By Jeffrey Maganya and Julie Kedroske COVID-19 is a humanitarian crisis of catastrophic proportions with no signs of abating. 130 million more people experienced chronic hunger last year, and approximately 150 million people will be forced into extreme poverty by the end of 2021. The pandemic is exacerbating existing inequalities in gender, race, and wealth, which will significantly worsen without …
Will the Generation Equality Forum deliver for women’s Rights?
The global movement for gender equality, also known as the Generation Equality Forum (GEF) is now in full speed. It is structured around six Action Coalitions: innovative multi-stakeholder partnerships involving governments, international organizations, civil society and youth-led organizations, as well as private sector companies and philanthropic foundations. It is the continuation of efforts toward keeping the promises of the Beijing Platform …
3 steps to linking farmer livelihoods with business benefits
Often, livelihoods projects in smallholder-based supply chains – such as tea or cocoa – aim to create solutions that benefit all links in the chain: by addressing a challenge in the supply chain (e.g. crop productivity or quality) the projects aim to improve conditions for smallholder farmers (e.g. increased income) as well as for the buyers and commercial partners (e.g. improved quality or security of supply). But demonstrating this ‘win-win’ can be challenging as monitoring and evaluation systems need to be designed in a way that captures the benefits …
A fresh approach to visual communications in development: allow me to illustrate
2020 brought many surprises. At the beginning of the pandemic, the last thing I expected was to be coaching voice actors down a crackly line to a recording studio in Afghanistan. My organisation, Integrity Action, was producing an animated video to showcase one of the impact stories from our work – this was part of our shift, over recent years, …
Who is asking whom? Does it matter?
In this blog we look at data from DRC, Zambia and the Occupied Palestinian Territory to see how interviewer and interviewee characteristics, especially gender, affect household-level information. Gender is one important factor shaping inequalities of power at play across scales, in private and public spheres and across contexts. In carrying out quantitative impact evaluations at Oxfam, we have been working to shed light …
On human rights, the US must repair, reflect, and re-engage
On January 16, Julio David González Arango, an Indigenous land defender involved in peaceful resistance to a mining operation in Guatemala, was shot in his home. The next day, two other defenders – Juan Eduardo Donis and Pablo Adolfo Valenzuela – received text messages saying that “they would be next.” Tragically, this incident is all too familiar to activists and human rights …
Agricultural Sheroes – The hidden stories of Palestinian Women
The agriculture sector in the Occupied Palestinian Territory is debilitated by multifaceted structural challenges. However, within the sector itself, women face another layer of challenges arising from the gender roles and responsibilities that are strongly defined by social norms. The gender division of labour in the agriculture sector depends upon the specific agricultural commodity and the various stages of the value chain. …