Signing off from a grim 2020 by reprinting this Christmas editorial from The Economist, which I found both thought-provoking and consoling. Warren Harding built a campaign for the presidential election in 1920 around his new word “normalcy”. It was an appeal to Americans’ supposed urge to forget the horrors of the first world war and the Spanish flu and turn back

One of the bright spots in a generally crap year has been the Emergent Agency project. It emerged in the early weeks of the pandemic from a brief conversation with Armine Ishkanian, who runs the LSE’s Atlantic Fellows for Social and Economic Equity (AFSEE) programme. Would Covid lead to new forms of grassroots organization? Wouldn’t it be interesting to monitor

Guest post from Niranjan J. Nampoothiri, who has just started as the Research Assistant on the Emergent Agency in a time of Covid project. Delighted to be working with you, Niranjan!   I have been following the literature on Covid-19 and civic space for several months now. One report that I was excited about, the annual People Power under Attack

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Guest post by Lucy Morris & Andres Gomez de la Torre, who work for and with INGOs in different capacities (e.g. members of staff, trustee, consultant, etc). “If your conversation on this matter is not uncomfortable, you are not having the right conversation!” Recent developments around the world have rightly brought back old calls for structural change in the aid

Asier Hernando Malax-Echevarria discusses what looks like an important advocacy win The Argentine Senate has just passed the ‘Solidarity and Extraordinary Contribution of Great Fortunes’ law, a one-off tax intended to help cover the costs of the COVID19 pandemic in a country where it has so far killed 40,000 people. The tax will pay for medical supplies, assist small and

A very good paper on a fascinating and important topic, by Caroline Harper, Rachel Marcus, Rachel George, Sophia M. D’Angelo, Emma Samman, published by ODI and ALIGN. The research questions are ambitious: how gender norms have changed over the past quarter-century, what has supported and blocked changes to gender norms in a number of sectors, and how to ensure change is faster, and robust

Glad to see humanitarian guru Hugo Slim is stepping up his blogging activity. This post first appeared on the ODI page In the run-up to Christmas the big humanitarian bureaucracies have been busy asking governments for money. UN OCHA has appealed for $35 billion for the UN-led humanitarian response in 2021 (to reach 235 million people across 56 countries). UNHCR

Development speak: the gift that keeps giving COVID-19 as a ‘Critical Juncture’: A Scoping Review by John Twigg Why so many Syrian women get divorced when they move to western countries. Thought-provoking piece from Rola El-Husseini In 2015 Oxfam profiled 40 Sahrawi refugees 40 years after the Western Sahara conflict erupted. For Human Rights Day they caught up with several

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I have a confession to make. I don’t listen to podcasts, even though I inflict them on others. When I’m at my desk, I’m much happier skimming documents (using my mad speed reading skills). If I’m out and about, I hate having something jabbering away in my ears. But my resolve is being sorely tested by the new series on

A recent piece in the Economist on Mexico’s debates is an interesting addition to my library of ‘how change happens’ case studies, and reminded me of conversations I had thirty years ago, when legalization seemed a purely theoretical possibility. Would legalization mean small farmers get a new and stable market for their crop, free from the violence and chaos associated