patients. As cleaners, we’re disinfecting every inch of the hospital. Nurses are in and out of the ward keeping a watchful eye on patients. Consultants and doctors are in their offices constantly on their phones and computers checking on patients almost every hour. I see phlebotomists coming to take blood samples to take to the lab. I see the security guard at the door making sure everyone is safe.

What I see in the ward is humanity at its best. Individuals taking care of others as they would their own. Recently, I’ve watched many patients be discharged. Seeing the staff who cared for them wave goodbye, with big smiles on their faces, is amazing.

Meet my colleague Catharine. Everyone at the ward refers to Catherine as Mama because she’s the oldest, wisest and the person we go to if we’re having a tough day. Catharine moved to London from Trinidad 26 years ago. She has been working in the health care sector for more than two decades. I can’t find the right words to describe Catharine’s grace and kindness. She literally stands for hours next to patients keeping a watchful eye on them. Catherine is a single mother to one daughter. She worked long hours for years to afford sending her daughter to Cambridge to study law. Mama Catharine is an NHS hero.

One of the things you’ve talked about repeatedly is the diversity not just of your adopted city, but of the NHS workers responding to this situation. How does it make you feel to see so many people, who come from so many different places, all working as one to help their neighbors? 

It makes me feel proud, and humbled. The diversity of NHS workers is not new. International nurses, porters, cleaners, doctors and ward hosts have formed the backbone of the NHS for as long as it has been around. It isn’t so much about seeing them all coming together to help their neighbors — they’ve always done that — it’s about acknowledging it in a concrete way. I definitely have hope, but what is really needed is action and policy change.

My friends at Choose Love recently summarized it perfectly. They said, “while the hard work and sacrifices many migrant workers are making on the frontline of this crisis should be recognized and remembered, no one should have to risk their lives in order to be recognized as a human being. A person’s ‘usefulness’ should not define their worth. We should recognize and respect our common humanity, regardless of immigration status. Not just in a crisis, but all the time.”

Louise: “Care for one … that’s love. Care for hundreds … that’s nursing.”

I’ve been asked several times if I’ve felt it’s my duty to “pay back” my community. The answer is no and yes. The right to seek asylum and freedom from torture is innate and inalienable. My refugee status is also my right under international humanitarian law. Refugees shouldn’t have to “earn” protection twice. I volunteered to work at the hospital, and if I hadn’t made that decision, I would still be just as entitled to my asylum status. However, as a proud Londoner, I do feel it’s my duty to support my community. I wanted to support my neighbors. If we come together in kindness and love, wherever we’re from, whatever we look like, and no matter how much we make, we can fundamentally reshape this world.

Meet my colleague Cherelle, aka Cherry. Cherry is a 24-year old British Caribbean. She loves Reggae and R&B, and the last show she binged was Stranger Things. When her shift is over, she plays music and dances for patients to cheer them up. Cherry is a full-time carer. During the day, she is a nursing assistant in our COVID-19 ward and at night she looks after her dad who has been fighting prostate cancer and leukemia for over 20 years. As a child, Cherry used to accompany her dad to Whipps Cross, where the nurses would shower her with love and kindness and feed her plenty of soup. Her father — and the nurses’ dedication to him — is why she chose this profession. They were both meant to go to Grenada, where her mum lives, but travelling restrictions stood in the way. I asked her what she’s planning on doing when this nightmare is over, she answered, “I’m going back to school to study and become a nurse.” Cherry isn’t just an NHS hero. She’s a role model and a hustler.

To that end, has this crisis — watching it, participating in the response to it — changed how you view migration policy in the U.K. at all?

I’m curious to see how this collective experience changes migration policy in the U.K.. This year was already going to be defined by questions about the kind of country we want to be as we leave the EU. Where initially it looked like the pandemic would pause those conversations for the foreseeable future, I think now we’re seeing that it’s actually enlivened them, and involved everyone in them.

Meet my colleague Sandra. Sandra is British Jamaican, and she has been working as a health care assistant in the NHS for 20 years. Sandra is a mother to three men and a grandmother to six. She is a force. You can feel her presence in every corner of our ward. I was intimated by her for a while, but recently she started referring to me as her personal photographer. It’s worth mentioning that Sandra is one of 15 women who work in our ward. In fact, women dominate essential, but low-paid, professions such as nursing and social care. A study by think tank Autonomy found that of the U.K.’s 3 million workers at high risk of the virus, 77 percent are women. If this doesn’t abolish the gender pay gap, what will? Sandra is an NHS hero.

It’s never been clearer that we’re global citizens — our well-being complexly intertwined with that of other countries — whether we like it or not. “Unskilled” immigrant workers are now “essential” and “key.” These make up a large chunk of the people we’re clapping for from our doorsteps every Thursday evening. We can’t go back to the same anti-immigrant, xenophobic rhetoric and policy that was so widespread before, and which continues to be normalized. I see energy for correcting past mistakes, and that gives me hope.

Meet my colleague Vittorio. Vittorio is from Turin, in northern Italy, where his mother in her 90s is isolating. Due to travel restrictions, he’s been unable to visit her. He is 52 years old, an avid chess player and book worm, with two sons who are both guitarists. He’s been working at our hospital as a health care assistant for three years. I asked him why he keeps coming to the frontline of this crisis, day after day. He replied simply, “Because it is my job.” Vittorio is an NHS hero.

How are family and friends back in Syria, and elsewhere, handling the pandemic and what comes with it? Are you still able to keep in regular touch with the loved ones who aren’t physically near you? 

Social distancing isn’t new to us Syrians. The revolution which turned into a proxy war back in my home country has driven a Syrian diaspora around the world. When my brother — with whom I shared a bedroom for 22 years — got married, I attended on Skype. I’ve watched my niece and nephew grow up on Skype. My parents celebrated my engagement eight months ago on Skype. This isn’t new to us. We are familiar with the queues outside supermarkets and with the constant worry for loved ones — because they’re in detention centers. Children aren’t going to school — because their schools were bombed.

Meet my colleague Albert. Albert is British Ghanaian — he moved to the U.K. in the 1990s. He is 50 years old, and he has been working as a cleaner at our hospital for 15 years. On my first day, I was sent to one of the COVID-19 wards to be trained by him. Albert is a tough master, and he likes things his way. The first thing he said was, “Hassan, you have to protect yourself and your family. Wear PPE all the time please and remember to wash your hands.” Albert is a father to two daughters. One is studying to be a doctor and the other is a musician. I asked Albert today, “Why do you risk your life by coming here every day during this pandemic?” He said, “Hassan I have to clean, and I have to feed my daughters.” I am so proud to have Albert as a boss. Albert is an NHS hero.

I wouldn’t think of comparing what you fled in Syria to what’s happening now in the U.K. and around the world … They’re both crises, but the similarities, I would think, end there. But how did one inform the other? If you hadn’t experienced such upheaval and turmoil and conflict in Syria, do you think you’d have had the same reaction to dig in and help in your new home?

When the pandemic hit I panicked, because I was triggered. A crisis on a much bigger scale hit my first home, and now I can see and feel it hitting my adopted home. But in the U.K., the army is working around the clock, sourcing medical supplies and delivering them to hospitals. In Syria, the army systematically targeted and bombed hospitals. While there are some similarities, this pandemic is not a “great leveler,” as some people have described. It’s experienced differently depending on your circumstances. I’ve seen it described as “the great magnifier,” which I think is more accurate.

Meet my colleague Gimba. Gimba is British Nigerian, and she has been working at our hospital for over 10 years as a ward host. Gimba’s favorite colours are white and yellow and she loves eating rice. Yesterday, she got some bad news that her mother had fallen ill and was taken to a hospital in Nigeria. Gimba was heartbroken that she wouldn’t be able to fly home to see her mother because of travel restrictions during the pandemic. That, however, didn’t stop her from carrying on doing her job preparing food for the COVID-19 patients in our ward. I took this photo of her while she was having her lunch — chicken and rice — in the staff room during our break. Gimba is an NHS hero.

Working on the COVID-19 ward has awoken something in me I hadn’t felt since 2011, when I stood up with my fellow Syrians to peacefully protest the Assad regime as a united front with a larger purpose. Now, I stand again to support my community and Whipps Cross, and to advocate for the rights of migrant and working-class communities both in the U.K. and around the world. I invite everyone to join me in this effort.