Selim Jahan

I know of Ferdousi Priyabhashini, but I did not know her. We met a few times in Dhaka either at a seminar or a conference, or at the residence of late National Professor Kabir Chowdhury.

This year, the theme of International Women’s Day is “Women in Leadership: Achieving an Equal Future for Covid-19 World”. When the United Nations chose this theme, the idea was to celebrate and recognise women’s leadership in confronting and tackling the challenges of Covid-19, both inside and outside the household.

So far, the focus of the Covid-19, commonly known as coronavirus, in every country has rightly been on health issues— expanding testing, tracing the infected, how to deal with infection, and combatting deaths. Issues of disaggregated profiling of its various aspects including the diverse socio-economic impacts were put on the back burner.

"Where am I?” is the first question I asked myself after getting out of the car. Bewildered, I looked around. With me, there were three black students from the University of the Western Cape, and the driver of the car was also a young black man.

A person may have multiple identities—he or she may be known by different traits. Just look at me. I am a person with more than one identity.

Today's technological revolution has given rise to a digital economy, which includes the Internet (fixed and mobile broadband), cloud computing, smartphones, smart cities, the Internet of Things and Internet of Everything, Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning,

The lack of women's empowerment is a critical form of inequality. And while there are many barriers to empowerment, violence against women and girls (VAW) is both a cause and a consequence of gender inequality.

What will be the nature of work in the future? This million-dollar question is being discussed in cafes, schools and workplaces around the world right now.

The 2018 update on the global human development indices and indicators was released on September 14. Covering 189 countries of the world, the update has revealed for these countries the levels of human development in different dimensions, their progress, the inequalities in human development achievements and the extent and nature of deprivations.

Recently, David Pilling had a write-up entitled “Do we need to say RIP (Rest in Peace) to GDP?” The write-up draws on his latest book The Growth Delusion on which he recently spoke at the Oxford Literary Festival.

To most people, “development” is best measured by the quantity of change – like gains in average income, life expectancy, or years spent in school. The Human Development Index (HDI), a composite measure of national progress that my office at the United Nations Development Programme oversees, combines all three statistics to rank countries relative to one another.