Amina Hersi, Charlotte Becker and Florence Ogola introduce Oxfam’s new paper on the ‘dual crises’ of Covid and GBV. First published on the Oxfam International blog. Women, girls, trans and non-binary people have always faced the horrific and sometimes lethal consequences of gender-based violence in our societies, throughout history, in all countries, and in all walks of life. Even before

Amber Parkes, Anam Parvez Butt, Marion Sharples and Vivian Schwarz-Blum talks us through an important new advocacy tool – the Care Policy Scorecard Everything gets a rating these days: apps, hotels, Uber journeys. And everyone wants that five-star rating. But what about government policies that affect people’s lives? What if we could rate them too, according to how impactful and

Women, Voice and Power, Oxfam’s new paper on ‘transformative feminist leadership’ exemplifies why I love working for NGOs, but also why it can get a bit irksome, especially if you’re a wordsmith. Let’s start with the good stuff. The 7 page Exec Sum (the full report weighs in at 45 pages) is stuffed full with great literature summaries, case studies,

My Oxfam colleague and regular FP2P contributor Max Lawson (right) sends out a weekly summary of his reading on inequality (he leads Oxfam’s advocacy work on it). They’re great, and Max has opened his mailing list up to the anyone who’s interested – just email max.lawson@oxfam.org, with ‘subscribe’ in the subject line. Here’s his latest effort (and thanks to Rakesh Rajani for suggesting the

I’ve come to recognize a certain format for ‘inspirational books for activists’: big sweeping statement about What Needs to Happen, then what I call ‘thousand points of light’ – breathless accounts of some activist-led efforts to achieve those goals. On to the call to arms, invoking political will. Job Done. I must be getting (even more) jaded. What’s wrong with

Powerful piece in this week’s Economist. I’ve added links to the various pieces of research it cites ‘Seventeen months into the COVID-19 pandemic, plenty of questions about the catastrophe remain unanswered. It is still unclear how SARS-COV-2 originated, for instance. Another puzzle is why some areas have had less destructive epidemics than others. Why has Florida had fewer deaths per person from

Guest post by Dhananjayan Sriskandarajah, Chief Executive, Oxfam GB In the past few weeks Oxfam’s work on anti-racism has attracted some criticism. Various commentators have characterised it as “woke posturing” or “anti-white.”   I think they have got it wrong. Let me explain why tackling racism is an integral part of Oxfam’s mission.   It is almost 80 years since a small group of volunteers,

I was speaking on a UN panel on Decent Work last week, so thought I’d better catch up with the latest Oxfam report, Not in This Together, written by Anouk Franck and Art Prapha. It provides a great case study of Covid as an ‘engine of inequality’ (and of how to write a research-based advocacy report – killer facts galore,

One of my LSE activism students asked if she could highlight the horrible response to popular protests currently going on in her native Colombia. Guest post by Daniela Duran  and Lorenzo Uribe   Colombia is entering its third week of protests and, although a lot of what is happening is new to the country, the political response to it has

Guest post by Rory Horner (University of Manchester) and Ken Shadlen (LSE) Various UK media reports have blamed lower than expected supply of the AstraZeneca vaccine from India for a slowing of the UK’s vaccination programme, especially delaying immunisation of the under-50s. Although five million doses of vaccines produced by the Serum Institute of India were dispatched from India to

Read this in English here. Desafiar al poder fundamentalmente implica cambiar nuestra mirada. La manera en que actuamos en nuestros mundos depende de cómo los vemos, por lo tanto cambiar nuestra forma de ver se convierte en un paso esencial para transformar nuestro actuar. Si no exploramos diversas formas de expresar(nos), de ver(nos) y de (re)crear(nos), limitamos nuestras posibilidades colectivas.

The ‘Emergent Agency in a Time of Covid-19‘ research project is churning out some interesting findings and a flurry of webinars. Here Niranjan Nampoothiri and Filippo Artuso give some headline findings on the 200 case studies Niranjan has analysed and coded. We aim to publish the database later this year. Niranjan will present his findings on 6th April, 12.30 UTC