Bafflingly, I was recently invited to an online ‘Expert Group Meeting’ to help UN Women flesh out a really important new strategy – making norm change central to its role. This from the Concept Note for the session: ‘In recognition of the emerging emphasis on an articulated approach to social norms in international development and acknowledging that discriminatory social norms

The same subjects have been coming up again and again in random conversations recently, especially the ones where someone comes down to South London for a general chat in a local coffee shop (one of my favourite ways of avoiding work). In a recent discussion with Oxfam Mexico’s Estefanie Hechenberger, a small penny dropped – the value of looking at

When I joined Oxfam in the mid-noughties, it was a time of Big Documents: The World Development Report, The Human Development Report etc etc. At regular intervals, the latest tome would thud onto my desk and require study, debate, lots of panels and press commentary. The tomes combined in-depth research and narrative – lots of narrative – about the nature

Oxfam has been receiving increasingly desperate voicenotes from staff and partners inside the Gaza strip. Here are some edited transcripts and links to give you a sense of the suffering that is unfolding: The Oxfam Partner Eman Shanan founded Aid and Hope in 2009, to support women with cancer in Gaza. Oxfam has been funding Aid and Hope through its

This post by Oxfam’s Richard Stanforth and Magnus Corfixen went up on Oxfam’s Views and Voices blog on Friday Why are Oxfam and other humanitarian organisations not welcoming calls for corridors, pauses and so-called “safe zones” to address the humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza? Richard Stanforth and Magnus Corfixen explain – and set out why a ceasefire is the only credible

Had a good chat last week about one of my enduring hobby-horses: the role of faith in development, and the aid sector’s massive secular blind spot. The conversation was with Christian Aid’s Lila Caballero Sosa, who (with Islamic Relief, the Joint Learning Initiative and the University of Leeds) is putting together a big event on faith and development for next

Guest post by Arief Anshory Yusuf, Zuzy Anna, Ahmad Komarulzaman and Andy Sumner Today, October 17th is the UN International Day for the Eradication of Poverty (you already knew that, right?). In new analysis for UNU-WIDER, we assess progress towards the global poverty-related SDGs, specifically monetary poverty, undernutrition, child and maternal mortality, and access to clean water and basic sanitation.

Guest post by Cordelia Lonsdale and Dr Gloria Seruwagi The Research for Health in Humanitarian Crises (R2HC) programme has an explicit impact mission: the research funded through the programme should improve health outcomes for people affected by humanitarian crises. R2HC uses case studies to evaluate not only the outcomes and impacts of funded research, but to understand the processes, activities

I accompanied a project in Myanmar that ran from August 2017 to October 2021 implemented by DT Global. This blog is written together with guest bloggers Jane Lonsdale and Kelly Robertson. As part of the programme’s final output, we wrote a ‘reflection paper’, discussing what ended up as being an important natural experiment in Adaptive Management (AM), as a governance

By Jonathan Fox (right) and Jeffrey Hallock , Accountability Research Center, School of International Service, American University This week, USAID Administrator Samantha Power is scheduled to give a keynote at the Open Government Partnership Global Summit in Estonia. In November 2021, she wowed the international development community with a pair of very ambitious localization targets –25% of direct funding for

Over the summer, there appears to have been a big upheaval in the international system, and I’m wondering what it all means. In August, the five existing members of the BRICS club — Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa, expanded it with invitations to Argentina, Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (BRICISSUE-AE?). According to the

Woah, if you’re even slightly interested in knowing more about the world of humanitarian response, check out the new ALNAP Learning Links | Free academic resources and teaching tools for humanitarian courses and programmes. Here’s the blurb:  ‘ALNAP is the global network for advancing humanitarian learning. We want to provide future generations of humanitarians with unfettered access to our very best