Why are Illegal Drugs still a Cinderella Issue in Development? (Looking at you CGD!)

September 15, 2020
Why don’t more mainstream aid organizations work on the issue of illegal drugs like cannabis, coca or opium poppy? We’ve known for decades that the prevalent approach to these – prohibition – harms small-scale farmers that grow them, fuels violence, undermines the rule of law and contaminates politics (the UN estimates the illegal drugs trade is worth $500bn a year
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What do 13,000 children in 46 countries have to tell us about living with COVID-19?

September 10, 2020
Guest post by Save the Children International’s Melissa Burgess and Michael O’Donnell The world is certainly not lacking in research on COVID-19. But there have been gaps in empirical data showing the lived experience of people around the world. Today, Save the Children is filling some of those gaps with the release of the findings from an unprecedented study, asking
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3 advocacy case studies I would love to read (on long term norm shifts). Anyone fancy writing them?

August 27, 2020
On the off chance that someone is looking for an interesting research topic, here are 3 case studies related to norm change that I would love to read about, but don’t currently have time to research myself. If you are interested in picking up any of them, I’d love to discuss (and read the result). 1. The canonization of Oscar
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Does development have a problem with racism?

June 16, 2020
Given recent events in the United States that have sparked mass protests around the banner of #BlackLivesMatter not only there, but across the world, we ought to talk about this right here. The COVID-19 pandemic has pushed us to rethink solidarity, and these protests calling for racial justice force us to ask questions also of the aid and development sectors.
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Why Abortion is becoming more available and safer around the world

March 18, 2020
If you were to buy just one issue of The Economist a year, the edition just before International Women’s Day is usually a good bet. Even though it seldom mentions IWD directly, the issue usually sneaks in some fascinating gender-based pieces (eg this 2017 article on gender budgeting). This year it ran pieces on femicide in Latin America; sexism and
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What values should guide Britain’s role in the world, post-Brexit?

March 3, 2020
Oxfam today publishes (with UK think tank, the Foreign Policy Centre) a collection of essays from parliamentarians and policy experts called ‘Finding Britain’s role in a changing world: building a values based foreign policy’. Here are a few highlights from the conclusion, snappily written by Adam Hug, Abigael Baldoumas, Katy Chakrabortty and Danny Sriskandarajah: ‘The extent to which the United
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Could Amartya Sen and Martha Nussbaum help us have a more grown-up conversation about aid?

March 2, 2020
This post got a lot of help from Severine Deneulin – thanks! I get a bit frustrated with the conversation on aid – too often, we seem to be expected to pick one of two equally unappealing camps: ‘all aid is bad’ v ‘all aid is good’. People tend to land on a single issue – growth, accountability, safeguarding –
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Against fascism in India: in solidarity, through care

February 26, 2020
Enda Verde and Chandan Kumar write about how women are leading the resistance against the unconstitutional Citizenship Amendment Act in India. Enda Verde is a Ph.D. candidate working in both Europe and India. Chandan Kumar is a labor rights activist based in Pune, India, and part of a citizen’s movement against the Citizenship Amendment Act called “Hum Bharat Ke Log.”
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What Place for Human Rights in the Growing Movement against Inequality?

February 11, 2020
Guest post by Allison Corkery and Ignacio Saiz of the Center for Economic and Social Rights Last month, to coincide with the annual Davos meeting, tens of thousands of people took to the streets as part of the Global Protest to #FightInequality. What are the implications for human rights advocates? Leading human rights figures are increasingly acknowledging the threat posed by inequality. But, for
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Colombian activists use music and art to call for climate action

February 3, 2020
Vanessa Daza Castillo is a young Colombian lawyer working as an environmental justice researcher at Dejusticia, a human rights think tank, and a fellow at the Climate and Environmental Justice Media program with FRIDA – The Young Feminist Fund in partnership with OpenGlobalRights. This piece was published as part of this partnership, by OpenGlobalRights. Social media and school striking are not the
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Change in the UK and decolonizing Academia – round up (14m) of FP2P posts wb 13th January

January 18, 2020
No excerpt
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The Year in Africa

January 7, 2020
If you don’t receive ‘This Week in Africa’, check it out – it’s an amazing and wide-ranging round up of links put together by Jeff (American) and Phil (Zimbabwean) and hosted by the University of San Francisco. And their annual version is even better. Their 2019 summary is way too long for a blog, so I’ve cut it down by
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