Understanding the Hunger Surge Caused by the COVID-19 Recession to Mitigate It Before It Is Too Late

Many uncertainties haunt the world’s campaign to counter the COVID-19 pandemic, but one thing is now sure: Global economic activity will suffer greatly, with large-scale consequences for the incomes and welfare of all, but especially for the most vulnerable food import-dependent countries.

Staring at a Human Security Catastrophe

The defining images of South Asia’s battle against Covid-19 are hundreds of thousands of migrants, many with children on their shoulders, trudging from New Delhi, Kathmandu or Dhaka to their far-flung villages. They are daily wage earners engaged in construction, small enterprises, plying rickshaws or street selling in the informal sector. With lockdowns and economic activity shut down to combat the virus, these migrants lost their low-paying jobs and were forced to flee to their rural homes. Those who remained in these cities face food insecurity, rising joblessness and risk falling deeper into poverty.

All-of-Government, Whole-of-Society Involvement Needed to Fight Virus

The Covid-19 pandemic is now widely considered more threatening than any other recent viral epidemic. Most believe that many more have been infected or even died than officially confirmed.

Why Reproductive Rights Must Be a Critical Part of Our Arsenal to Fight Pandemics

Sexual and reproductive health and pandemics might seem to be unrelated topics, but large and dense populations are drivers of the high velocity transmission of COVID-19, and there are lessons to be learned for the future.

COVID-19 Stimulus Measures Must Save Lives, Protect Livelihoods, and Safeguard Nature to Reduce the Risk of Future Pandemics

There is a single species that is responsible for the COVID-19 pandemic - us. As with the climate and biodiversity crises, recent pandemics are a direct consequence of human activity – particularly our global financial and economic systems, based on a limited paradigm that prizes economic growth at any cost. We have a small window of opportunity, in overcoming the challenges of the current crisis, to avoid sowing the seeds of future ones.

SDGs: the Challenge to Improve Lives After the COVID-19 Crisis

The SDGs, with their universal scope, interlinked nature and focus on leaving no one behind will be more essential than ever during and after this crisis.

UN’s Development Goals Threatened by a World Economy Facing Recession

The UN’s 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), described as an integral part of its highly-ambitious development agenda, may be in deep trouble.

Collaboration Can Help Eradicate COVID-19

Since the founding of the United Nations in 1945, space for multilateral policy development and commitment has grown. Its growth in the global health field augurs well as we find ways to mitigate the spread of the novel coronavirus.

Citizen Action is Central to the Global Response to COVID-19

The coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic has created an unprecedented human and economic crisis. Governments are taking strong actions, enforcing quarantines to reduce contagion, testing populations, building emergency intensive care units. Governments have also launched large fiscal stimulus plans to protect jobs and the economy, as well as temporary social protection programs such as income/food support, subsidies to utilities and care services.

What Does Covid-19 Crisis Mean for Rural Development?

The implications and consequences of the Covid-19 pandemic are playing out before us. Much of the news coverage of the to date in both the Global North and the Global South has understandably focused on the horrifying impact of the disease on urban communities, where it is clearly hitting people, and economies, hardest.

Q&A: Continued Social Distancing and Hundreds of Millions More in Poverty – A New Normal for the World?

With much of the global economy stalled amid an unprecedented lockdown of nations grappling to contain the COVID-19 pandemic, the author of a new United Nations report on the disease’s impact on poverty told IPS that hundreds of millions more could be pushed into poverty and we can expect to see social unrest.

A Global Crisis Like No Other Needs a Global Response Like No Other

I have been saying for a while that this is a ‘crisis like no other.’ It is:

• • More complex, with interlinked shocks to our health and our economies that have brought our way of life to an-almost complete stop;

 

• • More uncertain, as we are learning only gradually how to treat the novel virus, make containment most effective, and restart our economies; and

 

• Truly global. Pandemics don’t respect borders, neither do the economic shocks they cause.

Reimagining a Post COVID World: Key Principles for the Future

In her book, ‘A World Made New: Eleanor Roosevelt and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights,’ Mary Ann Glendon tells the beautiful story of how out of the ashes of the Second World War emerged the world’s pre-eminent rights framework. The Declaration recognises the inherent dignity of every human being and was born out of the shared horror felt by the international community with war crimes and genocide on an unprecedented scale. It acknowledged that fundamental change was needed to make the world fit for future generations.

The Theology of Pandemics

Ingmar Bergman’s 1957 film The Seventh Seal is set in medieval Sweden, as the bubonic plague ravages the countryside. In one famous scene, a procession of zombie-like flagellants enters a village and interrupts a comic stage-show.

Covid-19: Brazil’s Bolsonaro trumps Trump

Brazil’s President Jair Bolsonaro appointed medical entrepreneur Nelson Teich his new health minister on 17 April. The businessman quickly echoed his boss’ desire to resume business as usual regardless of its potentially lethal consequences.

Haunting Forest Spirits – is Mother Nature Striking Back?

Epidemic diseases are not random events that afflict societies capriciously and without warning, on the contrary, every society produces its own specific vulnerabilities. To study them is to understand the importance of a society's structure, its standard of living, and its political priorities. […] Epidemics are a mirror, they show who we really are: Our ethics, beliefs, and socio-economic relationships.                                                                                                                                                           Frank Snowden ¹

How Some Pacific Women are Responding to Climate Change and Natural Disasters

Sitting atop a banyan tree branch, Fiona Robyn had a cell phone tightly clasped in her fist raised high to get a signal. She was impatiently waiting for the SMS weather alert from the Women's Wetem Weta (Women’s Weather Watch (WWW)) hub in Port Vila as cyclone TC Harold raged towards the Republic of Vanuatu in the South Pacific Ocean on Apr. 5.

Multilateralism Through Public-Private Partnerships Are Key to Flattening the COVID-19 Curve

The UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has said that now is “a defining moment for modern society. History will judge the efficacy of the response not by the actions of any single set of government actors taken in isolation, but by the degree to which the response is coordinated globally across all sectors for the benefit of our human family.”

On Watching Contagion: What Do We Learn?

Contagion is a 2011 film by US director Steven Soderbergh (Erin Brockovich, Traffic, Che) that has proved very popular viewing during the first few weeks of the Coronavirus crisis. Set in a fictional global pandemic – modelled on the outbreak of a bat-borne Nipah virus identified in 1999 that killed around 100 people in Malaysia - the film is a tightly-written topical drama with a great castthat includes Matt Damon, Gwyneth Paltrow, Jude Law, Laurence Fishburne, Kate Winslet, Marion Cotillard and Jennifer Ehle.

Concerns for the Nearly 400 Rohingya Refugees Rescued off the Coast of Bangladesh

Nearly 400 Rohingya refugees have been rescued in Bangladesh after being at sea for two months. 

COVID-19: Maintaining Food Security in Asia Pacific

COVID-19 has disrupted supply chains that are essential to assure food security in the Asia Pacific region, yet countries overall seem to have managed, so far, to keep supermarkets stocked with food and feed those who can afford it. The Asia Pacific region is home to over 60% of humanity and also contains sub-regions with among the highest frequencies of severe weather events and some of the most challenging environments for agriculture. As a region it is characterized by diverse food systems and a multiplex of supply chains. Under normal circumstances, food security is already threatened by a multitude of factors.