The world has been struggling with the COVID-19 outbreak which has already damaged the global economy, and ASEAN is not an exception.

Last month, for World Refugee Day, the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR) launched its Every Action Counts campaign, to emphasise that all contributions to creating a more just and inclusive world make a difference. Everyone, including refugees, can have a powerful impact on society.

Even before the pandemic, Filipinos have long realised the importance of information communication technologies (ICTs) such as personal and networked computers, mobile telephones, the internet and emails, including social media platforms (i.e. Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Linked, etc.).

“The beautiful thing about learning,” the great blues guitarist B.B. King once wrote, “is that no one can take it away from you.” Born and raised in poverty, King understood the value of education as a force for change. If only political leaders responding to the COVID-19 pandemic had an ounce of his insight. COVID-19 is now mutating into a global education emergency.

While the world focuses on the COVID-19 crisis, climate change continues to advance. The consequences are devastating and becoming more so – and that includes for the pandemic response itself.There is no doubt that natural disasters are increasing in frequency and intensity as a result of climate change. This year alone, Australia grappled with its most destructive bushfires on record. East African countries have been battling the worst outbreak of desert locusts in decades.

Four years ago, Kenneth Rogoff, a former chief economist of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), made a powerful case for phasing out paper money.

COVID-19 hit the Chinese economy hard in the first quarter of 2020, causing real gross domestic product (GDP) to contract by 6.8 percent year on year. But since the city of Wuhan emerged from lockdown in early April, the economy has gradually returned to normal, and grew by 3.2 percent in the second quarter. According to the consensus view, China’s current potential GDP growth rate is six percent.

As the Philippines braces for the gradual reopening of its economy, the Inter-agency Task Force on Emerging Infectious Diseases (IATF-EID) on 2 July, 2020 approved the National Task Force (NTF) against COVID-19 Phase II Action Plan.

As China continues its incursions into Malaysia’s Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) in the South China Sea, there is a need for the latter to display firm resolve by leaving no doubt that it is prepared to use force in the extreme of circumstances, given the recurrent blatant and flagrant violations of its territorial sovereignty and integrity by China.At the same time, Malaysia must continue to pursue diplomatic recourse and channels – both bilateral as well as multilateral – to try to find an a

Areas that eased their initial COVID-19 lockdowns and now have surging infection rates are a testament to all that has gone wrong in the pandemic. The lesson from day one still holds: until the virus is defeated, there can be no return to normal.The future of the world economy is becoming clearer. At the outset of the pandemic, there were lively disagreements over whether the lockdown and other measures were warranted, or whether the economic costs were too high.