Off on holiday, back next week. Here’s a cute picture of some puffins

June 26, 2014
Just got back from Bosnia and Herzegovina (more on that next week), and am now off for a week to Skokholm, an island off the Welsh Coast, where there is nothing to do but look at puffins. Sounds perfect. I may even finish Piketty…….
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Strengthening active citizenship after a traumatic civil war: dilemmas and ideas in Bosnia and Herzegovina

June 25, 2014
I went to Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) last week to help Oxfam Italia develop advocacy and campaign skills among local civil society organizations. They have their work cut out. Firstly, there is a crisis of trust between the public and CSOs, which are poorly regulated, often seen as little more than ‘briefcase NGOs’, only interested in winning funding, and under
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20 years after the war, politics is frozen in Bosnia and Herzegovina: first impressions from last week’s visit

June 24, 2014
Just got back from a week visiting Oxfam Italy’s programme in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH from now on). It wasn’t what I expected. For a start, it never stopped raining (and I say this as an Englishman). And the traumatic war of 1992-95, which left some 100,000 dead (the exact figure is still disputed), and engraved names like Srebrenica, Tuzla
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‘Economists know almost nothing about anything’. Yet another reason to love Thomas Piketty

June 20, 2014
From the intro to ‘Capital in the 21st Century’, a taste of his great approach to learning, the easy discursive style, (but also why the book is 600 pages long – succinct he ain’t. I’ve got to page 164): “To put it bluntly, the discipline of economics has yet to get over its childish passion for mathematics and for purely
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Working with unlikely bedfellows to turn BP Deepwater Horizon fines into local jobs: How Oxfam America adapted to doing advocacy in the Deep South

June 19, 2014
Next up in the series of case studies on ‘active citizenship’ is an impressive bit of campaigning by Oxfam America’s domestic programme, in response to the horrendous BP oil spill of 2010. Here’s the draft case study (Draft AC case study Gulf RESTORE campaign June 2014: comments welcome), which I summarize below. ‘We started with two Senators and ended up with
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What works in reducing gender inequality? Great overview from Naila Kabeer

June 18, 2014
We’ve been having an interesting internal discussion on inequality over the last few weeks, and this contribution from Naila Kabeer jumped out. So I thought I’d nick it for FP2P A gendered analysis of essential services highlights the scale of the inequality challenge but it also offers useful pointers for the design of more inclusive and effective social protection strategies.
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Are we measuring the right things? The latest multidimensional poverty index is launched today – what do you think?

June 16, 2014
I’m definitely not a stats geek, but every now and then, I get caught up in some of the nerdy excitement generated by measuring the state of the world. Take today’s launch (in London, but webstreamed) of a new ‘Global Multidimensional Poverty Index 2014’ for example – it’s fascinating. This is the fourth MPI (the first came out in 2010),
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Where does power lie in a fragile state like Eastern Congo? What does it mean for aid organizations?

June 13, 2014
Here’s the last (at least for now) reflection on my recent trip to the DRC. The roads in DRC are extraordinary; a skeleton-rearranging, dental filling-loosening, vehicle disintegrating nightmare. From now on, when I talk about infrastructure and effective states, roads will be top of my list. In the rainy season, trucks charge $1200 to bump and crawl a load of
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What should we do differently when an ‘emergency’ lasts for 20 years?

June 12, 2014
Second installment in my reflections on last week’s trip to the Eastern Congo The classic cliché of humanitarianism is the angel of mercy (usually white) jetting in to help the victims of a sudden catastrophe (earthquake, war, hurricane), helping them get back on their feet in a few months and then moving on to the next emergency. A whole structure of
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Impressions of humanitarianism (based on last week’s trip to the Eastern Congo)

June 11, 2014
Blimey, that was hard work. Still recovering from a ‘getting to know the humanitarians’ visit to Eastern Congo last week, having my skeleton rearranged by bouncing around for hours on truly execrable roads, and my insides rearranged by some persistent DRC microbes (I’ll spare you the details). I’ve always worked on the long term development and advocacy side of development,
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Links I liked

June 10, 2014
Random World Cup bit: With their profession’s legendary record on prediction, The Economist forecasts the winners Good Health; Bad Health: Great overview of the Universal Health Coverage debate/new research from the ODI’s Kevin Watkins 2.1 billion people (30% of the global population) are now obese or overweight. 2/3 of the obese live in developing countries [h/t William Moseley] It’s like
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20 million food parcels (and counting): what explains rising food poverty in the UK?

June 9, 2014
Oxfam works on poverty in the UK as well as elsewhere, and is pretty alarmed at what it is facing there. Here Krisnah Poinasamy, Economic Justice Policy Adviser for our UK programme, introduces a new report on hunger in the UK. Today, Oxfam and its partners released Below The Breadline, a shocking report, which estimates that 20 million meals were
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