Sabine Garbarino is an independent gender and inclusion consultant specialising in economic development programming. I have a confession: I’ve recently banned colleagues at a private sector development programme in Liberia from using the term empowerment or women’s economic empowerment or WEE.  Here is why (and it’s not just my personal dislike of an unfortunate abbreviation):  Language matters Over the last years, I’ve noticed

Enda Verde and Chandan Kumar write about how women are leading the resistance against the unconstitutional Citizenship Amendment Act in India. Enda Verde is a Ph.D. candidate working in both Europe and India. Chandan Kumar is a labor rights activist based in Pune, India, and part of a citizen’s movement against the Citizenship Amendment Act called “Hum Bharat Ke Log.”

The first outputs are now appearing from ‘Governance Diaries’, a really fascinating new research method that emerged from an initial conversation in a bar in Yangon 4 years ago. If you’re even slightly interested in research, please take a look at this first paper on the emerging methodology, by Miguel Loureiro, Anuradha Joshi, Katrina Barnes and Egídio Chaimite. What are

Some interesting research on the realities of CSOs in the Global South and their interaction with the aid sector is coming out of the Netherlands (see last week’s post for more on this theme). Check out this new paper by the ‘Civil Society Research Collective’ – Margit van Wessel, Suparana Katyaini, Yogesh Mishra, Farhat Naz, B. Rajeshwari, Rita Manchanda, Reetika

The Action for Empowerment and Accountability (A4EA) programme, which I’ve been sporadically involved with, is now digesting the findings of its first 3 years of research, and has identified some important ‘recurring themes’ across its 5 focus countries (Egypt, Mozambique, Myanmar, Nigeria and Pakistan). The result? Eleven Recommendations for Working on Empowerment and Accountability in Fragile, Conflict or Violence-Affected Settings.

‘Whiteness’ is often claimed through distancing oneself from what is not considered ‘white’. NGOs in Kosovo, a Muslim majority country, for instance aspire to ‘Whiteness’ by denying Muslimness. Adem Ferizaj is a Balkan essayist writing about the region’s political and cultural issues. The Balkan region is often left out when it comes to debates about ‘development’ or ‘aid’, even though

I recently sat down with Akosua Adomako Ampofo, President of the African Studies Association of Africa to discuss her life, decolonization (including my own) and the research system. It’s 40 minutes, really interesting, and follows nicely from yesterday’s much-talked about post by Teni Tayo, but here’s some highlights for the non podcast community. Personal Background: My mother is German, my

Spent an enjoyable day last week in The Hague (see yesterday’s post). No I wasn’t on trial, I was opening a conference on ‘Pushing the Boundaries in Advocacy for Inclusion’ (my slides here). The good thing about opening an event is that you can then relax and listen and learn. And as this was a day on ultra marginalized groups

Filippo Artuso and Irene Guijt introduce their new Oxfam discussion paper When it comes to global futures, we have information of what could be, yet are largely in the dark about what will be. To shed some light, we compared 22 recent scans of powerful global trends – or megatrends. This helps give us some tools for thought about options,

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Guest post by Ynis Isimbi, first posted on the LSE International Development blog [note from Duncan: This made my week – a former student of my LSE course on advocacy and campaigns got in touch to say Rwanda’s just done the thing she was calling for in her student project, then interviewed its Minister of Health to find out why/how

It was Martin Luther King day this week, and Save the Kids boss Kevin Watkins tweeted a link to King’s 1963 letter from Birmingham city jail, describing it as ‘a hymn for our times and a reminder of the ties that bind us’. So I took a look. It’s beautifully written, deeply moving, and gives some powerful analytical insights into