United Nations ESCAP (25.06.2020) South Asia, a subregion with nearly a quarter of world’s population but over a third of world’s people living in extreme poverty and hunger, has been impacted severely given the vast proportion of population living at the margins, fragmented coverage of social protection, pervasive informality in economic activities and employment, and wide gaps in public health infrastructure.

Development Pathways (May 2020) The COVID-19 crisis and its widespread impacts demonstrate the need to reform current social security systems in Asia.

UN Secretary-General Policy Brief: COVID-19 and the need for action on mental health

Key messages:

The problem:

ilo.org (25.03.2020) This brief outlines the implications of the Covid-19 crisis for national social protection systems and highlights specific social protection responses taken in countries in the Asia and Pacific region. It builds on a more comprehensive ILO Brief which offers policy considerations regarding the role of social protection in responding to the possible impacts of COVID-19 crisis.

While the number of reported cases of the new coronavirus in India remains, concerns are already growing about the capacity of its healthcare system to deal with the potential threat.

World Economic Forum (04.10.2019) More than half of the people on Earth still don’t have full coverage of essential health services and almost 100 million people fall into extreme poverty from paying for healthcare. In South-East Asia, while some positive progress has been made in achieving universal health coverage (UHC), it isn’t happening fast enough.

worldbank.org (12.08.2019) The new e-payment system supports seamless—and cashless—transactions between the government and banking systems, allowing salaries, pensions, payments, and benefits to be delivered without manual intervention. 

adb.org (August 2019) Millions of Asia’s informal workers – such as vendors, day laborers, and others – are left out of national pension systems. Here’s what we can do to help them in their later years.

This publication provides updates on Social Protection Indicators of 24 countries in Asia, with an analysis of 2015 data on social protection programs.

blogs.adb.org (Aug 2019) Millions of Asia’s informal workers – such as vendors, day laborers, and others – are left out of national pension systems. Here’s what we can do to help them in their later years.