I’m on my 16th day of official Coronavirus lockdown. Since day 1, I’ve been seeing a welcome revival of all sorts of virtual conversations, resources and inspiring quotes about care. But here’s the thing: most of them focus on self-care rituals, yoga, mindfulness, and exercise regimes –  the ‘well-being complex’ and ‘wellness industry’ at our rescue. Before you leave thinking

Today’s post is a must-read on internationalist communications strategies during the Coronavirus crisis. Kirsty McNeill is Chair of the Campaign to Defend Aid and Development and Richard Darlington is Campaign Director. It was originally published on Global Dashboard. Over the last few years, bringing international NGOs together to make the case for aid and development, we’ve been digging deeply into how people think

Guest post from Mwanahamisi Singano, a feminist activist  Member of FEMNET The world is witnessing an unprecedent health pandemic.  With more than 440,318 confirmed cases of COVID19 across the world, and almost 20,000 deaths (at the time of publication), the world is shutting down. Everyone is being asked to stay home and be safe, but one thing that everyone has forgotten is that homes are not

Guest post by Vanita Suneja of WaterAid Covid-19 is currently   occupying our collective mind space.  Apart from avoiding mass gatherings, the foremost message given through public media and health advisories across the world is on hand hygiene. We are being been advised to clean our hands regularly and thoroughly with soap and water or with alcohol-based sanitizer. Hand washing is

This is an edited-down version of a post by Paul Richards that first appeared yesterday on African Arguments, launching its promising new ‘Debating Ideas’ series. Covid-19 is a flu-like illness (symptoms include fever, cough, and breathing problems) caused by a corona virus (SARS CoV-2). Like Ebola, the virus causing Covid-19 circulates within populations of bats and crossed over to humans

If you were to buy just one issue of The Economist a year, the edition just before International Women’s Day is usually a good bet. Even though it seldom mentions IWD directly, the issue usually sneaks in some fascinating gender-based pieces (eg this 2017 article on gender budgeting). This year it ran pieces on femicide in Latin America; sexism and

If you want to step back and think more broadly about Coronavirus, the Universe and Everything, you could do worse than start with Plagues and the Paradox of Progress, by Thomas Bollyky, which combined a ‘germ’s eye view’ of human history with some powerful reflections on the challenges that face us over the coming decades. First the history. The book

Madhumitha Ardhanari is a 2019-20 Atlantic Fellow for Social and Economic Equity at the International Inequalities Institute, London School of Economics. She has worked as a sustainability strategist and futures researcher at Forum for the Future, and has five years of experience coaching businesses and organisations to adapt to long-term sustainability challenges. Until six months ago, I didn’t care much

Guest post by Séverine Deneulin On the 12th February, Pope Francis released Querida Amazonia, a poetic love letter to the Amazon region and its peoples, and from them to the whole world. The letter is one outcome of a gathering last October of 200 religious leaders working in the Amazon region, indigenous peoples and other representative of local communities. The

I chaired a panel at LSE recently that included DFID lifer Phil Mason, who ran its Anti-Corruption Unit (reviewed here) after it was set up in 2000 by Clare Short. Phil had a big challenge – he had to persuade other Whitehall departments to get behind the idea, when they often had very different priorities. He sent me a short

I sat down recently with Saleemul Huq, a scientist and activist who has attended every single global negotiation on climate change since 1992. Saleem is Director of the International Centre for Climate Change and Development (ICCCAD) in Bangladesh and Senior Fellow at the International Institute for Environment & Development (IIED) in London. We discussed the evolving climate debate and ended

For a while now, I’ve been suggesting Oxfam make a conscious effort to ‘seed the ecosystem’ by spinning off more start-up organizations that can be more agile and responsive than our big bureaucracy. So I was delighted to find our team in Nepal are already doing it. Guest post by Prakash Subedi, CEO, Grow Nepal Ask an entrepreneur in Nepal