Term Paper

                       Presentation Skills Development

                     Bangladesh University of Professionals

Submitted by:
Name: Abdullah Faiaz
Roll no: 2042951059
Id no:20010432
Section: A
DEPARTMENT OF LAW

Submitted to:
Lt Col Siraj Uddin Ahmed (Retd)
Chairman, Department of Law
Covid 19: Joint Actions to Fight Its Consequences

Introduction:
The World Health Organization (WHO) has declared Covid 19 a pandemic. Covid 19 stands for
coronavirus disease 2019. This virus has now reached almost all the countries of the world.
The COVID-19 pandemic has had far-reaching consequences beyond the spread of
the disease itself and efforts to quarantine it. This virus has the economic, employment and social
consequences and it is leaving people in hunger and extreme poverty. As the virus has spread
around the globe, concerns have shifted from supply-side manufacturing issues to decreased
business in the services sector. The pandemic caused the largest global recession in history, with
more than a third of the global population at the time being placed on lockdown. The COVID-19
has already caused the world to suffer from global health emergency, and its economic and social
ramifications. The pandemic has shown us the importance of being united and taking joint
actions. It has also shown us that postponing bold decisions can have huge costs. We were not
prepared for the Covid-19 crisis, and we are even less prepared for the consequences of the
pandemic. To recover from its consequences, we must act together and the developed countries
are to contribute more in this case. So, what the world needs now is global solidarity, shared
responsibility and joint measures to fight covid-19’s consequences.

1. Suppressing transmission of the virus to control the pandemic:

Although Corona virus is a terrifying disease without having any vaccine so far, it can be turned
back. China, South Korea, Singapore and Taiwan have demonstrated that, with furious efforts,
the contagion can be brought to heel. Whether they can keep it suppressed remains to be seen.
But for the world to repeat their successes will take extraordinary levels of coordination from
countries and its leaders, and extraordinary levels of trust and cooperation from citizens. It will
also require international partnerships in an interconnected world.

As this virus is a contagious disease it can be weaken if the rules of social distancing can be
followed strictly. And this is possible only if the world work in a coordinative way. In this case
the developed countries have the most to do. They should step up to save the people of the
developing countries who are most vulnerable to covid-19’s impact. And there are measures
which must be taken all over the world to suppress its transmission.
World Health Organization has laid out some advice to prevent the virus from spreading. The
government should make people follow the directions and create widespread awareness on that.
The first step in the process of mitigating the outbreak is testing Coronavirus on a Large Scale.
So that the countries have the accurate information about their situation. Governments should
allocate enough resources to the hospitals and prepare enough ventilators. And enforce lockdown
where necessary. In order to successfully maintain social distancing, it is important that the
citizens are provided with enough food and supplies. And many countries lack the ability to
provide for their people. Here it is the responsibility of the leading countries in the world to help
the less developed countries. And We must respond decisively, innovatively and together to
suppress the spread of the virus and address the socio-economic devastation that COVID-19 is
causing in all regions.

2. Safeguarding peoples’ lives and their livelihoods:

Should we save lives or livelihoods? This question has put policymakers, citizens and scholars in
a quandary. Other questions include: How long should public health be prioritized over
economic prosperity? By temporarily shutting down the economy, is the cure becoming worse
than the disease? Until when can we sacrifice the nation’s economic potential and reduce GDP
growth?

Most economists continue to urge that the only way to minimize long-term damage to the
economy is to first control the virus, as being not only an end in itself, but a prerequisite for
saving livelihoods and the economy.

The International Labor Organization (ILO)’s policy framework provides guidance not only to

countries as they progress through the different phases of the crisis but also to the multilateral
community. The human-centered response must become a global response anchored in
solidarity. Countries experiencing fragility, protracted conflict, recurrent natural disasters or
forced displacement will face even greater challenges. For these countries, global support for
national stimulus packages is needed to save lives, support their economies and labor demand,
protect enterprises, jobs and incomes as well as workers in the workplace. Investment in Public
Employment Programs (PEP) can be an effective part of the crisis responses in developing
countries, especially when adapted to mitigate the health risks associated with COVID 19 and
deployed when the public health situation allows. In the absence of a strong social protection
system, these interventions can provide work and income to large numbers of unemployed and
informal workers impacted by the crisis, enabling them to remain economically active and
address various multi-sectoral needs (e.g. care work, environmental restoration, community
infrastructure). It is time for society to use this pandemic as an opportunity towards increasing
the value of human life in a more qualitative way to create a society that truly understands what
Mahatma Gandhi, said: “It is health that is real wealth and not pieces of gold and silver.”

In a nutshell, the government and its people must have to act quickly to curb the spread of the
COVID-19 as it is already too late. Alongside, the food and health safety have to be assured in
the first place. Then we can concentrate on our economy.

3. Introducing changes to our systems and policies:

The health, humanitarian and socio-economic policies we implement will determine how quickly
and strongly we recover. Rapid and well-designed policy measures to support enterprises, jobs
and incomes are essential for containing the economic and social fallouts of the pandemic.
Timely and coordinated implementation of fiscal and monetary policies can save lives, protect
people from losing jobs and incomes and companies from bankruptcies and enable a sustainable
recovery.

Indeed, without long-term structural changes to our systems, the deep-rooted inequalities that the
crisis exposed will deepen. In crafting immediate responses to the crisis, we also have an
opportunity to design policies that achieve social justice and a human-centered future of work.

Accommodative monetary policies will enable governments to adjust their fiscal policies in
support of the economy, making large amounts of public money available to enterprises, workers
and households to overcome the immediate negative impacts of the economic recession induced
by the response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Monetary policy tools must continue to be used to
ease financial conditions and alleviate liquidity constraints to provide countries the fiscal space
needed to support business continuity and household income.

Short-term sectoral policies include immediate financial support for investments in sectors

particularly hit by the crisis. Targeted support to hard-hit sectors includes financial relief,
bailouts, bridging loans and grants. To save lives, governments should finance additional health
and emergency services as much as needed. Investments in the health and care sectors are the
priority in order to expand treatment and curb deaths and expand employment and earnings of
health workers.12 Additional fiscal resources, and improved coordination, service distribution
and delivery in the health system with a central role for public provision is needed. To reap the
full benefits of such investments, efforts need to be sustained, expanded and legally and
financially anchored. Global coordination will help support countries with limited health
capacity, including through aid, medical resources, and concessional emergency financing. In
addition, public emergency services, essential infrastructure, utilities, education and many social
services must be maintained or scaled up. Lastly, support must be provided to selected sectors to
secure primary and intermediary inputs for production, including within global supply chains.

In the education sector we need changes as well as other sectors. With the spread of the covid-
19, countries are implementing emergency plans to slow down and limit the spread of the virus –
and prepare for a possible longer-term disruption of school and university attendance. Every
week of school closure will imply a massive loss in the development of human capital with
significant long-term economic and social implications. While this is a strong stress test for
education systems, this is also an opportunity to develop alternative education opportunities.
China, which was hit first by the corona virus, is already well advanced in providing a large
share of its students with access to online learning opportunities. So, it is urgent that
governments introduce changes to the education systems as well as other systems. And online
reliability should be embraced in all sectors of the governments so that the crisis does not affect
their systems much.

4. Implementing Global cease-fire:

Today there are 250 million children around the world living in areas under conflict. Each of
these children needs warring parties to heed the call of the UN Secretary General to lay down
their weapons as part of a global ceasefire to confront the COVID-19 pandemic. Each of these
children needs to finally be safe from the violence. Parties to conflict will not be able to fight
COVID-19 while still fighting each other.

A global cease-fire would stop the attacks on vital infrastructure like health centers and water
and sanitation systems. It would open space for vulnerable populations to access essential
services like healthcare – services that are key to stopping a pandemic.

There have been some positive developments, with parties to conflicts in 11 countries having
already committed to a cessation of hostilities during the pandemic.
First, all parties to conflict should make and respect ceasefire agreements, period. Secondly,
authorities and groups controlling territory should facilitate open access for humanitarian
personnel so that we can reach children and families with essential services, including food,
healthcare, protection, water and sanitation. This access could also be used to repair or
rehabilitate key infrastructure that may have been affected by fighting so that populations are
better protected from the spread of COVID-19. Thirdly, armed forces and groups must not
impede the delivery of relief supplies, or prevent people in need from obtaining services. All
civilians under the control of government or opposition groups must be allowed to receive
assistance that is vital to their survival and wellbeing.

5. Learning from this human crisis to build back better:

In natural disasters, technical experts two decades ago adopted the slogan “building back
better."  Together, we will come through COVID–19. But the reality is that the world was in bad
shape before the coronavirus. Here are three clusters of ideas, aimed mostly at the high and
middle-income societies where COVID–19 is now most pronounced, on how to make our
response now to contribute to “building back better."

The first is about social and political unity. We have seen a period of immense divisions. Now
we see the irrelevance of borders and barriers, both international and internal, and have an
opportunity to think about solidarity. One lesson from conflict is that recovery depends on trust
between citizens and the state. The state makes a mistake if it tries to deliver reconstruction and
recovery alone: this creates a culture of passive “wait and see,” among citizens, and of complaint
when services are not delivered. It fails to harness their own energies for participating in relief
and reconstruction efforts.

In the face of this new pandemic, national, regional, and local authorities can therefore think
about how to mobilize citizens to help, despite the demands of social distancing. Some ways of
doing this might include community drives to drop groceries off for the elderly living alone, or to
make daily phone calls to check on them and keep their spirits high; mobilizing communications
workers, working from home, to design more effective campaigns on how to adapt behavior and
coping strategies.

A second area is climate change. The immediate effect of the crisis is favorable to the climate
agenda. But we could make this a much more seismic shift in our response. This is a time for
creative thinking. Could we for instance use the passenger trains that are now running empty in
many countries due to shelter-in-place regulations to transport food and household goods, for
which demand has spiked?

The third issue is inequality. The coronavirus shows the limits of individual prosperity and
savings: a collective problem has now affected the safety of everyone’s family and most people’s
income. In the response, we need to acknowledge, for the first time in three decades in parts of
the developed world, that there is such a thing as society: “we are in this together.” The wealthy
need to offer up additional taxes to help heal their societies and strengthen universal health and
social protection systems. By contrast, the stimulus programs currently being discussed need to
go first to the bottom 40 percent, next the middle 40 percent: not to those at the top who can
weather this crisis much better, no matter how it affects the stock market portfolio or bonus
system.

6. Planning for recovery:

There is no doubt that this crisis is going cause the world to suffer from manifold impacts. So, it
is necessary that the world follows a long-term plan for recovery from this crisis. The virus has
already caused health, economic and social crisis. So, governments should scale up social
protection, and support to businesses to prevent bankruptcies and massive job losses. What is
needed is a large-scale, coordinated and comprehensive multilateral response amounting to at
least 10 per cent of global GDP. Developed countries can do it by themselves, and some are
indeed doing so. But we must massively increase the resources available to the developing world
by expanding the capacity of the international financial institutions to rapidly inject resources
into the countries that need them. Coordinated swaps among central banks can also bring
liquidity to emerging economies. Debt alleviation must be a priority – including immediate
waivers on interest payments for 2020. 

Conclusion:
The world is now suffering from the quick impact of covid-19. But there is going to be a long-
term consequence of the virus. Which may change our world and shape it differently. And the
world does not even know when the pandemic will come to an end. In this critical situation there
no alternative to global solidarity, cooperation and effective response in order to successfully
fight covid-19’s global consequences.
Reference:
https://www.un.org/en/

https://www.ilo.org/global/topics/coronavirus/impacts-and-responses/lang--en/index.htm

https://www.who.int/health-topics/coronavirus#tab=tab_1