Afghan security personnel wear protective face masks to help curb the spread of the coronavirus, Kabul, Afghanistan, April 8, 2020 (AP photo by Rahmat Gul).

The COVID-19 pandemic is affecting the entire world—but in vastly different ways. In particular, efforts to “flatten the curve” could create huge but unquantified costs for the most vulnerable. As a result of measures to contain the coronavirus’s spread, the specter of “biblical” hunger now hangs over much of the globe. At the same time, social distancing strategies remain an unattainable mirage for the hundreds of millions of people living in crowded quarters in the developing world. For fragile and conflict-affected countries, the pandemic represents a grim, dual challenge that risks threatening a precious good: peace. Many of these countries […]

Thousands of Afghan migrants enter Afghanistan at the Islam Qala border crossing with Iran, March 18, 2020 (AP photo by Hamed Sarfarazi).

Hundreds of thousands of Afghan migrants have returned home from neighboring Iran in recent months, fleeing one of the world’s worst coronavirus outbreaks. Iran has more than 94,000 confirmed cases of COVID-19, with a death toll of 6,000, although the real figures are likely higher. The exodus has raised concerns of an impending spike in coronavirus cases in Afghanistan. In an email interview with WPR, Annalisa Perteghella, a research fellow in the Middle East and North Africa Center at the Italian Institute for International Political Studies, discusses the high risk of coronavirus transmission in Afghanistan and the impact the pandemic […]