While people are facing the greatest public health crisis, the world’s largest economies are in a fierce competition to be the first to develop a COVID-19 vaccine and ensure its accessibility to their citizens. Quite evidently, the mysterious virus has introduced a whole new global race - the race to win exclusive patent rights to a Covid-19 vaccine.

The COVID-19 pandemic is taking a huge toll on the healthcare sector across the globe. The situation is seemingly more unfortunate in a developing country like Bangladesh.

For a long time, a major issue that has plagued international trade is that payments are received many weeks, and sometimes even months, after the delivery of the goods.

Healthcare workers (HCWs) are at the heart of the current crisis that the whole world is undergoing. Due to the spread of coronavirus, while all offices, services are closed or nearly closed, one institution across the world never closed for a moment is the hospital.

Now a days, intellectual property (IP) assets have become the currency of business, used not only to protect technology rights, but also to gain competitive advantage and drive new revenue opportunities.

A recent study conducted by the Department of Geography and Environmental Studies, University of Chittagong, shows that the frequency of cyclones have increased by four-folds in the Bay of Bengal, in the last 60 years.

Every year budget comes mainly focusing two areas – revenue and expenditure for the nation.

The UN International Day in Support of Victims of Torture on 26 June, 2020 marked the moment in 1987 when the UN Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, one of the key instruments in fighting torture, came into effect.

The Communicable Diseases Act, 2018

The economic contribution of high number of migrant workers has been proved to be helpful to overcome job crisis and ensure healthy economy

A substantial number of healthcare professionals are getting infected with the deadly COVID-19 disease and a significantly alarming number of such professionals are succumbing to death all over the world.

Recently, the Supreme Court of Sri Lanka in the case of Rathnayake Tharanga Lakmali v Niroshan Abeykoon, Suraweera Arachchige Wasantha and others, ordered the police inspectors liable for a fake encounter and custodial death and also the State to pay compensation to the widow of the deceased victim of the encounter.

The role of intellectual property (IP) in combating Covid-19, either in facilitative or restrictive way, is a recurrent issue resurfacing nowadays.

Infodemic and alluring false drugs’ promise to cure pandemic COVID-19 are compounding the ongoing public health crisis gradually.

Civil society groups Front Line Defenders, CIVICUS and South Asians for Human Rights (SAHR) have jointly published a report highlighting the use of excessive force, arbitrary arrests and allegations of torture and ill-treatment by the Bangladesh security forces during student protests.

Of late a sitting-member of the current parliament named Mr. Shahid Islam alias Papul has been arrested in Kuwait on charges of human trafficking and money laundering.

During the current pandemic, apart from all Covid-19 related disheartening news from in and outside of the country, Bangladesh has received some good news too.

Sub-section (3) of the section 6 of the Criminal Law Amendment Act, 1958 provides that the provision of Chapter XX of the Code of Criminal Procedure (CrPC), 1898, shall apply to trial of cases under the Act, in so far as they are not inconsistent with the provisions of the Act.

The proposed budget of 5 lac 68 thousand crore for 2020-21 fiscal year is a robust one. It is now called the budget of ‘economic recovery’ and ‘not of emotion or high ambition’, but the reality of the budgetary scheme is totally different as ‘development’ has been reiterated again even during this difficult time of handling Covid-19 pandemic.

The oppression against minority communities is nothing serious than a pandemic like Covid-19. The exception being that oppression has managed to plague the world for a lot longer.