The complexity

In my part of the world, the debate is now moving towards the recovery issue. To be able to get back to normal life as soon as possible. People are worried about jobs and the economic impact of this astonishing crisis. It’s now clear that the new debt situation of the states, the firms and the families will reach gigantic proportions. Many will not be able to reimburse it. They fear poverty. In any case, the Gross Domestic Product will contract seriously, to dramatic levels if the lockdown goes on beyond mid-May. There will be a lot of pressure on governments in the next days and weeks for them to provide masks free of charge and to allow the economy to re-open. At the same time, people want to know that the hospital system is still able to respond and that enough money is invested in the vaccine research. All this will have a tremendous political cost. I can anticipate a lot of political malaise in some countries, particularly in France and Spain. That will add to the complexity of an extremely complicated crisis. 

Contain, contain, contain

Today’s word is containment. Every government should ask themselves what they can do to more efficiently contain the epidemic. That must be the priority. But containment is not just about the disease. It is a lot, a great deal, about the disease. Indeed. But is also about the panic and the epidemic’s impact on key sectors of the world’s economy.

Human Development Report 2015

The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) has launched today its 2015 edition of the Human Development Report.

This is an annual compilation of data and indexes that has become during the last 25 years a major reference document to compare how each country of the world is doing in terms of addressing social and human progress.  Each edition contains also a state-of-the-art reflection about a critical dimension of human development. This year´s theme is about work. As it has been the case with past reflections, the texts included in the report do raise quite a number of innovative approaches to work, jobs and human dignity.