COVID-19 pandemic surges in Turkey as government continues to hide data

Barış Demir & Ulaş Ateşçi

The COVID-19 pandemic resurgence in Turkey is intensifying due to President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s back-to-work and back-to-school drive, supported by the bourgeois opposition parties and their allies in the trade unions. Turkey has recorded 1,815 more coronavirus cases and 72 more people died on Sunday. This brought the total to nearly 350,000 cases and more than 9,200 deaths.

With 1,812 new patients on Friday, Turkey had seen a record number of new cases since early May. However, President Erdoğan’s government acknowledged in early October that it has lied about and downplayed the COVID-19 pandemic in Turkey, effectively imposing a “herd immunity” policy in the interests of the Turkish ruling class by making an arbitrary, unscientific distinction between “cases” and “patients.”

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), a COVID-19 case is “A person with laboratory confirmation of COVID-19 infection, irrespective of clinical signs and symptoms.” However, Turkish Health Minister Fahrettin Koca declared that “Not all cases are patients, because there are those who show no symptoms at all even though their tests come back positive.” According to a journalist who spoke with Koca after his statement, the real daily number of cases is 8 or 10 times more than the number of patients announced.

The Turkish Medical Association (TTB) has recently declared that the government might not have reported more than 81,000 COVID-19 cases in April and 275,000 cases in September, according to the rate of positive tests announced by Koca. This would put Turkey in fourth place, just after France, in terms of the total number of cases in Europe.

Moreover, according to Koca, more than 40,000 health care workers have been infected and 107 of them have died. He added that the number of cases in Istanbul has increased 50 percent in last month, and that there is a “rising trend” in infections across the country.

Though the pandemic is erupting out of control, with the number of patients and the death toll rising rapidly, the back-to-school campaign was intensified on last Monday, as millions more students were forced back into in-person teaching.

Previously, Education Minister Ziya Selçuk had announced: “On Monday, October 12, we are opening all primary schools, village schools, 8th and 12th grades and the schools of our special needs kids.” In addition, all classes have been opened in Vocational and Technical High Schools.

A total of more than 10 million students have begun in-person teaching, including in pre-schools, primary schools and vocational high schools. President Erdoğan has declared that his government plans to re-open universities soon, despite widespread opposition among university students to such a move. After Erdoğan made his statement on the universities, tens of thousands of youth expressed their opposition on social media with a hashtag “We want online teaching.”

Students have rightly stated that this re-opening drive of universities did not stem from concerns about education, but of keeping the economy running and profits flowing amid a pandemic. There is also a developing movement among working class youth against student loans, demanding debt cancellation. More than 5 million youth have student loan debt; nearly 280,000 of them have been sent to the bailiffs for this reason.

Health Minister Koca recently said: “We see that there is no increase in the number of positive cases in the re-opening of schools. We even know that there are partial decreases compared to those that do not open.” This absurd statement, which is not based on any scientific analysis or research, indicates that the government will insist upon in-person teaching and a “herd immunity” policy at the expense of the lives of students, teachers and thousands more people.

Indeed, at least three students and two teachers in a school in the northern city of Samsun tested positive this week, and 240 students were quarantined.

A teacher and student in the Fatsa district of Ordu province have caught the coronavirus and the 30-person class was quarantined.

The government continues to implement this policy based on incorrect data, while refusing any demands for lockdowns and suppressing growing opposition within the working class, which is forced to back-to-work amid a raging pandemic.

Since the pandemic began, millions of workers have been forced to take unpaid leave and survive on only 1,170 liras (125 euro) monthly in unemployment insurance. With the votes of the bourgeois opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), the Erdoğan government extended the forced “unpaid leave” process, meaning hunger conditions until July 2021 for hundreds of thousands or millions of workers. While Turkey’s minimum wage is about 2,300 liras (€247), a family of four goes hungry on anything less than 2,400 liras (€258) per month.

Under these conditions, fearing that any protest could quickly trigger a social explosion, the government is trying to suppress any signs of social opposition. On Wednesday, police attacked Health and Safety Labor Watch (İSİG) activists who tried to issue a press statement on the COVID-19 pandemic in front of a hospital in the capital, Ankara. Police detained eight members of the group, including health workers.

In a report the group subsequently published online, they said: “As we have insistently stated since the first days of the outbreak, it has step by step transformed into a working class disease with the policies that have been carried out in this period.” The statement calls on all workers to form “pandemic committees” at workplaces against workplace homicides, the pandemic, unemployment, hunger and precarious employment.

Brazilian nurse speaks out against closure of COVID hospital and firing of 300 employees

Tomas Castanheira

The government of Para, a state in the north of Brazil, announced last week the closure of two centers for the treatment of COVID-19. Both the Castelo dos Sonhos Hospital and the Castanhal Regional Hospital had just been opened between June and July, and now have suddenly shut down.

The approximately 300 workers at the Castanhal Regional Hospital carried out a protest last Thursday just after receiving the news that they were all fired by the company contracted to manage the unit. They demanded their jobs back and the payment of two months of overdue salaries.

The World Socialist Web Site spoke with Gleyce Cristina, one of the nurses who led Thursday’s protest, which was organized independently by the workers. A picture of Gleyce holding up a placard reading “yesterday we were heroes, today we were fired” was shared hundreds of times on social media.

Workers of the Castanheira Regional Hospital protest for their jobs, October 15.

Gleyce told the WSWS that she and her colleagues were hired in June, about a month after the state government acknowledged the total collapse of Para’s health care system. Castanhal, a city of about 200,000 inhabitants in the northeast of the state, was one of the focal points of that collapse.

“The [Castanhal Regional Hospital] has been under construction for over 10 years,” Gleyce said. “Only after many people insisted, after many died, they inaugurated the fourth floor for COVID.

“As soon as it opened the situation was very critical. They gave a time period until December for the operation of the unit as a COVID center. We are in October and it is already being closed. But the pandemic is not over yet.”

She warned of the still alarming situation of the COVID-19 pandemic in Brazil, which already has more than 5.2 million confirmed cases and more than 150,000 deaths. About 500 Brazilians continue to die every day from the disease.

“While the hospital was open, people kept coming,” she said. “There were always patients. There was a patient there that said that the disease had just arrived in her city.”

The Secretary of Health of Belém (Sesma), has published recent data that points to a terrifying growth in the number of suspected COVID-19 cases in the state capital. Between October 12 and 16, hospitals registered a 112 percent increase in cases of acute respiratory syndrome.

But Gleyce’s stance toward the pandemic is radically opposed to that of the government of Para, led by Helder Barbalho of the Brazilian Democratic Movement (MDB). Explaining the reasons for the closure of the hospitals, the state health secretary Romulo Gomes declared: “We take into consideration the yellow flag zone in which these units are located.”

Gleyce Cristina holding a placard that says: "yesterday we were heroes, today we were fired"

This measure is part of the irresponsible and homicidal policy of the Para government and the entire Brazilian ruling class. Barbalho has since September authorized the reopening of schools in Para and is now trying to force the return of in-person classes in state public schools, facing resistance from educators. Gleyce firmly opposes the reopening of schools: “Not even we in the health sector have vaccines, it is too early to do so.”

There is another factor behind the closure of the health care units. The government of Barbalho is under federal investigation for the diversion of health care resources, which intensified during the COVID-19 pandemic. This directly involves the contracting of so-called social organizations to manage public hospitals, like the one in Castanhal.

As it launched a Federal Police operation on Tuesday, the Federal Public Ministry stated: “Helder Barbalho would previously deal with businessmen and the then chief of staff on matters related to the bidding procedures, that have been supposedly ... defrauded and over-billed.”

Gleyce said that she and her colleagues were hired with the guarantee that their jobs would be maintained even after the COVID-19 operation, as the hospital began functioning as an oncology and trauma center. “Many friends have given up years of work on other jobs. There are desperate family men.

“It was only after the media started talking about the hospital closure that they sat down to talk to us and informed us that we were fired. Without warning, without anything. Our pay has ended on the 15th, and we have two months of overdue salaries.

“We want our jobs, they said we wouldn’t have to leave. It’s a total disregard for life. I have friends who left their jobs and are sick at home. The last ones were a cleaning lady and a nurse, who on his last day on duty found out that he had COVID.

“And now, how will they take care of themselves, without money? And where will they take care of themselves, if the hospital is closed? It wasn’t supposed to close, COVID isn’t over, nor did a vaccine arrive.”

But the attacks faced by health professionals in Para, Gleyce declared, are not an isolated episode: “What is happening to me and my friends is what happens to many. We fought, we gave our blood, risked our lives. Many times bringing the virus into our home. They called us front-line heroes, but when it came time to fire us, they didn’t have a shred of pity.”

These workers will be thrown into the growing ranks of the unemployed in Brazil, which reached historic records during the COVID-19 pandemic. Some 10 million workers have lost their jobs in the country and, for the first time in decades, more than half the working age population is unemployed.

Gleyce said: “Unfortunately, we have no one to fight for us. We have no representative, it’s just our own voice. We wanted a response from the government, that it would guarantee our employment, but it doesn’t respond. The newspapers promised to help, but there was no answer.”

Referring to the Regional Nursing Council (Coren), which claims to represent the nurses’ interests, Gleyce said: “I haven’t even heard from Coren yet. I’m sure they know about what happened with us, because it had great repercussions, but even Coren is not in our favor. All I know is that you have to pay them every year, but Coren is good for nothing.”

On the other hand, Gleyce reported that, “in terms of shares on social media, we had many responses.” According to her, most of the support comes from workers who are going through the same situation.

She responded enthusiastically upon learning about the growing number of strikes and demonstrations by health professionals around the world, like those that swept Chile and Argentina less than a month ago. And she agreed with the perspective advocated by the WSWS, that workers form rank-and-file committees independent of the unions to represent themselves and coordinate their struggles internationally.

Gleyce concluded the interview with a message to all workers: “We are discussing how to continue this struggle. It’s not going to end like this; we’re fighting for our rights.”

Labour Party strengthens its hold on power in New Zealand election

Tom Peters

The New Zealand Labour Party, led by Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, was re-elected to a second term in Saturday’s election, with 49.1 percent of the votes, up from 36.9 percent in the 2017 election.

Some special votes are yet to be counted (overseas ballots and those cast by late registrants), but Labour is expected to get 64 seats in the 120-seat parliament. This is Labour’s best result since 1946 and the first time a party has been able to govern alone since 1996. Labour’s ally the Green Party also increased its share of votes from 6.3 to 7.6 percent (10 seats).

The opposition National Party’s vote plummeted from 44 percent in 2017 to 27 percent, just 35 seats, its second-worst defeat ever.

Under New Zealand’s mixed member proportional (MMP) system, voters have a party vote and a candidate vote. The party vote decides the overall proportion of seats in parliament held by each party, while the candidate vote decides which MP represents an individual electorate.

Jacinda Ardern with US President Donald Trump [Source: Wikimedia Commons]

Labour candidates increased their majorities in several working class electorates, including Mana, north of Wellington, Manurewa in South Auckland and Christchurch East. However, the party’s surge in support largely came from sections of the middle class, including farmers and business owners. In the South Island, Labour won the party vote for every single electorate, with only a few seats being retained by individual National MPs.

National lost 15 electorates to Labour, including affluent seats like Northcote and Upper Harbour in Auckland. National Party deputy leader Gerry Brownlee lost his seat of Ilam in Christchurch.

Ardern and Labour benefited from overwhelmingly positive coverage in the global and local media of their response to the COVID-19 pandemic, and the absence of any coherent and stable alternative from National. Labour ran an extraordinarily empty campaign. It refused to make any substantive policy announcements and framed the election as a referendum on its handling of the pandemic. This was to give itself a free hand to continue to impose its right-wing agenda after the election.

New Zealand imposed a relatively strict lockdown in March before the country’s first recorded death from the virus (there have been 25 deaths in total). The reality, however, is that the Ardern government was forced to lock down due to mass pressure from workers, including online petitions organised by doctors independently of the trade unions.

For all the media hoopla about Labour’s “historic” victory, large numbers of workers view Labour and National, correctly, as two parties of big business and militarism with essentially the same politics. Turnout was slightly higher than in 2017, but the Electoral Commission’s preliminary figures indicate that almost one in four eligible people, 877,674, decided not to vote for any party.

Ardern’s acceptance speech recalled US Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden’s right-wing appeal to Republican voters. Addressing traditional National Party voters who had switched to Labour, Ardern declared that she would listen to their point of view. Labour, Ardern said, “will be a party that governs for every New Zealander.”

She vaguely declared that Labour would “take on poverty and inequality” and create “thousands of jobs, new state homes to house the homeless,” renewable electricity and support for “small businesses.” One only has to look at the record of the last Ardern Labour government to know that these promises are lies.

In fact, the Ardern government’s main response to the economic crisis triggered by COVID-19 has been the same as other governments internationally: an unprecedented handout of tens of billions of dollars to businesses, which have sacked tens of thousands of workers. Living standards are plummeting, with the median income falling by 7.6 percent in the past year. Almost one in four children live in poverty, 20,000 families are on the public housing waiting list and nearly 12 percent of working age people are on welfare.

The Labour-led government was confronted in 2018–2019 with nationwide strikes by nurses and teachers. These stoppages, the largest in 30 years, were betrayed by the union bureaucracy, which pushed through the government’s agenda by signing agreements that maintained low wages and staffing levels.

Any illusions that Labour is a progressive party, or a “lesser evil” to National, will be shattered by the assault on the working class that is already well underway. To repay the debt accumulated by bailing out the rich, the re-elected Ardern government will work with big business and the union bureaucracy to implement drastic austerity measures.

This will inevitably trigger a resurgence of class struggle. The fact that Labour is even considering a coalition with the Greens points to its nervousness about governing alone in these circumstances.

The government will also continue to strengthen military spending and ties with the US.

Although Ardern is still falsely described in the international media as the “anti-Trump,” her coalition government formed in 2017 was supported by the Trump administration, which publicly criticised the previous National government’s strong orientation towards building business and trade ties with China.

In 2017, Labour scraped into power thanks to the right-wing nationalist NZ First Party’s decision to form a coalition with Labour and the Greens instead of the National Party, which received more votes. Ardern rewarded NZ First, which only got 7.2 percent of the votes, with the positions of deputy prime minister, foreign affairs minister and defence minister. Labour and NZ First had for years demonised Chinese immigrants and, over the past three years, strengthened New Zealand’s integration into US war preparations against China.

Labour’s victory is largely due to the unending turmoil in the National Party, including two leadership changes in the months leading up to the election. Current leader, Judith Collins, was only installed three months ago. The party has been attacked in the media for its links with Chinese donors. Pro-US academic Anne-Marie Brady, who is heavily promoted by the nationalist, trade union backed Daily Blog, repeatedly denounced National Party MP Jian Yang, without any evidence, as an “agent” of the Chinese Communist Party. Yang is one of several National MPs now retiring from politics.

NZ First, an openly racist party widely despised in the working class, received just 2.7 percent of the votes in this election—well below the 5 percent threshold needed to enter parliament. Following the mass murder of 51 Muslim worshippers in Christchurch on March 15, 2019 by fascist gunman Brenton Tarrant, NZ First ramped up its anti-immigrant scapegoating. NZ First leader and foreign minister Winston Peters responded to the pandemic by telling immigrants who lost their jobs to “go home.”

The Labour government, however, has adopted NZ First’s anti-immigrant policies. Ardern has refused to extend unemployment benefits to non-residents who have lost their jobs. The government is deliberately delaying the processing of tens of thousands of residency applications for families living in NZ, many of whom fear being forced to leave the country.

The Greens postured as a “left” alternative but the party’s campaign largely focused on better-off electorates. Its MP Chlöe Swarbrick narrowly won Auckland Central, an upper middle class electorate previously held by National. Swarbrick also led the Greens’ campaign for a “yes” vote in the cannabis legalisation referendum, which served as a major diversion from issues of social inequality and war, and a ploy to get out the vote, particularly among middle class people. The results of two non-binding referenda on cannabis and euthanasia will not be made public until the end of the month.

A significant feature of the election was the media’s promotion of other extreme right parties, particularly the ACT Party, at the expense of National and NZ First. ACT received 8 percent of the votes (10 seats), a substantial increase from 0.5 percent in the last election. Its overt aim is the destruction of public services and welfare. The party was strongly backed by the firearms lobby and campaigned against restrictions on guns following the Christchurch terrorist attack.

The Maori Party, a right-wing party based on racial identity politics and anti-immigrant chauvinism, exploited the worsening social conditions among Maori to narrowly win the Waiariki electorate from Labour. The Maori Party was part of the 2008–2017 National Party government and supported its austerity measures in response to the 2008 financial crisis.

The Christian fundamentalist New Conservatives received 1.5 percent and Advance NZ, which was established this year, got 0.9 percent (20,000 votes)—not enough to enter parliament. Advance NZ held widely publicised anti-lockdown rallies and promoted pseudoscience about COVID-19. It is viciously anti-Chinese and its co-leader Jami-Lee Ross, who defected from the National Party in 2018, was recently interviewed by Trump’s former advisor Steve Bannon on one of the latter’s anti-Chinese internet broadcasts.

The election result is being hailed by Labour’s supporters in the liberal and pseudo-left milieu, such as the Daily Blog, the unions and middle-class groups like the International Socialist Organisation and Socialist Aotearoa. The latter declared on Facebook, “there is more potential for workers and the left to push this government into making decent reforms in the short-term than there would ever have been with the Tories.”

Council of Trade Unions President Richard Wagstaff declared that the government “has been given an overwhelming mandate to end poverty and inequality in New Zealand.”

Melting glaciers threaten catastrophic consequences for humanity

Daniel Jakob

Global warming has already resulted in continual and worldwide loss of glacial ice. The concurrent melting of the permafrost ground layer is a possible tipping point—crossing a threshold beyond which no countermeasures can reverse global warming.

Last Monday the research vessel Polarstern made berth in Bremerhaven, having completed a year-long Arctic expedition. The expedition left Tromsø, Norway on September 20, 2019, on what they called the largest Arctic expedition of all time. Under the direction of the Alfred Wegener Institute (AWI), rotating crews of hundreds of scientists from 80 institutions and 20 countries were on board.

The Polarstern spent nearly 10 months docked on ice floes in the Arctic Ocean, allowing scientists to measure and document the entire ice cycle, from the winter freeze to the summer melt. The over €140 million mission was tasked with a year-long, all-encompassing measurement of Arctic ice and water. Scientists measured over 200 parameters, from temperatures in currents in deep water and at heights of up to 35 kilometers, to the microorganisms in and on the ice.

Research vessel “Polarstern” in arctic ice (Photo: Christian R. Rohleder / bordmeldungen.de)

It will take years to completely evaluate the data, which will likely be used for decades. But this much is already clear: the researchers encountered weak, fractured and melting ice extending all the way to the north pole. They repeatedly came across melt-water ponds and open water.

“This used to be an area of old ice,” says Polarstern captain Thomas Wunderlich. Now, however, in just a few days the Polarstern was able to advance practically unhindered to the North Pole. Since the 1980s, Arctic ice coverage has decreased by roughly half. The remaining ice is thin and thawing. The expedition has documented a collapsing world.

This year the Bering Strait was almost free of ice, as shown by a March 7 image from the European Earth-observing satellite Sentinel 1. Normally the strait is frozen that early in the year. According to the European Space Agency (ESA), there is currently less ice in the Bering Sea than at any point since records began in 1850.

By 2050, the temperature is expected to rise by at least 3°C (5.4°F); by 2080, by up to 9°C (16.2°F).

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is currently predicting that in the worst case, sea levels could rise by up to one meter by 2100 if global CO2 emissions are not successfully reduced. Researchers at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) likewise anticipate that if greenhouse gas emission continues unabated, then by 2100 ocean level rise could surpass a meter. By 2300, oceans could have risen by as much as five meters.

If global warming is kept below 2°C in accordance with the Paris Agreement on climate change, oceans would rise by a half meter by 2100. Such far-reaching predictions are generally very difficult to make due to the small number of studies and lack of transparency. However, it is becoming increasingly clear how ocean currents, ice masses and water circulation react to global temperature rise.

The melting of the Greenland glaciers is particularly devastating, since it is now irreversible, even if warming were to stop immediately, report researchers led by Michalea King of Ohio State University. More glacial ice is lost than is replenished by precipitation from the interior, resulting in an open-ended decrease in the quantity of ice. The ice and snow were still in equilibrium until the year 2000, after which the system tipped. Since then the glaciers have lost 500 billion tons of ice per year, 50 billion tons more than before.

In July 2020, the ice was less expansive than in any July since the beginning of satellite measurements in 1979. Ice lost on Greenland contributes to global sea level rise and could cause problems for other regions of the world. In just two months of last year, ocean levels rose by 2.2mm.

Melting of the Greenland ice sheet had occurred primarily in the south and at lower elevations, but that had changed by summer 2012. Angelika Humbert, professor of glaciology in Bremen, Germany, explains: “It was an extreme year of melting in Greenland. You could measure with satellites that on the entire ice sheet, up into the high altitudes, there was melting on the surface.”

At the end of August of this year, Ingo Sasgen of the Alfred Wegener Institute in Bremerhaven, Germany, published analyses of Grace-Fo satellite data that likewise show a greater loss in ice mass in 2019 than in any year since the beginning of measurements. Sasgen said: “We could show that the five greatest yearly losses have occurred in the last ten years.”

The melt water from Greenland not only contributes to ocean rise, it also has the potential to disturb the North Atlantic current, the Gulf Stream. As such, it would directly impact Europe, from weather to fish stocks. There would likewise be consequences for the Arctic around Greenland—perhaps the most sensitive region for global warming—if new summer conditions became typical over the gigantic island.

Temperatures there have risen more than twice the global average. If all of Greenland’s ice were to melt, global average sea levels would be seven meters higher than at present. However, the melting process would take thousands of years.

In 2019, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change warned: “The non-linear reaction of ice melt to changes in ocean temperature mean that small increases have the potential for rapid melts and could destabilize large parts of an ice sheet or ice shelf.”

This grave modification of nature would have extreme and far-reaching consequences. New land would be laid bare by retreating ice, but much more land area, including countless islands, would disappear under water. Land freed from glaciers would be unusable into the far future. The loss of land would drive so many people to flee as to make the current refugee crises pale in comparison.

Moreover, landmasses currently depressed by the mass of the glaciers would rebound. A landscape resulting from such a rise in the land is the archipelago landscape of Sweden, whose islands have risen out of the water. In Greenland, the rising land would take on far hillier dimensions.

Glacial melt is likewise being recorded in the Alps. The heat of the last decade and the warm winters have significantly shortened the snow season in the middle and high mountain ranges. In just the years from 2010 to 2014, the glaciers of the alps lost roughly a sixth (17 percent) of their volume, more than 22 cubic kilometers.

The Swiss Alps are particularly affected, as explained by researchers of the University of Erlangen-Nürnberg. Christian Sommer of the Institute for Geography says melting in the Alps has consequences far beyond the alpine region because of its influence on the flow in major European river systems that originate in the Alps.

Swiss researchers have predicted that the Alps could be completely free of ice by the end of the century. Half of the glaciers in the Alps could melt by 2050—and that independent of any success in reducing greenhouse gas emissions. The developments of the next decades cannot be stopped because glacial melt reacts very slowly to changes in climate, they explain.

In light of these alarming prognoses, it is necessary to take immediate and comprehensive measures, to implement existing concepts and to do everything possible to counter these processes and take protective action. But nothing of the sort is being seriously undertaken, rather quite the opposite.

An Oxfam study released September 21 shows that the richest 1 percent of humanity emits more than twice as much CO2 into the atmosphere as the entire poorer half. The report focuses on the years 1990 to 2015, during which the richest 10 percent (630 million) were responsible for more than half (52 percent) of CO2 emissions. The richest 1 percent (63 million) alone produced 15 percent, while the poorer half of the world’s population was responsible for only 7 percent.

A solution to environmental problems is not possible within the framework of capitalism. Appeals to national governments, (for example through Fridays for the Future) or the occasional charitable endowment of this or that wealthy individual, will not stop global warming and the catastrophic exploitation and destruction of nature. What is necessary is a restructuring of the global economy—a new organization of worldwide energy generation and transport infrastructure as well as the development of new technologies for immediate containment of carbon emissions.

The basis of energy production must be converted from fossil fuels to renewable energies. This requires an international effort and massive financial investment in infrastructure, the development of existing technologies and the investigation of new ideas, instead of wasting trillions on war and the self-enrichment of the billionaires.

Danger of Russian-Turkish conflict grows as Armenian-Azeri ceasefire fails

Alex Lantier

Three weeks into a bloody war between Azerbaijan and Armenia in the Caucasus, the danger is mounting that the conflict could trigger a broader regional and indeed global war.

Casualties are rapidly rising as artillery and missile strikes rain down on civilian and military targets on both sides. Yesterday, Armenian authorities in the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh enclave increased their confirmed military losses to 710 deaths. However, neither side has issued precise figures on their total military and civilian losses, while claiming that they have killed thousands of their opponents’ soldiers and civilians.

Fighting continued after a first truce negotiated a week ago by Russia, and then a new truce set to enter into effect at midnight Sunday, brokered by the so-called Minsk Group on the Karabakh conflict led by the United States, Russia and France. This latest ceasefire was presented as a “humanitarian” truce to allow an exchange of bodies and prisoners of war.

Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and Vladimir Putin [Credit: http://en.kremlin.ru]

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov called his Armenian and Azeri counterparts before the truce was announced to call upon both to adhere to the earlier ceasefire. The Elysée presidential palace in France also called on both sides to “strictly” respect the truce and said that France, which has a substantial Armenian population, would closely follow events.

US officials, who had until now maintained a deafening silence on the Armenian-Azeri war, also made statements last week suggesting support for a truce. “We’re hopeful that the Armenians will be able to defend against what the Azerbaijanis are doing,” US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo told WBS radio in Atlanta on Thursday.

Saying he wanted the two sides to “get the ceasefire right,” Pompeo blamed Turkey for the escalation: “We now have the Turks, who have stepped in and provided resources to Azerbaijan, increasing the risk, increasing the firepower that’s taking place in this historic fight over this place called Nagorno-Karabakh.” Pompeo claimed Washington does not want “third-party countries coming in to lend their firepower to what is already a powder keg of a situation.”

US Democratic Party presidential candidate Joe Biden also criticized Ankara’s support for the ethnic-Turkic Azeris, stating, “Turkey’s provision of arms to Azerbaijan and bellicose rhetoric encouraging a military solution are irresponsible.”

On Sunday, however, Armenian and Azeri officials denounced each other for violating the truce. After Armenian Defense Ministry spokeswoman Shushan Stepanyan blamed Azeri forces for artillery and rocket attacks, the Azeri Defense Ministry accused Armenian forces of launching an early-morning artillery and mortar barrage. On Saturday, Armenian forces had fired missiles on Ganja, Azerbaijan’s second-largest city, leaving 13 civilians dead, including two children, and dozens wounded.

There are signs that Azeri forces have, for now, the upper hand. US military analyst Rob Lee told Al Jazeera that high-altitude Turkish Bayraktar TB2 drones have “dramatically” affected Armenian forces. Lee said: “TB2s initially targeted air defence systems. The ones we’ve seen destroyed are from the 1980s. I think the radars are struggling to pick up these small [drones]. Then, the TB2s started going after tanks, artillery and now, because they’ve been going through a succession of targets of priority, we see them targeting squads of soldiers.”

Azerbaijan is buying drones from Turkey, which has used them extensively in the civil wars triggered by decade-long NATO imperialist interventions in both Libya and Syria. Fuad Shahbaz, an official at the Centre for Strategic Communications think-tank in Baku, told Al Jazeera, “We have seen Bayraktar drones actively used in Syria and Libya by the Turkish air force against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and General Khalifa Haftar’s Army in Libya.”

A large-scale Azeri ground invasion, Al Jazeera noted, would still face “well-fortified [Armenian] defensive positions occupying high ground in mountainous territory.” However, Lee added, “TB2s are just sitting overhead and waiting for targets of opportunity. Ultimately, Armenians don’t have a good plan for destroying them. They have to do something or Azerbaijan will keep hitting them.”

The bloody conflict over the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh enclave first erupted in the lead-up to the Stalinist bureaucracy’s dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991. None of the subsequent negotiations proved able to resolve the 1988-1994 conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan, which led to over 30,000 dead and 1 million displaced. Armenian forces ended up in control of Nagorno-Karabakh and several surrounding Azeri territories connecting Nagorno-Karabakh to Armenia, leading to permanent and insoluble conflicts between the two former Soviet republics.

This conflict, which shows the inviability and reactionary character of the nation-state system, has now become deeply enmeshed with the conflicts provoked by the decades of imperialist wars led by Washington in the Middle East and Central Asia since the dissolution of the Soviet Union.

In particular, it comes amid renewed US war threats against Iran and growing proxy wars between Turkey and Russia. In Syria, Russia and Iran have backed President Bashar al-Assad’s regime against NATO-backed Islamist militias resupplied from Turkey, while Russia and Turkey have backed opposed factions in Libya.

As the Armenian-Azeri war drags on, the risk that it could escalate into a direct conflict between the major powers rises. While Ankara has openly called for Azerbaijan to expel Armenians from the Karabakh, Moscow, which has an alliance and troops stationed in Armenia, has not yet intervened.

While Moscow still calls for peace and de-escalation, there are growing signs that it is considering direct involvement. On October 16, Russia held military exercises in the Caspian Sea, which borders both Azerbaijan and Iran, involving four warships armed with cruise missiles, two escort ships, warplanes and troops. The Russian Defense Ministry stated that the exercise did “not restrict the economic activity of the Caspian littoral states.”

There is undoubtedly concern in Moscow and Tehran about reports of Al Qaeda-linked Islamist fighters deploying to Azerbaijan, which borders both Russia and Iran. These fighters could be used to inflame Turkic-separatist sentiment in Iran or revive civil wars in nearby Muslim-majority areas of Russia, like Chechnya or Dagestan, that erupted after the dissolution of the Soviet Union.

In Iran, Mashregh News, close to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, warned that Turkish private security firms and Syrian Islamist militias are sending fighters to Azerbaijan. It wrote that if the Karabakh “is captured by [Azeri President Ilham] Aliyev’s forces and the terrorists sent by Erdoğan, there will be a serious threat to Iran in terms of national security and territorial integrity.”

As the Russian drills began in the Caspian Sea, Russia’s Kommersant published detailed allegations of Turkish involvement. It wrote that 600 Turkish troops including drone pilots stayed behind in Azerbaijan after Turkish-Azeri military exercises in July-August. Relying apparently on access to Georgian authorities’ records of Turkish flights through their airspace to Azerbaijan, Kommersant identified the aircraft type and flight numbers of alleged Turkish flights of ammunition and troops to Azerbaijan on September 4, 18, 30 and October 1, 3 and 9.

It also alleged that Turkish Defense Minister Hulusi Akar and army chief of staff General Ümit Dündar traveled to Azerbaijan on September 28-30 and “are in charge on the ground of overall operational leadership on the Karabakh front.”

“Turkish representatives are recruiting mercenaries to participate in fighting in the Karabakh on the Azeri side among Islamist militias loyal to Ankara fighting in Syria and Libya,” the paper added. It said that in the first week of October alone, 1,300 fighters from Syrian militias and 150 fighters from Libyan militias had deployed to fight in the Karabakh war. It alleged that Islamist militias recruit fighters in Syria’s Afrin province, transport them to the Turkish city of Şanlıurfa and by plane to Azerbaijan.

The danger of a horrific escalation in the region, already torn apart by decades of war, is very real. Moreover, none of the regional regimes—the Turkish or Iranian Islamist regimes or the post-Soviet capitalist kleptocracy in the Kremlin—have anything to offer to workers. They are jockeying to assert their interests and position themselves for a deal to be endorsed by the imperialist powers that have plundered the region for decades. Against this, the way forward is the unification of workers in the region, across all ethnic lines, and beyond in a socialist struggle against war and capitalism.

COVID-19 infections soar in US

Kate Randall

The United States reported more than 70,000 coronavirus cases on Friday, making it the highest single-day increase since late July. The seven-day national average of daily cases has also increased by 8,000 in the last week. The massive spike in cases is an indication that the US ruling elite’s policy of reopening businesses and schools is already resulting in the surge predicted by public health experts for the fall and winter.

More than 900 people died on Friday in the US due to COVID-19. Total US deaths approached 220,000 on Sunday, with total confirmed cases surpassing 8.1 million, according to Johns Hopkins University data. The global death toll stands at more than 1.1 million, with close to 40 million cases. The US, Brazil and India account for more than half of all deaths worldwide.

Midwestern and other states are experiencing a resurgence of coronavirus cases. Wyoming, Minnesota, Wisconsin, West Virginia, North Dakota, Indiana, New Mexico, Utah and Colorado all reached records on Friday for single-day case increases. As of Saturday afternoon, Indiana and Ohio had already topped their previous records.

Autoworkers leave the Fiat Chrysler Automobiles Warren Truck Plant in Warren, Michigan [Credit: AP Photo/Paul Sancya]

States with large rural areas are also experiencing their highest-ever rates of infection. Wyoming, Idaho, West Virginia, Nebraska, Iowa, Utah, Alaska and Oklahoma have recorded more cases in a seven-day period than in any previous week.

As average daily infections top 60,000, hospitalizations nationwide are up more than 30 percent from just four weeks ago. In New Mexico, hospitalizations have more than doubled in the last three weeks. Governor Lujan Grisham said of the state’s crisis, “Doesn’t matter if you don’t believe in it. The virus is real and it continues to spread, wreaking havoc on New Mexicans’ lives.”

The ripple effect on the Midwest from the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally this summer is still being assessed. The event held every August in South Dakota, drawing about half a million people, had already been linked to COVID-19 cases throughout the Midwest, including at least 35 in Minnesota.

Now a new report from the Washington Post says that more than 330 COVID-19 cases and at least one death have been directly linked to the Sturgis rally, though “experts say that tally represents just the tip of the iceberg” and that the rally likely “played a role in the outbreak now consuming the Upper Midwest.”

Wisconsin is struggling with one of the worst outbreaks of the virus in the country. Nearly 4,000 new coronavirus cases were reported in the state on Friday alone, and officials have been forced to open a field hospital in the northeastern part of the state to deal with the outbreak. The number of people hospitalized due to COVID-19 has tripled in Wisconsin in the past month and nearly 1,600 people in the state have died from it.

Despite these devastating conditions, President Trump made Wisconsin his second campaign stop on Saturday, following a rally in Muskegon, Michigan, where he led chants of “Lock her up,” referring to Gretchen Whitmer, the target of a fascistic plot to kidnap and execute the Democratic governor earlier this month.

Trump’s rally at the Southern Wisconsin Regional Airport in Janesville packed in several thousand people. Only about a third of his supporters wore marks and attendees were required to ride to the event in crowded shuttle buses to and from a parking lot a few miles away. In his rambling 93-minute speech, the president denounced Wisconsin’s Democratic governor, Tony Evers, for attempting to hold back the reopening of schools and businesses.

“We’re doing great, we’re doing really well. I wish you’d have a Republican governor because frankly, you got to open your state up,” Trump said. “You got to open it up.” He added without substantiation, “We’re rounding the corner. We have unbelievable vaccines coming out real soon.”

On Sunday, Trump held a rally in Carson City, Nevada, where masks and social distancing were also scarce.

Despite the warnings of health experts on the impending rise in cases and deaths in the coming months, Trump and his coterie have doubled down on their homicidal practice of holding rallies that endanger the health and lives of his deluded supporters and pose the very real threat of becoming super-spreader events that increase infections of the deadly virus.

The president has sidelined the advice of health experts on the White House Coronavirus Task Force, holding meetings of the body at best just once a week. Dr. Anthony Fauci, a member of the task force and an infectious disease expert, has cautioned against indoor gatherings of people outside their households for the upcoming holidays, which would serve to heighten the rate of infections, hospitalizations and deaths.

Scott Gottlieb, former Food and Drug Administration (FDA) commissioner, on CBS’s “Face the Nation” on Sunday pointed to the deadly implications of the Trump administration’s embrace of the policy of “herd immunity,” in which the virus is allowed to spread unabated, potentially leading to millions of cases and deaths.

“It’ll take the FDA two to four weeks to turn that [vaccine] application around,” Gottlieb said. “Then it will take us another two to four weeks to get the initial tranche of people, the most vulnerable who are indicated for the vaccine, vaccinated. Then they need to get a second dose and that happens in the next three to four weeks. And then it takes two weeks for the immunity really to kick in.”

“So, you’re looking at a situation where the first tranche of people to get vaccinated really won’t be protected from the vaccine probably till February and maybe March. And so that’s a long way off,” he said. “And it's probably likely to be the biggest wave that we endure without the benefit of a vaccinated population. So, we’re going to have to rely on those mitigation steps.”

But it is precisely these mitigation steps—social distancing, limiting gatherings, the wearing of masks—that the Trump administration vocally opposes. In this effort, Trump has brought onto the task force neuroradiologist Scott Atlas, an avowed supporter of “herd immunity,” which advocates allowing the coronavirus to spread uncontrolled until an adequate number of people are infected and are supposedly then immune.

The World Health Organization has condemned this policy as “unethical.” One health expert, William Haseltine of ACCESS Health International, has correctly said, “Herd immunity is another word for mass murder.” Health experts have argued that this policy would result in 2–6 million deaths in the US alone, per year.

The Great Barrington Declaration, supported by Atlas, calls for supposedly less vulnerable people to go to work, engage in team sports and participate in normal activities as if the virus was not a deadly threat.

In a tweet posted on Saturday, which was later taken down by Twitter, Atlas wrote, “Masks work? NO,” linking to antiscientific statements from the American Institute of Economic Research that argues against the effectiveness of masks, among other claims.

Despite certain criticisms of the Trump administration’s reckless policy of holding mass rallies, Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden does not oppose the president’s drive to reopen the economy. He opposes reverting to any form of lockdowns and is openly pushing for the reopening of businesses, schools and college campuses, and has pledged more funds to do so.

The vast majority of Americans, on the other hand, face the prospect of economic devastation as the two big-business parties have allowed stimulus and unemployment benefits to expire, threatening a fall and winter of evictions, utility shutoffs, hunger, disease and preventable death.

Tuberculosis and the Indian Poor: The present and the future

K Rajasekharan Nayar, Arathi P Rao, Lekha D Bhat, Anant Kumar & Parul Malik

The World Health Organization has recently published the latest World Tuberculosis Report (2020) and there are many trends which are of serious concern regarding elimination of this age-old disease from the world. At one time, the Tuberculosis did not even spare some very famous people like John Keats, Emile Bronte, George Orwell, Anton Chekhov, Albert Camus etc. apart from many well-known artists. Emile Bronte who wrote ‘The Wuthering Heights’ died of TB at the age of 30. Many political figures also were inflicted with TB which include, Ho chi Minh, Nelson Mandela, Desmond Tutu and it did not spare even kings, queens and priests. Considerable improvements in socio-economic conditions  and improvements in nutrition helped many countries to eliminate the disease. Tuberculosis is now considered as one of the diseases of the poor as it is widely prevalent in many poor countries.

Tuberculosis is one of the highly prevalent diseases in India which is still inhumanly ravaging lives. According to WHO, ninety percent of those who fall sick with the disease each year live in just 30 countries . Globally, an estimated 10.0 million (range, 8.9–11.0 mil-lion) people fell ill with TB in 2019, a number that has been declining very slowly in recent years. Most people who develop the disease are adults, and there are more cases among men than women. WHO also reports that in 2019, approximately 1.2 million people died from TB-related illnesses, and of the estimated 10 million people who developed the disease that year, some 3 million were not diagnosed or were not officially reported to national authorities.

According to World Tuberculosis Report 2020,  most people who developed TB in 2019 were in the WHO regions of South-East Asia (44%), Africa (25%) and the Western Pacific (18%), with smaller percent-ages in the Eastern Mediterranean (8.2%), the Americas (2.9%) and Europe (2.5%). Eight countries accounted for two thirds of the global total: India (26%), Indonesia (8.5%), China (8.4%), the Philippines (6.0%), Pakistan (5.7%), Nigeria (4.4%), Bangladesh (3.6%) and South Africa (3.6%). The present pandemic has also seriously affected case detection and treatment of TB.  WHO has warned that most likely, the global targets for prevention and treatment will be missed.

It is likely that Kerala might eliminate the disease by 2020. Kerala’s TB incidence rate is just 67 per 100,000 population as against the all-India rate of 138 per 100,000. The state has detected only 352 new cases in 2018 in a population of 38 million. This is a sign that the end of TB is in sight. It is possible that an active case finding strategy may not be the only cause for this achievement. In Kerala, socio-economic improvements in combination with better availability and accessibility of health care could have influenced this sharp decline. The impact of higher private sector participation also could have contributed to the decline to some extent. The Kerala example proves useful for developing future TB elimination strategies in other states in India. According to reports in February 2020, nine states- Assam, Bihar, Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Rajasthan, Tamil Nadu, Uttar Pradesh, and West Bengal accounted for 65% of the total net tuberculosis (TB) cases in India. The Central Government decided to step up measures in these states to eliminate TB by 2025, ahead of the SDG target of 2030.

The problem of TB in the neighbouring states of Tamil Nadu and Karnataka are not as favourable as in Kerala. According to India TB report of 2020,  there are 110845 net notified cases in Tamil Nadu. The state also has higher HIV/ AIDS prevalence and hence cases with TB-HIV are also more in the state. This makes elimination a real challenge in the state. According to the Annual TB Reports of 2019 and 2020, Karnataka notified a total of 83094 cases of TB in 2018 and this number increased to 91703, with the annual total TB notification rate of 135 cases/lakh/year in 2019. Due to high prevalence of TB-HIV co-infection, Karnataka had recorded the highest TB death rate in the country in 2018, at 6.2%, higher than the national TB death rate of 4% in public sector.

With respect to other vulnerable states in India, the total number of TB notified patients that are currently in the facility/District/State give an indication of the extent of problem of TB. In 2019, Assam notified 48669 cases, whereas Bihar stood at 122671. Madhya Pradesh notified 187407 cases while cases notified in other states are Maharashtra (227348), Rajasthan (175218), Uttar Pradesh (486385) and West Bengal (110668). It is also possible that there is considerable under reporting of cases in many vulnerable states like Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh etc.

The conditions are still unfavourable in many states in India, where the socio-economic and living conditions are unfavourable for the eradication of many diseases including TB. The major hurdles are related to overcrowding, childhood exposure and poor nutrition. Other factors are migration, TB comorbidity with HIV and Diabetes and migration of vulnerable sections of population to crowded slums/cities for livelihood. As many scholars had suggested,  improvements in socio-economic conditions played an important role in improvements in health status in the past. Certainly, this is the main constraint in the elimination of Tuberculosis from the world which means that technological solutions can only partially help in addressing the problem. Therefore, what is required is a multi-sectoral approach using Health in All Policy (HiP) as suggested by the WHO especially since TB is closely linked to conditions of living.

Building resilience is critical to minimise the impact of humanitarian crises

Shobha Shukla

The number of people affected and displaced by conflicts and natural disasters has almost doubled over the past decade and continues to rise. Climate crisis is a major driver and amplifier of disaster risks and losses, even as armed conflicts compel hordes of people to flee their homes in search of safety. Slow onset disasters, like extreme temperatures and droughts, have added to disaster related economic losses.

Infectious disease outbreaks among refugees and displaced persons are also becoming increasingly common and pose a major threat to health security and social protection. The impact is especially severe on women and girls, people living with disabilities and other vulnerable groups.

This changing humanitarian landscape is even more relevant in the Asia Pacific region, which is the most disaster-prone region of the world. In 2018, 50% of all the 281 global natural disasters occurred in Asia Pacific, with 8 out of the 10 deadliest ones also in this region.

The growing impact of recurrent and protracted disasters and humanitarian crises is posing a major threat to sustainable development and reinforces the importance of developing long term interventions that address humanitarian needs as well as development and peacebuilding challenges.

While delivering the plenary address at the 9th virtual session of the 10th Asia Pacific Conference on Reproductive and Sexual Health and Rights (APCRSHR10), Dr Tomoko Kurokawa, Regional Humanitarian Advisor at United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) Asia Pacific, made a case for building resilience across the humanitarian, development and peace-building triple nexus.

What is triple nexus?

The “humanitarian, development and peace nexus” is about synergising the efforts of members of the humanitarian, development, and peace community by ensuring that humanitarians can focus on acute needs and those in development can focus on long term resilience, promoting peaceful and robust communities.

What is resilience?

Resilience is the ability of an individual, a community or a country to cope with, adapt and recover positively, efficiently and effectively from the impact of a natural disaster, violence or conflict. Resilience covers all stages of disaster – from prevention to adaptation.

Dr Kurokawa calls resilience “the unifying approach that transcends the various pillars and is a prerequisite for achieving sustainable development, peace and prosperity for all and particularly those who are furthest behind”. Systems, institutions, communities, families and individuals are considered resilient when they have the capacities and resources to cope with and bounce back from both anticipated and unanticipated shocks.

She gives a very lucid explanation of resilience at different levels.

“At the national and societal level resilience may be about having positive social norms and customs that support gender equality. It entails having early warning and early action systems and having strong social protection schemes. At the institutional level resilience is having strong health and school infrastructures, sea walls built along vulnerable coastal areas and mobile health units and skilled personnel that can mobilize quickly at the onset of a disaster. At the community level it means local leadership and participation and decision making of women and youth groups. At the family and individual level it means having equal household decision making, equal livelihood and economic opportunities for all, especially women and having supportive intergenerational relationships.”

An individual’s resilience may depend on factors such as their economic well-being, education, health, and age as these define their capacity to cope and adjust. Building communities’ resilience is critical to minimise the impact of disasters and prevent future humanitarian crises.

The Sendai Framework for disaster risk reduction – the first major agreement of the post 2015 development agenda – provides governments with concrete actions to protect development gains from the risks of disaster. It prioritises that disaster risk reduction is inclusive of and accessible for people disproportionately affected by disasters. It also advocates for gender and disability to be integrated in all policies of disaster risk management and the comeback of young people in humanitarian action.

Even under normal conditions, reproductive health issues are some of the leading causes of death, illness and disability among women. Moreover, during and after any disaster, women and girls are disproportionately exposed to the risk of loss of livelihood, security and even lives. They face significantly increased risks for unintended pregnancies, gender-based violence, sexually transmitted infections and maternal mortality, says Dr Tomoko Kurokawa.

Globally some 500 women and girls die every day from pregnancy and childbirth related complications in countries facing humanitarian and fragile contexts. This is often a result of unavailability of sexual and reproductive health services and not having access to delivery and emergency obstetric services.

The non-availability of voluntary family planning services (like condoms and emergency contraception) in crisis situations increases the risk of unintended pregnancies, increases health risks for pregnant women and for those who resort to unsafe abortions. Gender based violence, one of the most pervasive human rights violations, that is already widespread in times of peace, is exacerbated during conflicts and disasters when communities’ protection systems break down.

Dr Tomoko Kurokawa feels that during emergencies availability of sexual and reproductive health and family planning services and protection of women from violence are as essential as food and shelter. So much so that very often access to basic sexual and reproductive health services determines the choice between life and death for women and girls.

The COVID-19 pandemic has put to test all health systems and national response capacities – both in terms of scaling of public health preparedness as well as for mitigation of broader socio-economic impacts. Some countries in the Asia Pacific region have also had to simultaneously contend with the already existing humanitarian crises and overlapping natural disasters. It has made them particularly vulnerable and less equipped to respond effectively.

The pandemic has already had far reaching impacts on poverty, inequality, employment, economic downturn, human rights protection, which will leave long lasting scars on the process of recovery and rehabilitation and inter-development work for years to come.

Recovery will require application of a comprehensive approach across the triple nexus through a resilience lens. There are already reports of increase in maternal and neonatal morbidity and mortality, increase in unmet need for family planning and increased risk of gender-based violence and harmful practices during the lockdowns.

But Dr Tomoko Kurokawa is upbeat with examples of innovative and creative demonstrations of resilience at various levels for the continuity of provision of sexual and reproductive health information and services across the Asia Pacific region during the pandemic. She shares that “In Pakistan, a women’s safety App was upgraded as an innovative solution to counteract challenges posed by lack of mobility and gender-based violence during the lockdown. In Afghanistan, a youth health line providing adolescent sexual and reproductive health information and services has reached over 5000 young people. In Mongolia, telemedicine services were set up by practising physicians to provide quality sexual and reproductive health services. In Mongolia a legendary Mongolian queen chatbot avatar provides counselling to adolescents about life and love on Facebook. In the Philippines, a free condom delivery service under ‘a condom heroes program’, is enabling people in lockdown to access condoms”.

Investing in resilience helps prevent and curtail economic, environmental and human losses in the event of a crisis, thus protecting development gains and benefiting many of the sustainable development goals.

The ‘new normal’, necessitated by COVID-19, will require agility, creativity and nimbleness to bridge the humanitarian development peace divide and to empower women, girls and young people as agents of change to build resilience and ensure sustainability of effective humanitarian action.