Guest Post from Hugo Slim, Senior Research Fellow at the Las Casas Institute for Social Justice at Blackfriars Hall, University of Oxford ‘Once again, humanitarians are bogged down in a moral predicament in Afghanistan. The extreme misogyny of Taliban policy is back and international humanitarian agencies should refuse to cooperate with it. The Taliban’s initial tolerance of gender equality in

Everyone ready? Ht Bryan Dawe Remembering Martin Ravallion, superstar analyst of poverty and inequality, who died just before Christmas. Memories and plaudits from his World Bank colleagues. In Effort to ‘Move the Needle,’ UN Chief Announces Special Summit on Climate Crisis ht Saleemul Huq Excellent overview of humanitarian policy issues: ‘What’s on our aid policy radar in 2023?’ The “deep

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Been catching up with my reading backlog over the Christmas break…. According to the publisher’s blurb ‘Africa 2.0 provides an important history of how two technologies – mobile calling and internet – were made available to millions of sub-Saharan Africans, and the impact they have had on their lives. The book deals with the political challenges of liberalisation and privatisation

As well as the headlines, First Edition, the Guardian’s excellent daily news summary (free subscription here), includes an in-depth conversation between the editor and one of its specialist journalists. Yesterday’s, with environment correspondent Damien Gayle, was on ‘Extinction Rebellion’s New Year’s Day statement, which led with the headline-grabbing phrase “we quit”’. Not true, apparently. Here’s the Guardian’s analysis: ‘This is

Hi there, hope you had a good break (if you took one). Mine was great – highlights included sorting out the spice cupboard and watching lots of really crap TV. Life in the fast lane eh? Everyone else did their top blogs of 2022 before Christmas, but I’m coming in a bit late with mine to kick off 2023. In