vol. 2 núm. 4 (2020): julio - diciembre

The World Health Organization (WHO) declared the SARS-CoV-2 virus outbreak an internationally important public health emergency on 30 January  2020, and by 11 March declared it a pandemic. By 15 November 2020, according  to the WHO weekly report, there were  53.7 million confirmed cases and  1.3 million deaths reported globally. The Americas region is the most affected. The incubation period has been documented between 3 and 6 days. Transmission occurs from person to person by  respiratory droplets, which occur when a person speaks, coughs or sneezes.  The clinical presentation can range from a mild respiratory disease, with coughing, headache, and  general discomfort, which resolves in a few days, to a severe disease with shortness of breath, that requires immediate attention.  Global lethality reported as of November 26 is 2.3%. It is higher in people over the age of 65 and with underlying diseases such as high blood pressure, obesity, and diabetes. There is currently no specific antiviral treatment. Vaccines are in development and several of them have shown promising results, but there is still a need to conclude with global trials. Until vaccination can be initiated,  prevention and control measures should be continued.  The best way to prevent the disease is to avoid exposure to infected or possibly infected people, as the virus can be transmitted even if the person has no symptoms.

Empezaremos recordando una anécdota de hace ya bastantes décadas: André Malraux preguntó al entonces primer ministro chino, Zhou Enlai, acerca de las lecciones y balance que hacía de la Revolución Francesa. La respuesta, mezcla de sensatez y de boutade, fue: “aún es demasiado pronto para poder afirmar con seguridad nada al respecto”. La frase señala, aunque quizás de manera exagerada, la necesidad de no emitir juicios apresurados y categóricos sobre fenómenos de actualidad y procesos de cambio en curso. No todo lo que en un primer momento parece histórico, un acontecimiento sin precedentes, que cambiará las tendencias y el curso de la historia, lo es – o lo será- final y realmente. De hecho, la mayoría de dichos sucesos acaban no siendo parteaguas, puntos de inflexión o catalizadores de cambios bruscos de tendencia. Como nos recuerdan las estadísticas y las matemáticas, que se produzcan eventos atípicos, incluso recurrentes, es más fácil que cambiar tendencias, en particular de largo aliento. De ahí la importancia de recordar la prudencia de la respuesta de Zou Enlai en lo que nos ocupa: cosas que se escribieron en marzo de 2020, cuando ya era claro que la epidemia se había convertido en pandemia y las cuarentenas y confinamientos eran habituales en todas las regiones del planeta, no aguantan ocho o nueve meses después la prueba de la contrastación fáctica. Veamos pues algunas evidencias y algunos interrogantes respecto de un presente, el previsto para 2020, desbaratado por la pandemia y retos, incertidumbres e incógnitas para el futuro, a corto y medio plazo.  

This article analyses the economic measures that have been implemented as a response to the COVID-19 crisis. Latin America and the Caribbean have been hit particularly hard, with an expected contraction of 9.3 percent this year—its largest recession on record. The policy response in the region has been different in every country, however, the monetary and fiscal measures are a priority. In this scenario, this document explores the measures implemented by Colombia and Brazil, in order to identify Which actors/sector have been the most benefited?

This article focuses on analyzing the transnational activities of Colombian women living in Catalonia in order to determine if this migrant collective can be defined as transnational agent of development and social change. The research is based on the theoretical debates held on the Migration-Development-Nexus and the transnational migration paradigm. According to this paradigm, migrants create transnational social fields that link together their society of origin and destination through multi-stranded relations like the sending of remittance to their families, the creation of businesses and networks or the exchange of ideas and skills. Those elements can thus promote the development in both societies. In order to conduct the research, the article takes two key components into account that are crucial to understand the linkage between migration and development in the Colombian case: a) The armed conflict, that has lead to the forced and voluntary displacement of millions of Colombians as well as the post-conflict settings and their impact in the creation of transnational fields; b) The role that gender affects the situation and condition of migrants, as the Colombian migrant collective is characterized by a high degree of feminization.

The paper addresses theory of improvidence, without extensive pretension, rather, it has a horizon fixed in the particularity of the circumstances in the prospective contractual review in view of the provisions that the National Government has adopted to face the situations generated by the contingency of the COVID 19 virus pandemic in terms of the execution of some economic activities. This raises the following question: How can the government's measures in the framework of preventive isolation affect the application of the contract review based on the hardship? This article is constructed by applying a descriptive documentary method, by means of which the characteristic elements of the hardship are illustrated based on relevant jurisprudence of the Colombian Courts, under the clause of the Social State of Law, together with specialized doctrine civil and commercial, to consider the real application in times of social and health contingency in Colombia and through it the action of revision of the contract

Sustainable development expresses the link between economic and social development and its effects on the environment. The above is not in itself a new problem, the novelty is the magnitude and extent achieved in recent years. To this challenge is added the need to generate inclusive public and residential spaces with the population with physical disabilities. These two elements establish a challenge for the housing sector, since this dynamic specifies the impacts against the mitigation of the described phenomena. The State, from this perspective, acquires a leading role since it promotes and regulates access to housing, being the main guarantor of access to housing for vulnerable populations. Defining a general overview of the subject is the main purpose of this document.

The research wants to focus on the concept of human security through a qualitative analysis of the impact of some prjects developed by the Food and Agricolture Organization and United Nations Developemnt Pogramme in Soacha. The place represents an interesting case study for its particular situation. Indeed, this commune on the one hand still lives histirical issues such as extreme poverty, inequality, accumulation of land and displacement, and on the other hand represents a paradoxical union between precarious and developed realities. The study uses a qualitative technique divided in two sections. The first one is built on semistructured individual intervews with the project’s coordinators that examine the main issues with their implementation, while the other one is based on surveys with the local community that analyze the perception of the population of Soacha on human security. Regarding this part, the survey, composed by a preamble and eight questions, has been completed by 120 people. The results evidence that the population consider that there has been a slight increase in the human security during the last five years. However, the outcomes reveal also the persistence of structural issues, which perpuate the human insecurity