Coronavirus will devastate vulnerable populations like the Rohingya families living in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh. Photo by UN Women/ Allison Joyce  CC BY-NC-CD 2.0
Coronavirus will devastate vulnerable populations like the Rohingya families living in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh. Photo by UN Women/ Allison Joyce CC BY-NC-CD 2.0
Coronavirus will devastate vulnerable populations like the Rohingya families living in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh. Photo by UN Women/ Allison Joyce  CC BY-NC-CD 2.0
April 2020
COVID-19 in the Mekong Region

In a newly published article, COVID-19 in the Mekong Region, Open Development explores how vulnerable groups in the Mekong Region are being impact by the COVID-19 pandemic and response measures implemented to try to combat it. The article specifically explores how a focus on counting cases and individuals excludes groups that are typically uncounted, such as indigenous and ethnic minorities, refugees and internally displaced peoples, migrants, urban slum-dwellers, and people working in the formal sector. Missing the experiences and needs of these groups will exacerbate existing inequalities. Open Development Mekong will use a rights-based development perspective to examine the pandemic’s intersectional impacts in the Lower Mekong Countries (LMC). They will explore how open data platforms like those of Open Development Initiative (ODI) and civic tech might provide better solutions.

Full Article: COVID-19 in the Mekong Region