Without urgent action, COVID-19 will continue to unravel decades of progress across South Asia, destroying the “hopes and futures of an entire generation”, warns a new report released on Tuesday by the UN Children’s Fund, UNICEF.

The COVID-19 pandemic will shrink the global economy by 5.2 per cent this year, representing the deepest recession since World War Two, and triggering a dramatic rise in extreme poverty, the World Bank said Monday in its latest Global Economic Prospects report.

Further evidence of the unprecedented impact of COVID-19 on the global job market has emerged in a new study by the UN labour agency, which on Wednesday said that more than one in six young people have stopped working since the onset of the pandemic.