In charting Bangladesh’s remarkable progress on a range of social indicators since the 1970s, Naila Kabeer explores the critical role played by women’s agency. How were women able to challenge existing gender norms in the context of the “lived” Islam of their culture? What are the lessons of this episode  – and what nuances are offered vis-à-vis the more “universal” path to progress and emancipation generally assumed by Western feminists?

After his family fled conflict in South Sudan, Peter Kidi was born in the Kakuma refugee camp in Kenya – where he has spent his entire life. Today, he writes powerful poems about life in the camp; poems that are, as he says, written ‘from the inside not as a subject, but as a witness and creator’. Now his work is winning international attention, notably a collaboration with the UK’s London School of Economics that will lead to a publication later this year. He speaks to FP2P about his life, his art and what his community wants from international aid organisations. 

If the development sector is serious about decolonisation, it must stop confusing optics with real, transformational change, argues Awssan Kamal.

The failure to deliver for poorer countries and the Trumpian backlash against free trade has shaken the dominance of the liberalisers and deregulators, says Duncan Green. He reports back from a recent gathering where experts unpicked emerging themes in a chaotic time for global trade policy: including the shift away from the multilateral system to bilateral treaties; and the heartening success of countries from Rwanda to Vietnam to Ecuador that have defied the old consensus.

‘One male former government minister said he felt like an imposter a lot of the time… a government minister!’ Duncan Green reflects on how a recent conversation with LSE leadership students revealed widespread feelings of imposter syndrome.

The growing water crisis for billions threatens global progress on everything from poverty to hunger to green growth. Yet no one is stepping up to deliver and coordinate the funding needed to avoid a catastrophic future. Jo Trevor sets out the urgent need for smart water financing – which is the focus of an Oxfam event at this week’s Marmalade Festival in Oxford.

FP2P’s blogger emeritus Duncan Green recommends Santosh, a film that anyone interested in India or social justice should not miss.

After decades of delay, the move from burning fossil fuels to renewables is firmly underway – but the fairness of this unfolding transition is not inevitable. In fact, there is a real danger the world will simply swap one exploitative and unjust system for another. Natalie Shortall introduces a new Oxfam paper that calls on the UK to get wholeheartedly behind a “just transition”.

Millions of women in the Global South earn a pittance, own no wealth or land and do far more unpaid care than men – and much of their condition today can be traced back to the economic devastation caused by both colonialism and the extractive economic system it created. That’s why any plan for redress must include justice for women. In the latest blog in our World Economic Forum series, Lurit Yugusuk and Hazel Birungi set out five ways to do that…

Global inequality will continue to spiral in a skewed system of international finance and governance that heavily favours the Global North, says Anthony Kamande in the latest blog in our Davos series.

Alex Maitland takes us through the number-crunching behind the headline prediction from this year’s Davos report: that there will be five trillionaires within a decade.

The world looks set to see five trillionaires within a decade — and more billionaires are now being created through inheritance than entrepreneurialism. Anjela Taneja and Harry Bignell introduce Oxfam’s 2025 Davos report, which reveals the scale of unearned wealth — and how those riches are built on a colonial legacy of exploitative global systems.