My colleague Richard King, an indefatigable number cruncher, has pulled together this handy summary of the latest stats. All updates welcome. Unemployment (ILO) · Gender impact of the economic crisis in terms of unemployment rates is expected to be more detrimental for females than for males in most regions of the world and most clearly in Latin America and the Caribbean

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

Last week, Oxfam published its proposals on how the burden of reducing carbon emissions should be shared between countries, both rich and poor. What struck me was the contrast with the stance Oxfam and other NGOs have taken in their advocacy on trade at the WTO and numerous other trade agreements. There, they have focused on what the rich countries

Ok I’m getting tired of picking holes in the arguments of aid sceptics, so here’s something positive – a specific example of what aid can achieve in a country like Nepal, which is recovering from a decade of conflict with devastating consequences for the delivery of basic services. One third of its population lives below the poverty line and one

The ODI continues to churn out some useful country research on the impact of the crisis. For a synthesis paper of its findings so far, see here. Or see the individual country case studies on Bangladesh, Bolivia, Cambodia, Indonesia, Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria, Uganda and Zambia. Most of the findings are by now fairly familiar – falling investment, stock markets, trade,

This is definitely the right subject – enough of ‘if I ruled the world’ policy solutions by environmental snake-oil salesmen, what are the politics of getting a breakthrough on climate change in time to stop the earth frying? Giddens’ new book even gets in a dig at his fellow LSE peer Nicholas Stern, saying ‘”Extraordinarily, there is no mention of

This comment piece went up on the Guardian ‘Comment is Free’ site yesterday, where it attracted the standard collection of random and/or extreme comments – people seem to visit the Guardian site largely in search of catharsis, picking fights and otherwise having a good rant. Definitely makes me appreciate the civilised conversation on this blog. As the first signs of “green

According to the FAO’s excellent and user friendly (even I can make it work) website on world food prices, which has both global price trends and breakdowns by individual country/commodity, world food prices bottomed out some time in February this year, and are now on their way back up again (see graphs – composite food price figure for 2009 is the

On 27 April Mostafa Rokonuzzaman, a young farmer from the village of Tepakhali in south-western Bangladesh, spoke in one of the first public hearings on the impacts of climate change – the hearings revealed a litany of seasonal disruption, including extreme heat, failed rains and warmer winters, all with impacts on their rainfed crops and winter vegetables, notably the salination

Is there a link between the current global crisis and the technological long wave that is in the process of transforming the world economy? Carlota Perez, a Venezuelan academic who specializes in the study of technological revolutions thinks there is, and laid it out at a talk at the IPPR last week (download her podcast here). Massively simplifying a pretty complex

A series of conversations in recent weeks have made me think a bit harder about the uses and abuses of testimony/first hand experience. First up, the launch of the World Bank book, Moving Out of Poverty at the ODI the other week (see my perhaps over the top review of the book back in March), where I was a ‘discussant’

The UN issued an update of its ‘World Economic Situation and Prospects 2009’ last week, with some pretty gloomy downward revisions. Headlines: At least 60 developing countries (out of 107 for which they have data) will suffer a fall in per capita incomes this year, while only 7 will grow fast enough to reduce poverty (compared to 69 countries in