These are exciting times for anyone who wants to reform the US aid system, as years of preparation and lobbying start to bear fruit (see my previous blog and click here for an excellent introduction to US aid from Oxfam America). Congress has taken an early lead on reform – with three pieces of legislation currently in the works (bipartisan bills

Foreign Policy magazine has teamed up again with the Washington DC-based ‘Fund for Peace’ thinktank to produce an interactive map of state fragility, to illustrate their Failed States Index 2009, covering 177 countries. Most fragile are Somalia, followed by Zimbabwe, Chad, Sudan and DRC. Most stable are (inevitably) the Scandinavians – Norway, followed by Finland and Sweden. Annoyingly, I can’t

Last month, the UK’s Department for International Development, (DFID), published its fourth White Paper since it was created as a fully fledged ministry by the incoming Labour Government in 1997. So what?  Well, it sets out the thinking for one of the more cutting edge bilateral aid organizations, so it’s at least worth a skim. White Papers are a big

One of the more exciting proposals in the UK Conservative’s recent Green Paper on development (see previous post here) is the idea of making aid ‘Cash on Delivery’ (CoD). ‘We will commit to pay a certain amount to a recipient government for a specific measure of progress – for example £100 for every extra child who attends school, or for

Back from a blissful and disconnected few days in Italy, and now paying the price in terms of catching up with the backlog of reading and emails, so this week will mostly be signposting interesting stuff, rather than trying to write anything original. Two graphics from this week’s Economist underline the rise of the G2 (US and China). First up,

This week I attended the launch of ‘One World Conservatism’, a ‘Green Paper’ (i.e. discussion document) in which the Conservative Party (who if you believe the opinion polls, are highly likely to take over from Gordon Brown’s Labour at the next election, due before next June) set out its thinking on international development. The Green Paper is the product of

How has Indonesia, the country worst affected in the late 90s by the last major financial crisis in the developing world, been coping with the current one? Quite well, according to the IMF, which predicts the economy will grow at 2.5% in 2009 and 3.5% in 2010. That’s down from the 6% average in the preceding years, but a far

One of the more unusual curtain raiser documents for the G8 summit last week was ‘Caritas in Veritate’ (Charity in Truth), the latest encyclical from Pope Benedict XVI. NGOs and development wonks tend to ignore these kinds of documents, but research shows that churches matter far more in the lives of poor people than NGOs do, so it’s worth paying

Oh dear, not only has climate change turned me into a reluctant green, but now I’m having to rethink my attitudes to organic farming. This is all the fault of a conversation with Peter Melchett and Ken Hayes from the Soil Association, who are both fervent advocates of organic agriculture (which Peter puts into practice on his own farm). What struck

Earthquake analogies and tectonic plates have been one of the most ubiquitous clichés of the global crisis, but they remain apt. The last week has thrown up further signs of the historic geopolitical shifts that are under way. The Economist has an excellent essay on the back of the first BRICs summit, exploring the sharp economic rebound in China and to

War, Guns and Votes builds on the strongest section of Collier’s best selling ‘Bottom Billion’ – his investigation of the ‘conflict trap’ that afflicts a disproportionate number of the poorest counties, especially in Sub-Saharan Africa (Collier’s real passion). The book is in equal measure hugely stimulating and deeply exasperating. Stimulating because he is an original thinker and a brilliant communicator,

Here’s an example of successful advocacy at national level, which is becoming an increasingly important part of Oxfam’s work. In 2005, Oxfam’s Malawi programme along with its partners mounted a campaign to eliminate gender based violence which led to the passing of the Prevention of Domestic Violence Bill in Parliament in April 2006.  How did it happen? In 2002, the Malawian