Today Oxfam launches Even It Up, its big new inequality campaign. For me, the most striking killer fact from the launch report: ‘The number of billionaires has doubled since the financial crisis, as inequality spirals out of control. In the same period, at least a million mothers have died in childbirth due to a lack of basic health services.’ Although

Spent an intense two days at Harvard last week, taking part in a ‘Doing Development Differently’ (DDD) seminar, hosted by Matt Andrews, who runs Harvard’s ‘Building State Capability’ programme and ODI. About 40 participants, a mixture of multilaterals and donors (big World Bank contingent), consultants and project design and implementation people, and a couple of (more or less) tame NGO people

Varja Lipovsek & Ben Taylor of Twaweza, one of my favourite accountability NGOs, read the tea leaves on the future of their field In the private rooms of the Royal Society in London, under the stern gaze of Isaac Newton, the World Bank, DFID, ODI and a handful of others gathered recently to discuss an evaluation of the Bank’s Governance

I wrote this puff for Blog Action Day on 16th Oct – it appeared on Oxfam International’s site earlier this week. If you’re a blogger and want to join in the inequality theme, sign up here. A few years ago I was touring the US to promote my book, From Poverty to Power, which focuses on inequality and redistribution. Big

Oxfam’s  country director, Simon Ticehurst (right), fills in the background ahead of this weekend’s election Some colleagues asked me this week, what is going to happen in the elections and who should I vote for? First up, prediction is not my forte. Last year in June I sent an optimistic briefing on Brazil to Oxfam´s CEO, saying that poverty was

Oxfam head of policy for food and climate change Tim Gore reflects on what happens next after the euphoria of New York (and asks you to vote, right) First, the good news. After the Copenhagen hangover, the international climate change movement is back. Over recent days in New York, we’ve seen the emergence of a new people’s climate movement, broader

The research star of the show at last week’s Thinking and Working Politically event was a great new ODI paper from David Booth and Sue Unsworth. Politically smart, locally led development seeks to identify the secret sauce behind 7 large and successful aid programmes: a rural livelihoods programme in India; land titling and tax reform in the Philippines; disarmament, demobilization

Ahead of next week’s Thinking and Working Politically seminar, here’s another case study from The Asia Foundation, which has got some impressive advocacy results in the Philippines. Room for Maneuver (book and research brief) examines four social policy reforms to try and draw lessons for advocacy work. They are 1. The successful passage of the Anti-Violence Against Women and their

Ed Cairns, Oxfam’s senior policy adviser on humanitarian advocacy, bares his soul on whether R2P has a future, or is best consigned to the dustbin of history Nine years ago this month, the UN World Summit endorsed the Responsibility to Protect. But this summer’s bloodshed in Gaza was only the latest conflict to provoke a heated debate on whether the concept

The Thinking and Working Politically crew are reassembling next week to discuss how better to apply power analysis, political economy etc in the practice of aid, so I thought I’d highlight a couple of good examples in advance. First up is some really exciting work from DFID’s State Accountability and Voice Initiative in Nigeria, which suggests that even big donors

Ah yes, death by consultation, the fate that awaits all NGO policy wonks. The international civil society alliance CIVICUS has published ‘Beyond Our Two Minutes’, a useful new report trying to assess the efforts of intergovernmental organizations (UN, World Bank etc) to engage with civil society. It’s a pilot project, developing a scorecard to test IGO engagement and produce a

Last week I headed off to the Kennington Tandoori for one of those enjoyable food-fuelled brainstorms that seem to happen during the summer lull. This one was with two disability campaigners – Mosharraf Hossain and Tim Wainwright of ADD International. ADD is doing some brilliant work supporting the emergence of Disabled People’s Organizations in Africa and Asia. ADD is at