الزراعة والتنمية الريفية والغابات

Although the COVID-19 (coronavirus) crisis is, in the first instance, a physical health crisis, it has the seeds of a major mental health crisis as well, if action is not taken. Good mental health is critical to the functioning of society at the best of times. It must be front and centre of every country’s response to and recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic. The mental health and wellbeing of whole societies have been severely impacted by this crisis and are priorities to be addressed urgently. Rapid implementation of recommended actions will be essential to ensure people and societies are better protected from the mental health impact of COVID-19. The e-book for this policy brief has been converted into an accessible format for the visually impaired and people with print reading disabilities. It is fully compatible with leading screen-reader technologies such as JAWS and NVDA.

The remarkable growth of cities in recent decades has intensified a number of humanity’s most pressing challenges. It has also presented many of our greatest opportunities to protect people, prosperity and planet. COVID-19 (coronavirus) has laid bare – and indeed heightened – both these challenges and these opportunities. With an estimated 90 percent of all reported COVID-19 cases, urban areas have become the epicentre of the pandemic. In the near term, for many cities, the COVID-19 health crisis has expanded to a crisis of urban access, urban equity, urban finance, safety, joblessness, public services, infrastructure and transport, all of which are dis-proportionally affecting the most vulnerable in society.

The brief highlights emerging trends and implications for women and girls’ safety in cities and public spaces, recognizing the continuum of violence against women and girls in private and public spaces throughout different phases of the pandemic. It provides examples of concrete action taken at the local level in partnership with governments, grassroots women and women’s rights organizations, the private sector and other partners, including from cities participating in the UN Safe Cities and Safe Public Spaces Global Flagship Initiative, and in particular from cities where the disease is widespread. The brief includes recommendations to be considered by governments, international organizations, women’s rights and other civil society organizations. It is a living document that complements other policy briefs prepared by UN Women on COVID-19 (coronavirus) and ending violence against women. It draws upon the knowledge and experience of a wide range of experts who support solutions to end sexual harassment and other forms of violence against women and girls in urban, rural and online settings, attentive to the country context in which the crisis is occurring.

This paper summarizes the recent UNICEF analysis on investing in early childhood education in developing countries. It provides a benefit-cost analysis of investments in pre-primary education in 109 developing low- and middle-income countries and territories, using data from 2008 to 2019. The COVID-19 (coronavirus) pandemic and related school closures exacerbate the risk of children missing out on both learning and future earnings. Investing in ECE and strengthening pre-primary education systems is needed to achieve progress on the Sustainable Development Goals, decrease inequalities and drive economic growth. It is now more critical than ever that ECE be prioritized by increasing domestic budgets and international aid and improving the efficiency with which ECE programmes are delivered.

The unfolding health crisis poses unprecedented challenges to individuals, families, Governments and to the international community. While containing the coronavirus pandemic is the most urgent priority, countries are quickly acting to counter its negative impact on employment and poverty, including through fiscal stimulus plans. Whether these plans will protect the most disadvantaged people and households over the long-term depends on their size, duration and on how measures are implemented.

In the space of nine months, COVID-19 (coronavirus) has spread to more than 190 countries, with over 30 million cases reported. Over one million lives have been lost. The pandemic has laid bare long-ignored risks, including inadequate health systems, gaps in social protection and structural inequalities. It has also brought home the importance of basic public health, and strong health systems and emergency preparedness, as well as the resilience of a population in the face of a new virus or pandemic, lending ever greater urgency to the quest for universal health coverage (UHC). Health is a fundamental human right, and universal health coverage is a critical tool for achieving health for all. Universal health coverage is defined as a situation where all individuals and communities receive the health services they need without undue financial hardship. However, at least half of the world’s population still do not have full coverage of essential health services, and over 800 million people spend at least 10 per cent of their household budgets to pay for health. It will be important to remove as much as possible financial barriers to accessing health services. This is challenging during an economic recession, but COVID-19 has shown that effective epidemic control benefits the economy. It has also exposed the down sides of financing health coverage primarily through wage-based contributions. In the context of a global economic crisis where unemployment increases, and where entitlement to services is linked to such contributions, access to health services is reduced at the time people need it the most.

This policy brief discusses the role of effective governance, and in particular the role of the relationship between the state and people, in building countries’ resiliency and in responding to and managing nation-wide crises such as the COVID-19 (coronavirus) pandemic.

COVID-19 (coronavirus) leaves few lives and places untouched. But its impact is harshest for those groups who were already in vulnerable situations before the crisis. This is particularly true for many people on the move, such as migrants in irregular situations, migrant workers with precarious livelihoods, or working in the informal economy, victims of trafficking in persons as well as people fleeing their homes because of persecution, war, violence, human rights violations or disaster, whether within their own countries — internally displaced persons (IDPs) — or across international borders — refugees and asylum-seekers. The e-book for this policy brief has been converted into an accessible format for the visually impaired and people with print reading disabilities. It is fully compatible with leading screen-reader technologies such as JAWS and NVDA.

This policy brief analyses the impact of COVID-19 (coronavirus) on the financial sector and puts forward policy recommendations, focusing on how the international community can support countries most in need, in four areas: i) launching a large-scale, coordinated stimulus package that includes a significant increase in access to concessional financing; ii) strengthening the global financial safety net; iii) initiating a debt moratorium; and iv) in the medium-term, building a more sustainable future. These measures should complement other national and international actions to address the health, social and economic impact of the crisis.

This paper identifies key ethical considerations when undertaking evidence generation involving children during the mitigation stage of the pandemic (emergency phase), on subject matter relating to COVID-19 (Coronavirus) once the pandemic has been contained, and once containment policy measures, including lockdowns, have been lifted (post-emergency phase). While the COVID-19 pandemic is undoubtedly a global crisis, with evidence generation activities raising critical ethical issues that have been captured in the literature and relevant guidelines, there are specificities relating to this emergency that must be considered when unpacking potential ethical issues. Hence while ethical issues pertaining to evidence generation involving children in emergencies and humanitarian contexts are relevant and should be considered, there are factors that define this ‘special case’ that must be considered from the outset. These will inform the core ethical considerations that need to be addressed.