Young Lives have published the findings of their second phone survey in Ethiopia, India (Telangana and Andhra Pradesh), Peru and Vietnam, showing that the knock-on effects of COVID are impacting young people living in rural areas and in the poorest households most, with families turning to more traditional gender roles in times of stress and many young people reporting high levels of anxiety and depression. 

The Government of Honduras has launched a Multidimensional Vulnerability Index (MVI), developed in partnership with the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative, to provide electronic vouchers for food, medicines and biosafety equipment targeted to independent workers and self-employed persons hit hardest by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Shelter without Shelter, the documentary by Tom Scott-Smith of the Refugee Studies Centre with Mark E Breeze of Cambridge University, exploring refugee architecture from the point of view of architects, aid workers, and refugees themselves, has won the Best Research Film award in the 2020 AHRC Research in Film awards. Read more and watch an excerpt.

A forthcoming book by Professor Diego Sánchez-Ancochea, The Costs of Inequality in Latin America, has been selected as one of the best economics books of 2020 by Martin Wolf of the Financial Times. The book explores what lessons one of the world’s most unequal regions can teach us about the causes and consequences of inequality and its links to the rise of populism.

The latest issue of Forced Migration Review explores some of the shortcomings in refugee status determination systems worldwide, as well as the challenges faced by different actors and the consequences for asylum seekers and refugees. It also includes a feature reflecting on lessons and good practice emerging from the 2018–20 GP20 Plan of Actionfor IDPs.

New publications

Bjola, Corneliu, and Ruben Zaiotti (eds) (2020) Digital Diplomacy and International Organisation: Autonomy, Legitimacy and Contestation, Routledge

Chatterjee, Mikihia (2020) ‘Non-farm futures and the dispossessed: mapping manual labour in an industrial area in India’, Journal of Peasant Studies

Fu, Xiaolan, and Pervez Ghauri (2020) ‘Trade in intangibles and the global trade imbalance’, The World Economy

Doss, Cheryl, and Ruth Meinzen-Dick (2020) ‘Land tenure security for women: A conceptual framework’, Land Use Policy

Gollin, Douglas, Martina Kirchberger and David Lagakos (2020) ‘Do Urban Wage Premia Reflect Lower Amenities? Evidence from Africa’, Journal of Urban Economics

Vériter, Sophie L, Corneliu Bjola, and Joachim A Koops (2020) ‘Tackling COVID-19 Disinformation: Internal and External Challenges for the European Union’, The Hague Journal of Diplomacy Sud, Nikita (2020) ‘Making the political, and doing politics: Unfixed land in an Amoebal Zone in India‘, Journal of Peasant Studies