At a meeting of the General Council on 15 May, WTO members exchanged views regarding trade responses to the COVID-19 pandemic. Many members said the unprecedented crisis was best addressed through enhanced cooperation and coordination among the international community, including at the (...)
At a virtual meeting of all WTO members on 14 May, WTO Director-General Roberto Azevêdo announced that he would step down on 31 August, cutting his second term short by exactly one year. He said that bringing forward his departure would allow members to select his successor in the coming months, (...)
WTO Director-General Roberto Azevêdo welcomed G20 ministers’ endorsement of collective action measures to mitigate the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on trade and investment and help foster global economic recovery. The initiatives were endorsed at a virtual meeting of the G20 trade and (...)
The COVID-19 health crisis revealed important gaps in terms of entitlements to protection in case of sickness. Sickness benefits are an important part of social health protection to ensure access to health care and income security.
Food retail and grocery store workers, have become essential to the economy’s survival and to guaranteeing food security and safety for the population. These workers, working in a labour-intensive sector now considered essential, are in many cases low-skilled workers receiving low wages and (...)
Efforts to mitigate the public health emergency of the #COVID-19 pandemic are having an immense impact on the textiles, clothing, leather and footwear industries. Quarantine measures, closure of retail stores, and salary reductions have suppressed consumer demand. At the same time, this highly (...)
The COVID-19 crisis is affecting the personal safety and health of seafarers and fishers, their conditions of work and their ability to join and leave their vessels. This has had a negative impact on their capacity to perform their key role in ensuring transport by sea, serving passengers and (...)
To curb the spread of COVID-19, a combination of flight cancellations and travel advisories or bans, have almost entirely halted international travel. In some cases, these restrictions also include air cargo, even though it is instrumental in combating the pandemic by delivering much-needed (...)
While employment in the automotive industry had recovered from the 2008-09 global financial crisis, employers and workers across the global supply chains of the industry are once again faced with great uncertainty. Since the global pandemic began in China, the impact of #COVID-19 on the (...)
Tourism is a major driver of jobs and growth. But COVID-19 has dramatically changed this. The impact on tourism enterprises and workers, the majority being young women, is unprecedented. Timely, large-scale and, in particular, coordinated policy efforts both at international and national levels (...)