Half the world’s population live in cities, and urban informal workers make important economic, social, and environmental contributions to city life. Rhonda Douglas from WIEGO argues that the New Urban Agenda must include all urban stakeholders, including the working poor, to ensure it doesn’t leave anyone behind. More than 50% of the non-agricultural work force in most developing countries is …
Drought and water scarcity
Sally Rangecroft, from the University of Birmingham University, and Niko Wanders, from Princeton and Utrecht University, explore the interconnected relationship between drought and water scarcity. Droughts have been very much in the news recently, notably the lengthy drought in California and the impacts of El Niño on Southern Africa and the Horn and Eastern Africa. An extended drought is currently …
The new urban agenda: Rights and transformative change
Richard Friend explores The New Urban Agenda in the SDGs and assesses issues around governance in the context of urban development. The New Urban Agenda with its call for “a shared vision of cities for all” appears to offer much in setting development objectives for the coming decades, but it is undermined by a combination of its inability to draw on history …
A harvest of dysfunction: Causes and impacts of drought in South Africa
John Magrath introduces the report, A Harvest of Dysfunction: rethinking the approach to drought, its causes and impacts in South Africa. “Interventions to assist poor people affected by drought must start with how drought itself is defined and understood” – so says Sipho Mthathi, Executive Director of Oxfam South Africa in her introduction to a new report that challenges the …
New series launch on urban development
Hashim Zaidi, Global Urban Work Lead, introduces a new blog series on urban development and why it is important to Oxfam. Cities today are home to 3.9 billion people accounting for 54% of the total world’s population. UN-Habitat estimates that an additional 2.5 billion people will live in cities by 2050 with almost 90% of this increase happening in Asia and Africa. …
Can official development assistance be reformed to help the poorest countries?
The rules defining official development assistance, a key poverty reduction tool, are currently being revised by the OECD. But if governments and citizens from the South are not consulted more, this reform is likely to be in their detriment. The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) is currently revising the rules defining what can be counted as official development …
Taxation conversation over the airways
Based on conversations with those involved, Sue Moore reflects on a recent programme to encourage discussion on how the government spends taxes in Kenya and improve understanding of tax compliance behaviour. Tax is a hot topic for Kenyans with many public conversations around how the government raises and spends this revenue. Kenya’s constitution recognises the right to public participation in …
Putting responsible data into practice
Rachel Hastie and Amy O’Donnell introduce Oxfam’s new responsible data training resources and their launch event. 90% of the data in the world today has been created in the last two years. Possibly the greatest challenge of the information age is how to manage data properly. As data is increasingly used for needs assessments, feedback, accountability and monitoring; management of …
Brexit and trade: An opportunity to do better
Pooja Mall explores how Brexit can have a positive impact on trade policy and why it’s important to development. Over a decade ago, Oxfam’s ‘Make Trade Fair’ campaign made the argument that many people in developing countries have been made worse off because the rules are rigged against them. It centred on eliminating the practice of dumping highly subsidised developed-country …
Reviewing humanitarian evidence
The Humanitarian Evidence Programme is delighted to announce the launch of its series of eight systematic reviews. Over the last few years we’ve been working with teams of researchers, practitioners and consultants from academic institutions and NGOs to map out the existing evidence critically appraise it and synthesise the results in response to key questions in eight practice areas. Each …