HRH Prince El Hassan bin Talal today called for policy-makers to consider a broad, inclusive, interdisciplinary and systematic framework to better understand the impact of protracted conflict and violence in the West Asia region, at an expert group meeting organised by the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia (ESCWA) in partnership with the West Asia-North Africa (WANA) Institute. 

The Regional Review of Institutions for Sustainable Development in the Arab Region reviews existing governance systems for sustainable development at the local and regional levels, highlights progress made and current trends, identifies promising developments and illustrative examples that could help achieve sustainable development in the region and presents a series of actions and policy recommendations for consideration in the preparations for the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development (Rio+20) in 2012.

Providing an analysis of the global situation in mid-2020, amidst the COVID-19 pandemic, is a difficult task. The outbreak has exerted tremendous pressure on the global economy, the scale of which is still unclear. Consequently, the present report sets out two scenarios: a moderate one projecting that the crisis will end and the economy will rebound in the last quarter of 2020; and a pessimistic one in which the crisis will persist throughout 2020 and continue in the first quarter of 2021.