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

The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace is doing some great research on civil society responses to Covid. It’s latest, published yesterday, is Coronavirus as a Catalyst for Global Civil Society. Its a bit more distanced and neutral than the Civicus work I highlighted recently, and the two approaches complement each other nicely. The Carnegie report’s 94 pages comprise an overview

A thought-provoking new paper from Abigael Bellows and Nada Zohdy on how the pandemic is influencing the ecosystem of advocacy, campaigns and experimentation to promote open government (aka transparency and accountability). Based on interviews with 125 civil society leaders in 20 countries, in a paper published by the Carnegie Endowment, the authors find that the ‘pandemic has generated a surge

I’m loving the theatre of the protests in Thailand. First the adoption of the Hunger Games’ three finger salute, which actually started in 2014, and was promptly banned by the military. In that earlier round of protest, popular culture figures from cartoon hamsters to the Harry Potter villain Lord Voldemort were all invoked. Now it’s the hour of the rubber

Guest blog by Chris Roche, Josie Flint and Fiona Tarpey   As the COVID pandemic spread around the world a significant natural experiment took place in the Pacific. The vast majority of non-Pacific international aid workers, technical specialists and diplomats returned to their home countries. Preliminary findings of a real-time monitoring exercise of the effects on development and humanitarian organisations

Maria Faciolince introduces one of her amazing resource lists. 25 November is the International Day to End Violence against Women, kicking off #16DaysofActivism. Once considered a private issue pertaining to ‘family matters’, now it is largely recognized as part of large-scale social issues and systemic oppressions. But to make sense of this day, we have to extend our gaze beyond

Imagine you’ve written a mini-book (82 pages) setting out your thoughts on a progressive agenda, scheduled to come out in the first days of a Biden Administration. What could possibly go wrong? I can only imagine what my friend and political sparring partner Paul O’Brien was going through in the early hours of 4th November, as a second Trump term

Oxfam has just published an interesting overview of its work on unpaid care and domestic work (UCDW) in over 25 countries since 2013, which I recommend as a good intro to an increasingly important topic in the aid and development biz. Firstly, the history: ‘Conversations on UCDW have evolved over the decades from the ‘domestic labour debate’ of the 1970s—then

How many friends and relatives can you buy the same book for as a Christmas present, without getting into trouble for your lack of imagination? Difficult Women has everything – a great and funny writer in Helen Lewis, and a fascinating and page-turning introduction to the history of northern, mainly UK, feminism. Here’s the pitch: ‘Women’s history should not be

Spent an intense two hours last week on a webinar discussing the initial findings, hypotheses etc of our Emergent Agency in a Time of Covid project. We had some great panellists (Laurence Cox, Yogesh Ghore, and Katherine Marshall) on social movements, livelihoods and faith organizations, respectively. I cross examined, Irene Guijt chaired, and a good spread of activists and researchers

Larissa Pelham, Oxfam’s Social Protection Adviser, reports back on a 4 day Zoomathon Covid-19 has catapulted social protection into the spotlight.  From furloughing to school feeding programmes delivered to homes, 212 states and territories across the world have planned or delivered 1179 social protection interventions in response to the pandemic.  It is the backbone support to families and individuals to

My colleague at Oxfam America, Paul O’Brien, has a book out on Monday (review to follow) on the agenda for a Biden-Harris administration. He must have been chewing his nails more than most on election night. Since then, we’ve had an interesting exchange on what lessons to draw for the wider progressive movement – broadly, Paul is doing cup half