Socio-Economic Impacts of the COVID-19 Pandemic in OIC Countries: Pathways for Sustainable and Resilient Recovery
Date: 15 March 2022

The “Socio-economic Impacts of the COVID-19 Pandemic in OIC Member Countries: Pathways for Sustainable and Resilient Recovery” is the updated edition of SESRIC earlier report titled “Socio-economic Impacts of COVID-19 Pandemic in OIC Member Countries: Prospects and Challenges”, which was published in May 2020.

This report provides a comprehensive analysis of the socio-economic impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic in OIC member countries and highlights a diverse set of policy reactions and good practices in response to the pandemic under 18 socio-economic categories. The report also suggests a number of policy recommendations under these categories with a view to supporting sustainable and resilient recovery in OIC member countries.

Depending mainly on the pre-pandemic social and economic conditions as well as technical and financial capacities of countries, the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on different economies and societies vary greatly across the world. In general, the pandemic has caused widespread mortality and hospitalization, stalled economic growth, reversed much of the global progress in reducing poverty and adversely affected the health and education prospects. The poor and vulnerable groups, including women, young people, migrant workers and informal sector workers, have been hit the hardest by the measures taken to curb the spread of the virus.

The unprecedented toll of the pandemic on people’s health and prosperity simply reflect the scale of unpreparedness of the world to such systemic shocks. Governments in OIC member countries and elsewhere have to respond to the challenges posed by the pandemic on multiple fronts while trying to keep a fine balance between restrictions imposed to curb the spread of the disease and avoid any further damage to socio-economic activities. Nevertheless, effective management of the pandemic is overwhelming the national responses, especially in the context of widespread disruptions in international trade, tourism and investment.

Despite the breakthroughs in vaccine development, the rapid transformation of the pandemic into a multidimensional global crisis is definitely a strong reminder for policymakers and the global community to prioritize the measures towards reducing vulnerabilities and strengthening their resilience to future shocks. Temporary support measures implemented by governments over the last two years start to expire, as the resources available for short-term interventions tend to deplete. It is now imperative to focus on long-term structural reforms to build back better and be better prepared for the next shocks. In this vein, the report suggests a number of policy recommendations reflecting on a longer-term perspective to prepare OIC countries for the future crisis, reinforce their capacity to withstand or absorb shocks, mitigate the potential impacts and respond to them more effectively.

Online Electronic Version

  • Socio-economic Impacts of the COVID-19 Pandemic in OIC Member Countries (English) (Arabic) (French)