
November 21, 2023
When I joined Oxfam in the mid-noughties, it was a time of Big Documents: The World Development Report, The Human Development Report etc etc. At regular intervals, the latest tome would thud onto my desk and require study, debate, lots of panels and press commentary. The tomes combined in-depth research and narrative â lots of narrative – about the nature
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Why a âhumanitarian pauseâ or âhumanitarian corridorsâ are simply not the answer in Gaza
November 6, 2023
This post by Oxfamâs Richard Stanforth and Magnus Corfixen went up on Oxfamâs Views and Voices blog on Friday Why are Oxfam and other humanitarian organisations not welcoming calls for corridors, pauses and so-called âsafe zonesâ to address the humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza? Richard Stanforth and Magnus Corfixen explain â and set out why a ceasefire is the only credible
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Think tanks are struggling. They need to change.
October 25, 2023
Guest post by Enrique Mendizabal of On Think Tanks Just 15% of respondents say itâs getting easier to operate as a think tank, according to the 2023 Think tank state of the sector report. And over 50% of respondents in Latin America & the Caribbean, the USA & Canada, and Africa say it is getting harder to operate. I think
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What Tactics are most Effective in Non-Violent Protest?
October 24, 2023
Continuing on yesterdayâs theme of the ups and downs of mass protest, I met (albeit via zoom) with Srjda Popovic, one of my protest heroes, last week. Srdjaâs a Serbian political activist who cut his activist teeth as a leader of the student movement Otpor that helped topple Serbian president Slobodan MiloĆĄeviÄ. He established the Centre for Applied Nonviolent Action and Strategies (CANVAS) in 2003 and
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Why did the Street Movements of the 2010s fail?
October 23, 2023
Been reading some interesting (and challenging) reflections on protest movements recently, so the next two days will cover what Iâve learned. First up a Guardian âlong readâ from Vincent Bevins, a journo, on âWhy did the Street Movements of the 2010s failâ. The piece is based on his new book, If We Burn: The Mass Protest Decade and the Missing
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How Local Women Mobilizers Shaped Ukraineâs Invasion Response
October 2, 2023
This guest post by Esther Brito Ruiz first appeared on the Global Policy blog. The impacts of Russiaâs war in Ukraine have been deeply gendered: from human traffickers targeting women and children fleeing airstrikes, to the increase in gender-based violence, rising feminized poverty, and haunting testimonies of sexual violence. Yet despite these disproportionate vulnerabilities, Ukrainian women have also emerged as vital agents of resistance: as
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Fancy some Good News? Brits are getting nicer.
September 21, 2023
Fancy some good news? A fascinating piece in todayâs Guardian outlines the magnitude of the norm shifts that have taken place in the UK after the last 40 years, based on the latest British social attitudes (BSA) survey, which is marking its 40th year of mapping Britainâs cultural and political landscape. Underneath the left-right pendulum shifts of political debate, the
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What can we learn from how an Adaptive Management programme has navigated Myanmarâs current chaos?
September 19, 2023
I accompanied a project in Myanmar that ran from August 2017 to October 2021 implemented by DT Global. This blog is written together with guest bloggers Jane Lonsdale and Kelly Robertson. As part of the programmeâs final output, we wrote a âreflection paperâ, discussing what ended up as being an important natural experiment in Adaptive Management (AM), as a governance
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How more Open Government can bolster USAIDâs Localization Agenda
September 6, 2023
By Jonathan Fox (right) and Jeffrey Hallock , Accountability Research Center, School of International Service, American University This week, USAID Administrator Samantha Power is scheduled to give a keynote at the Open Government Partnership Global Summit in Estonia. In November 2021, she wowed the international development community with a pair of very ambitious localization targets â25% of direct funding for
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The World Order Seems to be in Turmoil â Whatâs Going on?
September 5, 2023
Over the summer, there appears to have been a big upheaval in the international system, and Iâm wondering what it all means. In August, the five existing members of the BRICS club â Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa, expanded it with invitations to Argentina, Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (BRICISSUE-AE?). According to the
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A historic global agreement on tax is under threat. Hereâs why.
August 22, 2023
This post by Farida Bena was originally published on the Kiliza website Every year, an estimated USD 312 billion are lost in unpaid corporate taxes around the world. By using legal loopholes, many companies avoid paying their dues â often to Southern countries that host their operations and provide cheap labour. This happens because the governments of those countries are unable to
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How did we get here? Great chronology of citizen and corporate action on climate
August 1, 2023
Iâm spending the summer lull updating How Change Happens and am coming across some really interesting stuff. To update the bookâs case study on the Paris Climate Summit of 2015, Irene Guijt sent over âA short history of the successes and failures of the international climate change negotiationsâ an excellent (open access) paper by Mark Maslin, John Lang and Fiona
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