On the eve of the national elections set to take place on 17 March in the Netherlands, developmental issues are being debated and diverging solutions proposed by political parties running in the elections. A recent debate organized by SAIL on the role of knowledge in aid and trade relations indicated that even though not receiving much attention in pre-election debates, knowledge produced by Dutch knowledge institutes is considered vital in sustaining aid and trade relations between the Netherlands and its counterparts in the Global South, writes Linda Johnson.

The COVID-19 pandemic has made the majority of people living in the MENA region even more vulnerable, adding to existing structural problems that include under-resourced public health services, a high degree of labour informality, and high poverty and unemployment rates. Temporary social and economic support measures to mitigate the pandemic’s effects are not sufficient, however – the region has to go beyond piecemeal policies. Countries need to expand the scope and scale of social provisioning and social protection as well as the quality of and access to public health services by moving towards a universalist approach to social policy, writes Mahmood Messkoub.