News & opinion

Read more about the latest updates on our work with partners and analysis of pressing global challenges.

News

News

MEPCCC closing reflections: strategies for preserving heritage

On 25 February 2025, the University of Duhok hosted a conference titled ‘Preserving Cultural Heritage in Kurdistan - Iraq’. This event, organised in collaboration with the Institute of Development Studies, marked the end of the Middle East People’s Culture Conservation Collective (MEPCCC)...

15 April 2025

News

Calls to prioritise climate finance as global budgets squeezed

IDS researchers are calling for a renewed focus on climate finance commitments to support adaptation and loss for those worst impacted by climate change, amid widespread cuts to development budgets. One researcher describes recent Official Development Assistance (ODA) funding cuts to climate...

10 April 2025

News

Podcast: Humanitarian diplomacy in a World gone mad

Humanitarian diplomacy is a broad landscape and possibly one with internal contradictions. For example, traditionally humanitarian agencies have sought to distance themselves from mediation and human rights activism. The concept of humanitarian diplomacy requires at least an end to these silos....

1 April 2025

News

Gauthier Marchais receives prestigious education research award

Gauthier Marchais, Research Fellow at IDS, has won the Jackie Kirk Outstanding Book Award of the Comparative and International Education Society (CIES) for his work on education in crises. Gauthier was named alongside co-editors Mary Mendenhall from Columbia University, Yusuf Sayed from the...

27 March 2025

Opinion

Opinion

What is ‘success’ in Zimbabwe’s land reform areas?

What constitutes ‘success’ if you have land in the A1 land reform areas in Zimbabwe? This is the question we have been asking of local residents across our study sites in Mazowe, Gutu, Masvingo and Matobo districts. We have held 11 workshops in different sites, involving around 208 people...

28 April 2025

Opinion

Deadly childbirths: the need to invest in maternal healthcare in Afghanistan

One woman dies in Afghanistan every two hours while trying to give birth and 167 children die in Afghanistan from preventable causes every day. In this bleak context, IDS alumna Tanjila Mazumder Drishti shares more about the dire state of care for pregnant women in Afghanistan and why it is...

Tanjila Mazumder Drishti, Regional Lead - Asia at Global Resource Mobilization and Partnerships, BRAC International

24 April 2025

Opinion

Woman or Indigenous? How the UN human rights treaties simplify discrimination

The UN human rights treaties separate rights into categories, misrepresenting the reality of some cases of discrimination. There are cases where Indigenous people have sought justice for states violating their cultural rights through the UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights...

Sofie Nielsen, MA Gender & Development, Class of 2024-25

16 April 2025

Opinion

What gets measured gets done: the change of metrics needed for our food system

Some of us live to eat, and most of us eat to live, but there are still two billion people who suffer from some form of hunger or malnutrition. Why do hunger and malnutrition persist even when the world produces enough calories for everyone? Why is the food system a victim to and a villain of...

Karan Shinghal, MSc Climate Change, Development and Policy, Class of 2024-25

16 April 2025

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