Politics, Policies and Prospects of the MENA Region

Analysts are trying to understand why the COVID-19 pandemic is progressing in Africa at a much slower rate than expected. According to one report, the continent had by the beginning of May seen 37,000 infection cases and 1600 fatalities, compared to the rest of the world, which has 3.2 million cases and 228,000 deaths1. Various explanations have been proffered to explain this disparity: Africa’s warm climate, the youthfulness of the continent’s population (60% of the population is u ...

Les 20 et 21 avril 2020, sur le New York Mercantile Exchange (Nymex), les prix du West Texas Intermediate (WTI) pour le contrat de mai 2020 sont tombés largement en dessous de zéro. Ces prix négatifs – un concept quelque peu difficile à appréhender – ont montré, de façon spectaculaire, à quel point la pandémie du Covid-19 a un impact considérable sur le marché pétrolier mondial. Il convient, cependant, de relativiser ces prix négatifs qui portaient sur une qualité de pétrole (le WT ...

 اليقينيات و فضحت خال أسابيع محدودة مدى هشاشة الانسان في محطة متقدمة من العولمة من خال حدة الصدمة الاقتصادية التي أفرزتها عالميا. و رغم اننا ما نزال غير متحكمين في الخروج من هذه الأزمة الصحية فإن كل الملاحظين يتفقون على أن مسار العولمة سيتأثر حتما بعواقبها نتيجة الانخراط العالمي في الحجر الصحي الذي فرض نفسه كظاهرة معولمة. ذلك انهم يتفقون على ان هذه الأزمة ستؤدي مستقبلا لمراجعات عميقة للتدبير الاقتصادي و للسياسات العمومية بل للمنظومات السياسية و المجتمعية و للعلاقات الدولية بين .الأق ...

They live in the shadow of death: the United States has 2,650 death-row inmates, 740 in California’s San Quentin State Prison alone. Today, these prisoners fear another executioner, the invisible COVID-19. The condemned on death row live in single cells, some having spent many decades in solitary confinement. The suicide rate is high, and many die of natural causes before their rendezvous with the special execution team. These prisoners hardly ever receive visitors, and for them th ...

Data recently released on the first-quarter global domestic product (GDP) performance of major economies have showed how significant the impact of COVID-19 has been on economic activity and jobs, with large contractions across the board. The ongoing global recession is poised to be worse than the “great recession” after the 2008-09 global financial crisis, especially from the standpoint of emerging market and developing economies. The depth and speed of the GDP decline will rival th ...

An examination, inevitably bound to be broad in scope, of the economic and social implications for a country, in this case Morocco, of a sudden pandemic that has broken out in virtually most parts of the world, can only be a prelude to a broader and more comprehensive study to be undertaken in due course. For obvious reasons, especially as the current crisis induced by the primacy of health, could later evolve into a form of economic depression as various multifaceted aid and suppor ...

Un examen, nécessairement à grands traits, des incidences économiques et sociales pour un pays, en l’occurrence le Maroc, d’une soudaine pandémie qui s’est déclarée sur presque la plupart des régions de la planète, ne peut être qu’un simple prélude d’une large étude exhaustive à entreprendre le moment venu. Et ce pour des raisons évidentes, à savoir que la crise en cours induite par le primat du sanitaire, pouvant évoluer, ensuite, en une forme de dépression économique que divers pr ...