There is no shortage of information on the Coronavirus but not many pieces in the media dig deep into the causes, context and faultlines exposed by COVID-19. These are some of the pieces that TNI staff have found most helpful in understanding this unprecedented moment, and the ways we might respond as movements and actors committed to social and environmental justice.

This pandemic health crisis exposes the injustices of the global economic order. It must be a turning point towards creating the systems, structures and policies that can always protect those who are marginalised and allow everyone to live with dignity.

The Coronavirus pandemic is the second major crisis of globalization in a decade. We did not learn our lessons from the financial crisis and this is perhaps why the impact of COVID-19 has been even more massive.

Internally Displaced Peoples (IDPs) in Myanmar today are caught in a ‘perfect storm’,  which is the combination of the 2018 VFV Land Management Law, the BRI, and the National IDP Camp Closure Strategy.

Right-wing populists have been gaining support throughout Europe. Their nationalist and xenophobic outlook that seeks to reassert national glories has found a great support among rural communities in many countries. Although, right-wing populism is not an exclusively rural phenomenon, its popularity among European countrymen is alarming.

At the end of 2019 the government of Iván Duque presented a draft decree to resume the spraying of drug crops used for illicit purposes. It argued that spraying is the only instrument to curb the increase in coca crops.

This research by the Research Consortium on Drugs and the Law (Colectivo de Estudios Drogas y Derecho, CEDD) analyzes a duality facing Latin America: the prohibitionist discourse and its effects on human rights persist, alongside reforms to laws and policies related to the use of cannabis.

From Austria to Chile, Lagos to London, people are demanding policies that democratize economies and keep public resources in public hands. In just the last decade, more than 2,400 cities in 58 countries have brought privatized resources back under public control. Laura Flanders reports from Amsterdam at The Future is Public, a conference co-hosted by TNI that brings together hundreds of organizers, scholars, and government officials who are working to democratize their municipal and national economies.

Liz Fekete of the Institute of Race Relations examines the narrowing media narrative of what constitutes racism, and the way accusations of it are kicked around by politicians and journalists.

As the peoples of Myanmar commemorate Union Day this week, Sai Wansai argues that “civic nationalism” can help address the crisis in "ethnic nationalism" that underpins state failure and the enduring cycles of conflict in the country. Seventy-three years after the historic Panglong Agreement brought the new Union into being, Myanmar is a land that is yet to achieve ethnic peace and political inclusion.

TNI mourns the loss of Dorothy Keet (February 16, 1942 - February 8, 2020), who passed away in London after a period of long illness. Dot was a TNI Fellow and Planning Board member from 2001 to 2011, and Associate ever since.  She will be fondly remembered by TNI’s Associates, Fellows, staff and wider community.