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Distress and poverty ravage the world amid Covid-19 2
More than half of the world’s population is being `contained` due to restrictive measures to prevent the spread of nCoV, in the context of the number of global infections reaching more than 2.6 million and nearly 183,000 deaths.
In Iraq, where the protest movement demanding political reform lasted 6 months before the government imposed a curfew because of nCoV, people’s anger broke out in Nasiriyah and Sadr, poor cities next to the capital Baghdad.
People protested on April 17 in Tripoli city, Lebanon, despite the blockade order due to Covid-19.
`I would rather die from the virus than die from hunger, or have to see my wife and children starve. But I can’t find food for them,` said Hussein Fakher.
Fakher was once asked by the police to pay a fine for violating curfew when going out to look for work, after which he fought with the police.
In the city of Mumbai, India, tens of thousands of unemployed migrant workers, stranded and unable to return to their homeland, gathered in protest crowds last week, despite social distancing rules.
In Lebanon, a country that was facing the risk of financial collapse even before Covid-19 paralyzed the economy, angry people have flooded the streets at least three times in the capital Beirut and the southern city of Tripoli.
According to human rights groups and government statistics, many Kenyans even died in the police crackdown on residents who broke curfew on April 18.
United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres warned that Covid-19 poses a `serious threat to the maintenance of international peace and security`.
Richer countries have not escaped the severe impact of the pandemic.
Groups planning anti-lockdown protests in several German towns and cities were also approved by the courts.
Even so, poor countries that cannot afford to subsidize the unemployed remain more vulnerable to escalating unrest, said Catia Batista, an economics professor at Nova University in Lisbon, Portugal.
Recent research by the World Institute for Development Economics Research, a United Nations advisory group, warns that 500,000 people are at risk of falling into absolute poverty due to restrictive measures to prevent nCoV, reversing
The professor added that emerging economies in Africa will also be seriously hit.
According to analysts, the Middle East, a region devastated by war, could become a hot spot.
Distress causes some people to act out of desperation.
Fawaz Gerges, professor of international relations at the London Institute of Economics, said the next phase of instability in Arab countries could be worse and more intense than the organized protest movement demanding political reform.
Ali Fathollah-Nejad, an Iran researcher at the Brookings Doha Center in Qatar, said the situation depends largely on how long Covid-19 lasts.
China, where Covid-19 originated, last week reported a 6.8% drop in first-quarter GDP compared to the same period last year, marking the first time the country had a quarter of negative growth since 1992. Professor Yasheng Huang
However, according to Washington Post commentator Liz Sly, that trust seems to be eroded by evidence that the Chinese government initially concealed the severity of the pandemic.