Featured image for “How the pregnancy penalty supercharges global inequality”

How the pregnancy penalty supercharges global inequality

March 7, 2024
In a blog for International Women’s Day, new parent Anthony Kamande reflects on the heavy cost his partner and family have paid for the simple act of having a baby. In one of the proudest moments of our lives, my wife and I became parents on Valentine’s Day. But for us, as for millions of others having babies across the
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Featured image for “Corporate power is driving up inequality. This is how to make corporates work for the common good instead – this year’s Oxfam Davos report”

Corporate power is driving up inequality. This is how to make corporates work for the common good instead – this year’s Oxfam Davos report

January 15, 2024
Oxfam’s annual ‘Davos Report’ has become a bit of an institution. On the eve of this year’s megarich schmoozathon, Anthony Kamande introduces the main findings of the 2024 version. Full paper here. Last Christmas eve, my cousin Lucy came to my rural village. She needed some help. Lucy’s son had excelled in the national exams and was selected to join
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Featured image for “Mia Mottley on Slavery, Poverty, George Floyd, Climate and the Future of the World”

Mia Mottley on Slavery, Poverty, George Floyd, Climate and the Future of the World

December 14, 2023
I was lucky enough to attend the Prime Minister of Barbados, Mia Mottley’s extraordinary speech at LSE last week (Video here or audio file here). Props to outgoing Oxfam CEO Danny Sriskandarajah and whoever else from Oxfam was involved in pulling it together, along with the LSE’s International Inequalities Institute, who hosted. It was jaw-dropping for both the performance, interweaving
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Featured image for “Will growth be enough to end poverty? New Projections of the UN Sustainable Development Goals”

Will growth be enough to end poverty? New Projections of the UN Sustainable Development Goals

October 17, 2023
Guest post by Arief Anshory Yusuf, Zuzy Anna, Ahmad Komarulzaman and Andy Sumner Today, October 17th is the UN International Day for the Eradication of Poverty (you already knew that, right?). In new analysis for UNU-WIDER, we assess progress towards the global poverty-related SDGs, specifically monetary poverty, undernutrition, child and maternal mortality, and access to clean water and basic sanitation.
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Featured image for “Fancy some Good News? Brits are getting nicer.”

Fancy some Good News? Brits are getting nicer.

September 21, 2023
Fancy some good news? A fascinating piece in today’s Guardian outlines the magnitude of the norm shifts that have taken place in the UK after the last 40 years, based on the latest British social attitudes (BSA) survey, which is marking its 40th year of mapping Britain’s cultural and political landscape. Underneath the left-right pendulum shifts of political debate, the
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Who Decides What Constitutes ‘Knowledge’ on Climate Change?

August 31, 2023
Thanks to Irene Guijt for sending over her 2021 chapter (gated, sorry – boooh!) on ‘The urgency for epistemic and political climate justice’, co-authored with Jacobo Ocharan and Velina Petrova for an edited volume, Knowledge for the Anthropocene. Don’t worry about the slightly intimidating title (confession: I always find ‘epistemic’ sending me scuttling back to the dictionary, along with ‘ontological’,
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Featured image for “A historic global agreement on tax is under threat. Here’s why.”

A historic global agreement on tax is under threat. Here’s why.

August 22, 2023
This post by Farida Bena was originally published on the Kiliza website Every year, an estimated USD 312 billion are lost in unpaid corporate taxes around the world. By using legal loopholes, many companies avoid paying their dues – often to Southern countries that host their operations and provide cheap labour. This happens because the governments of those countries are unable to
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Featured image for “The Gross Domestic Problem: what would a new economic measure that values women and climate look like?”

The Gross Domestic Problem: what would a new economic measure that values women and climate look like?

August 3, 2023
Measuring progress by Gross Domestic Product leads straight to gender injustice, austerity and environmental ruin. Anam Parvez Butt and Alex Bush introduce a new Oxfam discussion paper that aims to encourage debate about alternative metrics, and calls on advocates to join the “Beyond GDP” movement Since its official adoption at the Bretton Woods conference in 1944, Gross Domestic Product or
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Featured image for “How the United Nations and the World Bank can turbo charge the effort to reduce Inequality”

How the United Nations and the World Bank can turbo charge the effort to reduce Inequality

July 26, 2023
Guest post from Oxfam’s Anthony Kamande Over the past decade, many leading economists and global institutions such as the United Nations (UN), the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank have taken a keen interest in economic inequality. Tons of inequality data have been unearthed, and inequality is now on ordinary people’s lips. Indeed, in 2015 the UN adopted
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Featured image for “Showing Your Working when you come up with a ‘Killer Fact’”

Showing Your Working when you come up with a ‘Killer Fact’

July 12, 2023
Oxfam got some headlines last week with ‘World’s 722 biggest companies ‘making $1tn in windfall profits’’. This is a good example of a ‘killer fact’ – a memorable statistic that summarizes an injustice, in this case a massive windfall for big corporates at a time of global austerity and spiralling food and fuel prices. Here’s my 2019 guide to writing
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Featured image for “Why are LGBTQIA+ people in the Philippines still waiting for an anti-discrimination law?”

Why are LGBTQIA+ people in the Philippines still waiting for an anti-discrimination law?

July 6, 2023
This post first appeared on Oxfam’s Views and Voices site. Neal Igan Roxas looks back on his childhood, and at the daily challenge for LGBTQIA+ people of “braving spaces” in the face of hostility, to explain why it is so vital the landmark SOGIE equality bill passes into law, after a two-decade battle for anti-discrimination protection. A same-sex couple at
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Featured image for “How do we Start Thinking About AI and Development?”

How do we Start Thinking About AI and Development?

May 19, 2023
Spent a mind-bending day this week discussing AI and development with some NGO and legal folk (Chatham House Rule, so that’s all I can say, sorry). Everyone in the room knew at least ten times more than me on the subject. Perfect. Some impressions/ideas. The catalyst for the discussion was the UK Government’s new White Paper on AI and Innovation,
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