AD Talks 2020: Latin America in the post-Covid World: A Discussion with Former Presidents

September 23, 2020

Latin America is immersed in a new world reality: the daily coexistence with the COVID-19 pandemic, the latter inflicting on this region some of the highest death rates in the world. It is facing a humanitarian crisis borne out of several factors, mainly: political instability, social unrest, fragile health systems and perhaps most importantly, longstanding and pervasive inequality — in income, health care, and education—which has been woven into the social and economic fabric of the region. Today, Latin America is struggling to find a balance between keeping strict sanitary controls and opening its economic activities to full capacity, while reducing the number of new daily cases and the mortality rates. Another (complementary) alternative would be to find a balance between quarantines, alternative treatments and vaccine campaigns in order to reduce the risk of contagion and to permanently control the pandemic. This panel will try to answer the following questions: How will the governments react to protect their citizens and contain Covid-19’s spread while at the same time saving their economies? Is the return to normal pre-pandemic life possible despite the recent social unrest happening in some parts of the region? What would be the actions and solutions to mitigate the negative effects caused by the pandemic in the social, economic and geopolitical levels? Moderator : Lourival Sant’Anna, International Affairs Reporter and Analyst, CNN Brazil; Columnist, O Estado de São Paulo Speakers : - Jamil Mahuad, Former President of Ecuador - Federico Ramón Puerta, Former President of Argentina - Miguel Ángel Rodríguez, Former President of Costa Rica Closing remarks Speaker: Karim El Aynaoui, President of the Policy Center for the New South

Speakers
Karim El Aynaoui
Executive President
Karim El Aynaoui is Executive President of the Policy Center for the New South. He is also Executive Vice-President of Mohammed VI Polytechnic University and Dean of its Humanities, Economics and Social Sciences Cluster. Karim El Aynaoui is an economist. From 2005 to 2012, he worked at the Central Bank of Morocco where he held the position of Director of Economics, Statistics, and International Relations. At the Central Bank of Morocco, he was in charge of the Research Department and equally a member of the Governor’s Cabinet. Previously, he worked for eight years at the World Bank as an Economist for its regional units of the Middle East and North Africa and Africa. Karim El Aynaoui has published books and journal articles on macroeconomic issues in developing countries. Hi ...

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