News stories by Walden Bello

NEW YORK, Dec 15 (IPS) - In recent years, the world has been shaken by protests. From the Arab Spring to the social uprisings in Chile and Latin America, the world has seen a dramatic rise in protests. In a polarized world, the COVID-19 pandemic has only accentuated feelings of outrage and discontent.

NEW YORK and MANILA, Apr 22 (IPS) - The coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic has created an unprecedented human and economic crisis. Governments are taking strong actions, enforcing quarantines to reduce contagion, testing populations, building emergency intensive care units. Governments have also launched large fiscal stimulus plans to protect jobs and the economy, as well as temporary social protection programs such as income/food support, subsidies to utilities and care services.

WASHINGTON, Mar 22 (IPS) - Last year, the Philippines brought a complaint against China's aggressive actions in the West Philippine Sea to the United Nations Arbitral Tribunal. It was a master stroke by the Philippine government.

If ever an international conference was bound to fail, it is the coming G20 meeting in London, billed as a 'new Bretton Woods' that would forge a coordinated global response to the developing depression and create a new order of global economic governance, writes Walden Bello, professor of sociology at the University of the Philippines at Diliman, president of the Freedom from Debt Coalition, senior analyst at the Bangkok-based research and advocacy institute Focus on the Global South.

For East Asia, the current economic crisis represents the end of an era of export-oriented industrialisation that began in the 1960s, when Korea and Taiwan embarked on a development process that tied their growth to the US market. Encouraged by the World Bank to make ''special efforts'' to turn their manufacturing enterprises away from the relatively small markets associated with import substitution toward the much larger opportunities flowing from export promotion, the Southeast Asian countries followed suit in the 1970s and 1980s, writes Walden Bello, professor of sociology at the University of the Philippines, president of the Freedom from Debt Coalition, senior analyst at the Bangkok-based research and advocacy institute Focus on the Global South.