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...

Notes from the Land of Peace and Prosperity

by Galileo de Guzman Castillo | Jun 4, 2020

By Galileo de Guzman Castillo[i] 2020 June 4 The only hope, or else despair Lies in the choice of pyre of pyre— To be redeemed from fire by fire. —T.S. Eliot, Little Gidding I write this approaching three months into my extended stay in...

Statement to the Extraordinary Meeting of G20 Agriculture Ministers, April 21, 2020

by Focus on the Global South Ally/Friend/Partner | May 7, 2020

by International CSOs As the COVID-19 health emergency unleashes a wider social and economic crisis, we believe that urgent action is indeed needed to safeguard global food security and nutrition. Action, however, cannot be limited to ensuring the flow of food...

STATEMENT: Condemning Crackdown on Women Activists in Delhi

by Focus on the Global South Ally/Friend/Partner | May 7, 2020

1,100 + FEMINISTS ACROSS RELIGION, CLASS, CASTE, ETHNICITY, ABILITY, SEXUALITY AND GENDERS ISSUE SOLIDARITY STATEMENT DENOUNCE false narratives that try to link anti-CAA protests with the violence in Delhi. DEMAND an immediate stop to targeting of Muslim women...

India’s forest workers and indigenous communities under lockdown

by Ayantika Das | May 7, 2020

By Ayantika Das* 30 April 2020 It is now a month since India went into complete lockdown on 26 March to contain the spread of Covid-19. As non-essential economic activity has come to a standstill, the lockdown has hit millions of people working in the informal sector....

COVID-19 exposes twin crises of Neoliberalism and Authoritarianism in Philippines

by Bianca Martinez | May 7, 2020

by Bianca Martinez* 29 April 2020 Under the Luzon-wide lockdown imposed on March 17 and the subsequent provincial lockdowns, institutions deemed as non-essential have been closed, public transportation halted, mass gatherings banned, and majority of the population...

Women workers in Cambodia under the COVID pandemic

by Focus on the Global South Team | May 7, 2020

By Sokunthy Ros* 2 May 2020 As in other countries, COVID-19 has not only shaken Cambodia’s health system, it has also exposed the underlying flaws in the country’s current economic model, which are resulting in livelihood crises for many people. The economic impacts...

Migrant Agricultural Workers in India and the COVID-19 lockdown

by Ranjini Basu | May 7, 2020

By Ranjini Basu* 29 April 2020 The COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in an unprecedented health crisis world-over, where we are still grappling with the unknown characteristics of the virus. This is also an economic crisis of such scale that many wonder whether the world...

PRESS RELEASE: Workers are not Virus-Proof

by admin | May 7, 2020

Advocacy groups call for expanded massive testing before economic restart As the nation commemorates Labor Day, scientists, artists, youth, human rights, public health, and citizen groups join forces with the labor sector to demand for the increase and expansion of...

The Left Better Arm Itself with a Strategy for Deglobalization: An interview with Walden Bello*

by Joseph Purugganan | Apr 25, 2020

*This interview was done by the French online publication Mediapart and was originally published 21 April 2020. What’s the main political lesson you’re drawing from the outbreak of Covid-19? The main political lesson is that globalization was wrong, wrong, wrong....

Why the Covid 19 Crisis Tells Us that Food Sovereignty is an Idea Whose Time has Come

by Walden Bello | Apr 24, 2020

by Walden Bello* The global food system has been very much front and center in the Covid 19 story. Every one, of course, is aware that hunger is closely tracking the virus as its wreaks havoc in both the global North and global South. Indeed, one can say that, unlike...