“We all know that while no one is immune from the Covid-19 virus—and people of all types have caught the virus and died from it—it is the world’s most vulnerable communities that have suffered disproportionately from the pandemic,” said Michael Kugelman, Deputy Director and Senior Associate for the Wilson Center’s Asia Program. He spoke at a recent Wilson Center event on the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on refugee communities. As of 2019, 1 percent of humanity was displaced. That’s more than 79.5 million people. The COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated the vulnerabilities of these people. “The health pandemic is fostering a new pandemic of poverty,” said Matthew Reynolds, Regional Representative for the U.S. and the Caribbean at the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).

Rohingya refugees fleeing anti-Muslim persecution in Myanmar are exploited by the Arakan Army to smuggle synthetic drugs into Bangladesh. The army, which demands greater autonomy for Myanmar’s Rakhine State, uses the drug sales to purchase arms and ammunition. It moves the drugs from production centers in Myanmar’s interior to Rakhine State, where Rohingya make the arduous trek along refugee migration routes into neighboring Bangladesh. Lacking other sources of income, the Rohingya are vulnerable to recruitment by the army’s drug smugglers.

On May 6, Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) announced it had started to treat COVID-19 patients in Tijuana, in northwestern Mexico. Tijuana, which is on the border with San Diego, has the greatest number of cases in Mexico and one of the highest death rates.

“We will be providing support to health institutions [by] relieving the hospital burden in Tijuana,” said Maria Rodríguez Rado, MSF’s COVID-19 Emergency Response Coordinator in Mexico, according to the group’s website. “Through this support, we want to relieve the enormous workload of health workers who are responding to this pandemic and help alleviate the suffering of patients.”

The move is welcome. Across Central America, megacities such as Guatemala City, Tegucigalpa in Honduras, and Managua in Nicaragua are vulnerable to the rapid spread of COVID-19.

“While COVID-19 has wreaked havoc the world over, history has proven, and recent data agrees that the hardest hit will be the world’s women and girls and populations already impacted by racism and discrimination,” said Sarah Barnes, Project Director of the Maternal Health Initiative and Women and Gender Advisor at the Wilson Center, at a recent event on the impact of COVID-19 on race and gender inequities. Coronavirus has hurt women and girls in many ways. Among them, women have been pushed back into the home.  And healthcare workers and caregivers who are mostly women are jeopardizing their own health, caring for others.

At an event organized by the Coalition of Atoll Nations on Climate Change in December 2019, Tabitha Awerika, 21, from Kiribati, urged world leaders to listen to the climate science and to the pleas of those living in the South Pacific. “I will not leave the lands of my ancestors,” she said. “I will not abandon my motherland. I refuse to leave the only place I call home.”

As the humanitarian community responds to the Covid-19 pandemic, other long-term pressing priorities persist and require innovative solutions. The dry zone which extends across Central America encompassing parts of Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, and Nicaragua and a 10-year drought has left 1.4 million people in urgent need of food assistance. The impact of climate change, which includes extreme drought, poses an ever-increasing risk across Central America and contributes not only to food insecurity but also to migration issues that have plagued the continent in recent years.

“The only certainty is uncertainty,” Pliny the Elder reportedly said. Though all historical times are full of uncertainties, some seem more so than others. This is one of those times.

A major slowdown of the Indian economy was brewing and completely spilled over when I got to India in September 2019 to start my dissertation fieldwork on Indian women construction workers’ experiences and conceptualizations of Human Security. Wages stagnated. Consumer spending fell. Construction, real estate, and other industries were sent reeling. Construction workers’ livelihoods were teetering on the brink. Uncertainty became the backbone of their existence.

Safe water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) are vital for human well-being. However, 1 in 3 people (approximately 2.2 billion) still lack safe drinking water, 4.2 billion do not have access to safely managed sanitation services, and 829,000 people die annually from unsafe water and related sanitation and hygiene around the world.