NEW HAVEN – Until recently, we were regularly confronted with images of drowned migrants floating in the waters separating poorer countries from richer ones, from the Rio Grande to the Mediterranean. And although COVID-19 now dominates the news, the pandemic’s economic fallout is likely to exacerbate the global inequalities that drive migration.

Basic income security is a human right guaranteed by the Human Rights Declaration 1945, International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights 1966, and other international human rights instruments. Article 33 of the Constitution of Nepal 2015 guarantees employment as a fundamental right to all Nepali citizens. In 2018, the federal parliament enacted the Employment Rights Act (ERA), which requires Government of Nepal (GoN) to provide at least 100 days of employment annually to the unemployed or provide half of the minimum wage for 100 days should it fail to provide employment.

LONDON – Decades of privatization, outsourcing, and budget cuts in the name of “efficiency” have significantly hampered many governments’ responses to the COVID-19 crisis. At the same time, successful responses by other governments have shown that investments in core public-sector capabilities make all the difference in times of emergency. The countries that have handled the crisis well are those where the state maintains a productive relationship with value creators in society, by investing in critical capacities and designing private-sector contracts to serve the public interest.

TEL AVIV – The COVID-19 crisis has become the latest front in the escalating clash of ideologies that has become a central feature of geopolitics in recent years. Representing authoritarianism is China, which has touted the success of its aggressive lockdown strategy in curbing the coronavirus’s spread. Representing democracy are a broad array of countries, some of which have responded far worse than others. So, which political system is better suited to managing crises?

Over the last month we are seeing how a crisis like the ongoing lockdown to prevent the spread of Covid-19 is bringing again the best out of the people. I am saying again because it has been the same during the emergency following the earthquakes that hit the country.

The coronavirus pandemic has completely engulfed the world. The United States is now the epicenter of the crisis. The worldwide shutdowns necessary to contain the spread of the virus has been quite detrimental to the global economy. What is good for public health has been devastating for economies around the world. In the United States, about 17 million people, more than 10 percent of the labor force, filed for unemployment claims during the month of March. Canada sheds more than one million jobs in March, which represents almost five percent of the country’s labor force. The statistics are unavailable for Nepal but if it were, it would be damning for the economy. Since there is no public provision for lost income in Nepal, there are no estimates to rely on to quantify the labor market effects of the economic shutdown.