How ‘cash-for-work’ projects help vulnerable groups in Lebanon – and what they need to do better

Léa Moubayed-Haidar Cash transfers, Humanitarian, Research

Offering temporary jobs on donor-funded and public projects can boost community incomes, as well as women’s economic empowerment and local quality of life. However, our new paper also finds such schemes need to do more to improve long-term economic inclusion and social impact, say Léa Moubayed-Haidar and Christina Elias of the EU-funded Economic Development Policy Unit (EDPU), hosted at Oxfam Lebanon

Faced with impossible healthcare costs, unsafe housing and rampant discrimination, Lebanon’s LGBTQIA+ people are in survival mode

May Achour Health, Research, Rights

The price of a single therapy session is now half the monthly minimum wage and most LGBTQIA+ people face violence where they live. In the first in a series of blogs to mark Pride month, May Achour introduces two new Oxfam policy briefs on the state of healthcare and housing

Fighting for invisible women in Kenya: a story and podcast of an extraordinary changemaker in the pandemic

Filippo Artuso Gender, Innovation, Research

“I am a reflection of how a widow can  thrive. I am a reflection of how widows can remain invisible…” Roseline Orwa, advocate for Kenyan widows, is star of the first episode of a new podcast series telling four stories of changemakers in a time of Covid. Oxfam’s Filippo Artuso and the LSE’s Barbara van Paassen tell us more about the series – and the research that informs it

Austerity is not the answer to Africa’s colliding crises: it’s time to invest massively in public services and decent jobs

Anthony Kamande Debt, Inequality, Research

Our continent faces droughts and spiking prices that are pushing millions into hunger and poverty, a debt crisis and the ongoing pandemic. So why are countries cutting billions in spending? Anthony Kamande introduces a new Oxfam Pan Africa briefing based on our index that scores governments on how committed they are to cutting inequality

The messy realities of governance in conflict-affected areas: six dilemmas for development practice

Katrina Barnes Conflict, Governance, Research

Development projects too often assume there is a simple structure of local governance. But innovative research based on people in Mozambique, Myanmar, and Pakistan writing diaries reveals how in fact their lives are governed by many competing informal and formal actors. Katrina Barnes of Oxfam and Colin Anderson of the Institute of Development Studies on key dilemmas this complexity raises for practitioners