Local actors can deliver programming that is up to 32% more cost-efficient than international ones, one study suggests. Yet, particularly in fragile contexts and conflict zones, international actors still seem reluctant to localise. Economist Sophie Pongracz looks at cash transfers to explain why it’s time for the humanitarian sector to take a proper look at the evidence on cost-effectiveness.

Shruti Patel shares her new advent calendar of success stories.

Debates about workers on digital platforms too often focus on male-dominated sectors such as deliveries and ride-hailing. Veronica Deutsch explains how care workers, overwhelmingly women, are now central to the precarious UK gig economy – and sets out what campaigners, researchers, employers and policy makers can do to support them.

If everyone used private jets and superyachts like 50 of the world’s richest billionaires, the remaining carbon budget to stay within 1.5C would be burned up in just two days. Nafkote Dabi introduces Oxfam’s new climate report, which spells out how the emissions of the super-rich are driving inequality, hunger and heat-related deaths.

New Oxfam analysis shows global Commitment to Reducing Inequality (CRI) has just hit a new low. Anthony Kamande shares insights from Oxfam’s biannual CRI report that ranks 164 countries’ policies – and offers three big policy changes that should be firmly on the agenda at this week’s World Bank/IMF annual meetings.

The “project” is intrinsic to modern international development – yet this basic form of organising our work is not something neutral or benign, says Caitlin Scott, but has real, often distorting, effects on the way development organisations think and act.

Logan Cochrane and Alexandra Wilson on a fascinating new analysis that identifies four principles that drive NGOs to reject large donations – and if your organisation has turned away money recently, they want to hear from you…

Marc J. Cohen, Amy Croome and Elise Nalbandian introduce a new Oxfam report that sets out how the veto power of a few countries at the UN Security Council has been catastrophic for humanity. Ahead of next week’s landmark Summit of the Future, they demand four changes to reform a UN system that is simply no longer up to the challenge of maintaining international peace and security.

How did a meeting for disabled people in Uganda end up using sign language that local deaf people couldn’t understand? Julia Modern reflects on how that failure is rooted in racialised ideas about who is an expert – and shares six tips for effective deaf inclusion. (And you can also watch a Ugandan Sign Language translation of the blog)

Always wanted to write that book about progressive change but don’t know where to start? Oxfam’s Irene Guijt shares tips from an expert…

The development sector has been too slow to invest in the healthy news media and “information ecosystems” on which healthy societies depend, say Nick Benequista, Laure-Hélène Piron and Cristina Ordóñez.

Theory tells us that democracies should become more equal. So why are they still so unequal? Gideon Coolin, Emanuele Sapienza, and Andy Sumner on their new UNDP paper that unpicks the politics of inequality.