Sri Lanka has lost half a million jobs in industry and services. With the rising cost of living, this has doubled the national poverty level to 25 %, this according to the World Bank’s latest report titled, “Sri Lanka Development Update 2022”.
One of the consequences has been the growth in regional disparities. While poverty jumped to 15 per cent in urban areas, it skyrocketed to 52 % in rural areas.
Several factors in the past five years explain this development, most notably a restrictive trade regime, a poor investment climate, and a careless monetary policy, not to mention the COVID-19 pandemic.
After its credit rating was downgraded, Sri Lanka lost access to international financial markets in 2020. As a result, its official reserves fell from US$ 7.6 billion in 2019 to less than US$ 500 million in December 2022.
Against this background, the World Bank has insisted on debt restructuring and growth-enhancing structural reforms, but these must be accompanied by measures to combat poverty.
For Faris Hadad-Zervos, World Bank Country Director for Maldives, Nepal and Sri Lanka, “The current crisis is not a temporary liquidity shock that can be resolved by external financing support from outside. Instead, the crisis provides a unique opportunity to implement deep and permanent structural reforms that may be difficult in normal circumstances. Sri Lanka can use this opportunity to build a strong and resilient economy.”

China, Myanmar, North Korea, India, and Pakistan were listed among the worst offenders against religious freedom or belief last year, according to an annual report by the US Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF).
The commission’s report, released on May 1, documented “systematic, ongoing, and egregious violations” of the right to freedom of religion or belief across the world.
It recommended listing 17 nations as “countries of particular concerns (CPC)” — Myanmar, China, Cuba, Eritrea, Iran, North Korea, Nicaragua, India, Pakistan, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Nigeria, Syria, and Vietnam, and Afghanistan, stating that governments in those countries engage in or tolerate violation of religious freedom or belief.
Cuba and Nicaragua have been added to the CPC list for the first time.
China has been listed in the CPC since the commission started publishing the report in 1998 due to various forms of religious persecution such as torture, forced disappearances, arbitrary detention, and unjust convictions.
India has been added to the list for the first time since 2004.
“The national government used its strengthened parliamentary majority to institute national-level policies violating religious freedom across India, especially for Muslims. Most notably, it enacted the Citizenship [Amendment] Act, which provides a fast track to Indian citizenship for non-Muslim migrants from Afghanistan, Bangladesh, and Pakistan already residing in India,” the report said.

South Asia faces the daunting task of eliminating child marriages as the region is home to nearly half of the world’s child brides, says a report from the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF).
South Asian countries account for 290 million or 45 % of the total of 640 million child brides globally, according to the report released on May 1.
South Asia is followed by sub-Saharan Africa with 20 % child brides, East Asia and the Pacific at 15 %, and Latin America and the Caribbean at 9 %, the report said.
The report used data collected from women aged 20 to 24 years who were married before the age of 18.
UNICEF in its report stated that the current rate of decline in the practice of child marriage was insufficient to achieve the target of eliminating it by 2030.
“In fact, at the current rate, it will take another 300 years until child marriage is eliminated [globally],” the report said.
According to the report, the pace of decline must be at least 20 times to reach the sustainable development goals of child marriage eradication set by UNICEF.
United Nations Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) no 5.3 targets to “eliminate all harmful practices, such as child, early and forced marriage, and female genital mutilation.”
Among South Asian nations, India is a major contributor accounting for around one-third of the world’s child brides while leading the fight to eliminate the practice.

The number of foreigners living in Japan has reached an all-time high. According to the country’s Immigration Services Agency, more than three million aliens were living in Japan at the end of 2022.
In fact, the agency’s count of 3,075,213 is lower than the actual number because there are undocumented aliens in the country in addition to those who have been processed and recorded officially.
It has been projected that in half a century, nearly 11 percent of the population will be non-Japanese while the population overall will drop from the present 126 million to 87 million.
The largest groups of foreign residents are from China, Vietnam and South Korea. Others from the Philippines, Brazil and other countries of Latin America are reshaping the Catholic Church as they have become the majority of Japan’s Catholics.
For decades, Japan has resisted welcoming immigrants. Almost all the three million are in the country as students, trainees or specialists of one kind or other. However, many of them are in fact immigrants in all but name and legal status. They will remain in Japan either legally or illegally, and increasingly are starting families there, sometimes with Japanese partners.
Japan’s population is declining and the country desperately needs more people to maintain its economy and, as the population ages, the national health insurance system. Speaking at a press conference, Prime Minister Fumio Kishida said, “Time is running out to procreate.”

A mob in Pakistan lynched a Muslim cleric for allegedly committing blasphemy by defaming Prophet Muhammad on the 25th death anniversary of Catholic Bishop John Joseph who killed himself protesting controversial blasphemy law.
Nigar Alam, 40, was beaten to death on May 6 after he made a speech during a political rally in the northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province.
He reportedly said he respected a local administrator as much as Prophet Muhammad, enraging a crowd in Sawal Dher village of Mardan, police said.
The police initially managed to bring Alam to safety in a nearby shop, but the crowd forcibly dragged him out after breaking the door and beat him to death.
The killing took place on the same day when Bishop Indrias Rehmat of Faisalabad distributed shields among 25 associates of Bishop Joseph, the former bishop of the diocese, as an act of honor.
Bishop Joseph shot himself on May 6, 1998, in front of a court in Sahiwal after a Christian, Ayub Masih, was sentenced to death for allegedly insulting the founder of Islam.
In 2002, the Supreme Court overturned Masih’s conviction and released him.
Blasphemy is a serious criminal offense in the Muslim-majority nation, Pakistan law confers a death sentence for insulting Prophet Muhammad.

The visit to China by Bishop Stephen Chow of Hong Kong may have been a mistake, but it is also an indicator of Beijing’s continuing war on faith.
Bishop Chow, wittingly or unwittingly, may have made himself a pawn in Beijing’s co-option strategy. Time will tell what his reasons are, how much in control of his plans he actually is, and to what extent he was coerced into complicity. That his visit was distressing, disturbing and disappointing is not in doubt, especially for those of us – like me – who greeted his appointment last year with relief and some hope.
Xi Jinping’s Chinese Communist Party (CCP) regime desires ultimately to eradicate religion and, in the short to medium term, to restrict, repress, control and co-opt religion. The bishop’s visit, and his remarks, are a sign of just how much pressure is to come on religious freedom in Hong Kong.
Until now, religious freedom appeared to be the last remaining freedom: Christians and other religious communities have been free to go to places of worship and practice their faith freely. To an untrained eye, even though all other freedoms have been stripped from Hong Kong, religious adherents are still able to worship. Yet that has always been a fallacy, for several reasons.
First, as soon as freedom itself – and its component parts – is trampled upon, inevitably freedom of religion or belief will be impacted. As soon as freedom of association, expression and assembly are undermined, freedom of religion or belief is eroded.

A 435-year-old Baroque-style church in the Philippines was declared an “important cultural property” by the government on April 22. Nuestra Señora de los Remedios (Our Lady of the Remedies), more popularly known as “Malate Catholic Church” in the capital Manila, was recognized by the National Museum of the Philippines for its historical and cultural role. “A panel of experts was convened on Dec. 5, 2018, by the director-general of the National Museum of the Philippines.”

Archbishop Peter Chung Soon-taek of Seoul attended the 20th-anniversary celebration of the Vietnamese Catholic Community in South Korea and urged the migrant workers and students to strive for their goals despite difficulties in the foreign land.
The community, established by the Migrant Pastoral Committee of Seoul Archdiocese, marked the celebrations at the Pastoral Hall in the national capital on April 23, Seoul Archdiocese-run Good News reported on April 24.
“Living in an unfamiliar foreign country away from your beloved family and hometown is a difficult task that requires great sacrifice,” Chung said.
“All of you here are also enduring various hardships in foreign countries because of work or study…  I will pray that God blesses you so that you accomplish what you set out to do,” the prelate added.
About 550 Vietnamese Catholics joined the anniversary Mass and a Thanksgiving program sponsored by the archdiocese.

The new Member of Parliament in Kazakhstan, Karakat Abden, has put forward a proposal that has unleashed discontent in her country: that of “imposing a tax on Kazakh girls who marry foreigners”. A group of women’s rights activists immediately started collecting signatures for a petition, leading to Abden’s removal from her parliamentary seat.
In her speech on a TV programme, the MP argued that “a ‘Kazakh woman’ is a national talisman, and we cannot lose cede this abroad, which is why I call for a tax on mixed marriages”. The politician had already hinted at this project in last year’s presidential election campaign, when she was listed as a ‘front’ candidate competing against outgoing President Tokaev.
Having become a member of parliament for the social-patriotic Auyl party, Abden claims to have the support of the other deputies in her group. The country’s feminists have risen up against her, who had already marched on 8 March with the slogan ‘we are not your toys’, aimed precisely at those who, like Abden, want to manipulate the role of Kazakh women.
A woman married to a foreigner, Ajžan, who lives with her husband and family in Thailand, intervened on social media: ‘If the MP is hungry for taxes, let her take them from husbands who beat their wives’.

Christian leaders in Pakistan have slammed the ongoing national census saying the questionnaires were erratic and accused the enumerators of not counting many members of minority groups.
“Many parish houses [parsonages] have been skipped. Maybe they thought no one stays in churches. Since every parish has at least three priests, at least 40 people will be missing in the count [in the city],” Father Mario Rodrigues, rector of St. Patrick’s High School in Karachi, the country’s largest city, told UCA News.
The population in the port city stands at more than 16.5 million as per the seventh national population and housing census that started last month.
Christian leaders like Rodrigues in Karachi and those in other cities have issued a series of allegations against the first-ever digital census including undercounting, faulty questionaries, and delaying tactics.
Based on the latest data, the state-run Pakistan Bureau of Statistics (PBS) said the current population of the country is estimated at 235 million. The agency did not reveal data on the religious minorities in the predominantly Muslim country.
The bureau initially planned to hold the census from March 1- April 1, but it was later extended to April 30, media reports say. The field activities were halted on April 20 for the Eid-ul-Fitr festival and will resume on April 26.