Tasneem Tayeb

In a time of an unprecedented global health crisis that is only spiralling from one peak to another, one would expect all parties—warring or not—to join hands and work together to establish peace.

Since the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic in Bangladesh, the country’s flourishing economy had taken a hit. With the government-announced general holidays leading to closures of businesses, offices, educational institutions, shops, eateries, factories and other livelihood-generating opportunities—both formal and informal—life came to a halt in the nation.

Prashanta Kumar Halder’s financial misadventures and subsequent escape from the country with Tk 3500 crore, which made the headlines recently, has brought into the fore Bangladesh’s struggles with systemic irregularities in its financial sector.

Children, like adults, can get embroiled in conflicts with the law. When juveniles commit criminal offences, they are placed in Juvenile Development Centres (JDC) rather than jails, where constructive counselling is supposed to be provided so that they realise their mistakes and come out of these centres better human beings. The reality of these JDCs, as perhaps one would expect, is pretty different.

The dilapidated condition of the lonely ruins scattered across the country can be attributed to many reasons.

For the people of Lebanon, it was business as usual on Tuesday, August 4, 2020. Post-Eid holidays, the desperate people—struggling to feed themselves and their loved ones—were out in search of livelihood and subsistence. As the day neared its end, little did they know that it was going to be the last for many of them.

Bangladesh has recently been rocked by several international human trafficking scandals, one of them involving a lawmaker trafficking individuals to Kuwait.

The British Court of Appeal has recently ruled that “ISIS bride” Shamima Begum should be allowed to return to the United Kingdom to challenge the revocation of her British citizenship.

Management of medical waste has remained a persistent problem for Bangladesh. Proper disposal of these wastes—general, infectious, hazardous, radioactive, and often containing pathogens—has never seemed to be taken seriously by the authorities, resulting in rampant mishandling by all concerned.

From Buddhism travelling to China from India in the ancient days and the “Hindi Chini Bhai Bhai” slogan in the heydays of friendship, to the scuffle in the Galwan valley earlier this month that led to casualties on both sides, India and China’s bilateral relationship has been through highs and lows over the centuries. But the modern day spats between the two countries are rooted deeply in the colonial legacy left by the British.

Hundreds and thousands of refugees and migrants are preyed upon every year by human traffickers with false promises of a better future, a home.

Children are our most precious assets—for some, in a very literal sense. For money, for sustenance, for survival, many parents unable to bear poverty end up pushing their precious little ones into the wide open in search of subsistence. Children as young as three-four end up in the informal sector, doing menial jobs, for a tiny sum of money.

With Covid-19 bringing economic activities across nations to a halt, more and more people are being pushed into poverty. Job losses, business losses and farming losses, leading to economic stress, are pushing many to the fringes of poverty. And as families are being rendered helpless, the worst sufferers are invariably the children.

While the world grapples to contain the spread of the coronavirus, a different breed of pesky pestilence is threatening the food security of many regions, including some parts of Asia—locusts!

China and South Korea were the early frontlines in our pitched battle against Covid-19. Both countries had taken the hardest hit during the initial phase of the outbreak, but both were quick to rebound from the initial shock of it and soon cornered the mortal enemy with the swift stroke of their digital weapons.

Even a few months back, I didn’t realise that work from home on a daily basis was possible.

The world watched in paralysed horror as oil prices plummeted to below zero: the price of West Texas Intermediate oil grade went negative to –USD 37.63 per barrel (pb), for the first time in history. The shock of the collapse was intense, leading to traders naming the day “Black Monday”.

According to newspaper reports, 10 children have already died in the CHT since the outbreak began on February 26, when the first death was reported. Another 300 children have been infected.

Wars and epide-mics make the perfect bedfellows. Wars create the perfect wombs where murky diseases can gestate and then combust, wiping out entire populations as they spread around the world.

These are unprecedented times, times that call for unprecedented measures, humane measures.