Across the globe, Governments are now confronted with the major challenge of putting in place appropriate exit strategies to come out of COVID-19 pandemic. What is the role of trade unions during lockdowns, shutdowns and re-opening? Learn more here...

“La igualdad es una declaración política. Tenemos que huir de la cultura del privilegio, que naturaliza las desigualdades y hace creer que las personas no son iguales. Necesitamos un nuevo pacto social, un nuevo Estado de bienestar que consagre la protección social universal, con acceso a sistemas de salud de calidad, y reconstruir con igualdad y sostenibilidad”, declaró Alicia Bárcena.

“It’s not over until there’s no virus anywhere in the world”, said WHO spokesperson Dr. Margaret Harris. “So, all the things we have been saying (still) apply. The best precaution is being able to stay one metre away from each other, being able to wash your hands, being able to ensure that you don’t touch your mouth, nose and eyes…We have certainly seen a lot of passion this week, we’ve seen people who’ve felt the need to be out and express their feelings, but we ask them to remember: still protect yourself and others, the coronavirus is all around, protect yourselves and others while expressing yourselves.”

To achieve a better outcome, the world must act jointly and swiftly to revamp all aspects of our societies and economies, from education to social contracts and working conditions. Every country, from the United States to China, must participate, and every industry, from oil and gas to tech, must be transformed. In short, we need a “Great Reset” of capitalism.

The COVID-19 crisis has affected societies and economies around the globe and will permanently reshape our world as it continues to unfold. While the fallout from the crisis is both amplifying familiar risks and creating new ones, change at this scale also creates new openings for managing systemic challenges, and ways to build back better.

This report presents a set of policies to mitigate the impacts and groups them in three overlapping phases: Coping, Managing Continuity, and Improving and Accelerating. The guiding principle are to use every opportunity, in each phase, to do things better. This includes the provision of incentives, such as school feeding and school health programmes, to maximize reenrolment and attendance as schools reopen. By learning from innovations and emergency processes, systems can adapt and scale up the more effective solutions. In doing so, they could become more effective, more agile, and more resilient. A vision and proactive action will help not only mitigate the damage from the current crisis, but could turn recovery into real growth.

“COVID-19 is not only spreading sickness and death; it is pushing people into poverty and hunger,” he explained, adding that in some cases, “it is reversing decades of development progress”.

Meanwhile, as access to services is curtailed and repressive measures are adopted by some nations, protecting the most vulnerable, particularly in conflict zones, has become even more difficult.

Guidance from UNDP, Gender-based violence and COVID-19, also recommends developing new protocols to provide support via phone or online platforms rather than in person, expanding immediate response services in order to save lives, and most ensuring that steps to prevent gender-based violence are in every COVID-19 response plan and budget.

“La crisis es el accidente más la desestabilización. Combina el desencadenamiento de dificultades, el desorden en el funcionamiento de las organizaciones y divergencias en cuanto a las opciones fundamentales. Con la crisis, la cuestión de la información del público se vuelve central. No se trata solamente de aplicar soluciones listas para ser empleada en problemas definidos. Será preciso legitimar la propia acción, mantener la credibilidad, hacer gala de eficacia en la ayuda a la población.”

Investment in transforming the transport sector could create millions of new jobs and help countries move to greener, healthier economies, says report from the International Labour Organization and the UN Economic Commission for Europe.

The study finds that 10 million additional jobs could be created worldwide - 2.9 million in the UNECE region - if 50 per cent of all vehicles manufactured were electric. In addition, almost 5 million new jobs could be created worldwide - 2.5 million in the UNECE region - if UNECE countries doubled investment in public transport.

While the pandemic arrived after it had already devastated Europe (and now the United States), everybody in the human rights field knew that health and social services in Latin America had been dismantled progressively, mostly via privatisation and the shrinking of public programmes and spending. Hence the pandemic will affect principally the vulnerable people who can’t access basic public services.

While a global pandemic has been a looming risk for decades, COVID-19 has come as a shock to society, health systems, economies and governments worldwide. In the midst of extraordinary challenges and uncertainty, and countless personal tragedies, leaders are under pressure to make decisions on managing the immediate impact of the pandemic and its consequences, decisions that will shape the state of the world for years to come. What might be the silver linings in the crisis and how might leaders use this moment to build a more prosperous, equitable and sustainable world?

The United Nations and other partner organizations of the CCSA make a wealth of impartial data and statistics available free of charge with the spirit of promoting facts-based planning. This report presents a snapshot of some of the latest information available on how COVID-19 is affecting the world today. Although a wide range of topics are covered in this report, a consistency of message is clear – this is an unprecedented crisis, and no aspect of our lives is immune. The quantitative knowledge presented in this report covers different aspects of public and private life from economic and environmental fluctuations to changes that affect individuals in terms of income, education, employment and violence and changes affecting public services such as civil aviation and postal services. The report also puts a spotlight on the affects for some sub-population groups like women and children as well as geographical regions.

Relación de las acciones e iniciativas más destacadas que México, como una respuesta de Estado, ha puesto en marcha para hacer frente a la pandemia.

The COVID-19 pandemic continues to wreak havoc globally, generating significant challenges that could result in risks to food security and nutrition in many countries. Countries are ordering lockdowns, restricting movement and observing physical distancing to curb the pandemic. Disruptions in supply chains resulting from blockages on transport routes, transport restrictions and quarantine measures are resulting in significant increases in food loss and waste, especially of perishable agricultural produce such as fruits and vegetables, fish, meat and dairy products. In addition, labour shortages, owing to the restriction of movement of key stakeholders in production and transport, are significantly impacting food supply and demand owing to food shortages in some markets, further contributing to food loss and to the unnecessary waste of food supplies in these difficult times.

La pandemia del COVID-19 tiene fuertes efectos en el ámbito de la salud y profundas implicaciones sobre el crecimiento económico y el desarrollo social. Llega a América Latina y el Caribe en un contexto de bajo crecimiento —como fue analizado en anteriores informes especiales sobre la materia (CEPAL, 2020a y 2020b)— y, sobre todo, de alta desigualdad y vulnerabilidad, en el que se observan tendencias crecientes en la pobreza y pobreza extrema, un debilitamiento de la cohesión social y manifestaciones de descontento popular.

While the world has focused primarily on the impacts of the COVID-19 Crisis on developed countries in Europe, North America, and East Asia, developing countries will not be immune to the economic fallout from the crisis or its social implications. The vast majority of these countries are deeply integrated into global goods and labour supply chains and will feel the effects of declining demand in the short term; current travel restrictions will have a severe impact on communities reliant on tourism; and many developing countries rely heavily on labour migration – both to developing countries as well as to developed countries – as a way of easing domestic labour market pressures and as a financial resource, with migrants sending home billions of US dollars to family members in the form of remittances, as well as returning with savings which serve to stimulate local economic activity. Restrictions on internal migration further exacerbate the situation as seasonal and trade-related mobility is disrupted, impacting the livelihoods of migrants and their families.

Thirty million Americans filed for unemployment in the past six weeks. It took about a year to reach that number in the wake of the Lehman Brothers’ bankruptcy. Meanwhile, euro area GDP contracted by 3.8% in the first quarter of 2020 (Eurostat 2020). Against this background, the relatively slow frequency of most official statistics and macroeconomic indicators represents a challenge for policymakers in their efforts to mitigate the economic impact of the crisis.

Este artículo de MIT Technology Review indica que la mejor estrategia para frenar la pandemia de coronavirus requiere que nos confinemos durante dos de cada tres meses, según un modelo del Imperial College de Londres. Y el mes que podamos salir, las normas sociales deberán cambiar drásticamente, algo que afectará principalmente a los más vulnerables.

On March 20, 2020, Pope Francis asked the Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development (DPIHD) to establish a Commission consisting of five working groups with the objectives of: supporting local Churches, enabling them within their own local circumstances to be active agents of assistance in cooperation with Caritas Internationalis; focusing on the study of the pandemic, reflecting on society and a post-Covid-19 world, particularly in areas such as the environment, economy, employment, health, policy, communication and security; supporting the Holy See in its activities and in its relations with Countries and International Organizations, conveying to them the results of the research, dialogue and reflection undertaken; and funding its activities in the areas of research, analysis and communication.