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COVID-19 Updates

As the novel coronavirus continues to spread across the world, close to four billion people in over 90 countries are under mandatory lockdowns. The virus has in its wake taken both tens of thousands of lives and millions of livelihoods. Countries continue to grapple with the challenges of testing, quarantines and lack of medical facilities and equipment. It is also evident that global trade and national economies will take a much worse battering than expected. Focus created this special section of the website to capture some of the impacts of COVID-19 in Asia

Latest Articles/Statements

COVID-19 Impacts on Women’s Economy, Women’s Rights and Livelihood in Thailand

In 2020, Thailand was the first country in the world to detect COVID-19 transmission outside China. Since then, the Government has aggressively exercised executive and judicial measures, especially on the infinite extension of COVID-19 state of emergency decree, to...
COVID-19 Snapshots from Asia

COVID-19 Snapshots from Asia

Synthesis of Inputs and Testimonies of the Impacts of COVID-19 on Food Security in Asia Prepared for the CSM Global Synthesis Report on COVID-19. October 2020 Introduction The COVID-19 pandemic has made visible the stark realities of long-standing, multi-generational...

COVID-19, Distorted Development, and Degrowth 

COVID-19, Distorted Development, and Degrowth 

The following paper was presented at the Chulalongkorn University Social Research Institute's Webinar "Sustainable Social and Economic Recovery after COVID-19" on September 17, 2020. What I’d like to do is focus on some economic vulnerabilities exposed by COVID-19 and...

Collective struggle, collective strength

Collective struggle, collective strength

By Galileo de Guzman Castillo, Joseph Purugganan, and Bianca Martinez As we commemorate today the International Day of Peace, let us all stand in solidarity with various peoples’ movements and learn from the grassroots communities the importance of analyzing the roots...

Our disease is landlessness

Our disease is landlessness

Cambodian farmer Oum Samorl and her family lost their farm to a corporate land grab 15 years ago. They have never stopped feeling the loss, especially during the pandemic. Oum Samorl remembers the day in June 2006 when tractors invaded her family’s farm in Cambodia’s...

COVID Bulletin 05: The autocrats are failing

COVID Bulletin 05: The autocrats are failing

View this email in your browser Bulletin Issue 05: August 26, 2020 The COVID-19 pandemic will soon enter its seventh month with more than 23 million detected infections globally. India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and the Philippines are currently the worst affected in...

Postscript to Independence

Postscript to Independence

By Galileo de Guzman Castillo WHAT FREEDOM? We shall find / We shall discover / What is ours we shall recover — Cynthia Alexander, “Malaya”. Is it freedom when some are more equal than others? In all dimensions of life and its discontents Violence of a broken system...

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