Editorial Note

Abstract

We live in an era of intense turbulence of much disenchantment and bewilderment. Geopolitical tensions are deepening and are transforming international relations. Political tribalism is revealing deep divisions between nations and the political and economic failures of countries are causing mass exoduses from Belarus, Libya, Afghanistan or Venezuela to name a few. The pandemic caused by the SARS-COV2 virus has accentuated these changes, as expressed in the latest Oxfam report (2021) calling it the virus of inequality, where more than 2 million people have lost their lives and hundreds of millions have fallen into poverty, while most of the world's richest people and companies remain the richest on the planet. Their multimillion-dollar wealth has returned to pre-pandemic levels in just nine months, while for the poorest it could take more than a decade to emerge from the impacts of the pandemic (Berkhout, Galasso, Lawson, Rivero Morales & Taneja, 2022).