european think tanks group
In fragile and conflict-affected settings, Covid-19 is increasing vulnerabilities and tensions caused by unequal access to already strained (and often inexistent) social and medical services. This is particularly true for young people – one in every four of whom live in such areas.
World Bank Group President David Malpass expects the corona crisis to result in a deeper global recession than the Great Depression of the 1930s. The pandemic will hit the world’s poorest countries even harder than industrialised nations, especially as the former have barely any fiscal leeway. Their social-security and healthcare systems are not sufficiently robust.
As the coronavirus pandemic puts an accent on the geopolitical dynamics among powerful states, China has stepped up its support to Africa’s fight against the virus – arguably not only out of magnanimity. Although China’s assistance is very welcome on the continent at the moment, more is on its way to test China-Africa relations, such as negotiations on debt relief.
To improve gender justice, ODI’s experts explore multiple dimensions of gender and Covid-19 concerns to better understand the gendered impacts of the threat and embed gender concerns into every aspect of the response.
The experts discuss gender, Covid-19, and issues of leadership and intimate partner violence. They also cover women’s economic empowerment and security, education, health and social protection. Finally, they share ODI’s latest thinking on issues around youth and data, conflict and humanitarian contexts and learning from history.
The international community bears joint responsibility for the world’s poorest countries during this pandemic. For this reason, both temporary, immediate liquidity support and long-term measures that address the root causes of indebtedness are important in order to enable these countries to prevent a financial catastrophe on top of a humanitarian one.
COVID-19 can be a turning point towards building more resilient and sustainable societies. At this moment, global and national economies have come to an abrupt standstill. Suddenly, economic growth is not sacred anymore. To protect the weakest members of our societies, we are willing to make enormous sacrifices. Reconciling other values with economic growth is also needed if we want to meet the sustainable development goals on achieving zero hunger and greater environmental sustainability.
International development cooperation risks being deeply affected by the global COVID-19 pandemic, with potentially disastrous consequences among fragile states.
Twenty-twenty should have been the year of a fundamentally new Africa-Europe partnership, culminating in the sixth EU-AU summit in October in Brussels. Ursula von der Leyen, with a delegation of some 20 European commissioners in her wake, recently traveled to Addis Ababa for meetings with their African Union counterparts.
The crisis sparked by the COVID-19 pandemic has overshadowed existing migration debates in Europe, yet is inextricably linked with mobility and movement and its governance within the EU and globally. The current situation reveals the complexities of migration debates, pushing aside current, unearthing old and raising new questions.
The human impact of the Coronavirus is widely reported but new research from the Overseas Development Institute highlights the outbreak will have a significant economic impact on the world’s poorest economies – even if they have no confirmed cases. The Overseas Development Institute have developed a Vulnerability Index, which shows Sri Lanka, Vietnam and the Philippines, followed by Kazakhstan, Cambodia, Kenya, Malaysia and Nepal are at greatest economic risk.
