One of President Lula’s early acts as President of Brazil for the third time was to reinstate the national food and nutrition security council, after the previous President Jair Bolsonaro had dismantled it in 2019. Earlier this month, I was at the inaugural meeting for this council,...
25 June 2025
Six months after the USAID cuts tilted the aid world on its axis, donors and agencies are still finding their feet. Humanitarians are emerging from last week’s Geneva meetings – with talk of ‘cruel math’ of hyper-prioritisation and of resetting the system. Meanwhile, development folk are...
24 June 2025
Lea la versión en español de esta opinión. Every time a community organises, learns, and cares for its members, it is exercising power. That power doesn’t always make the headlines, but it is still there. We see it when someone speaks out, when one person defends another against...
24 June 2025
Read the English version of this opinion. Cada vez que una comunidad se organiza, aprende y cuida de los suyos, está ejerciendo poder. Ese poder no siempre aparece en los titulares, pero allí está. Lo vemos cuando una persona alza la voz, cuando alguien defiende a otra frente a la...
24 June 2025
The previous blog series explored ‘success’ in A1 areas across our sites in Mazowe, Gutu, Masvingo and Matobo districts. How does this compare with local perceptions of success in communal areas? This is an important question as most people in A1 areas came originally from communal areas....
23 June 2025
The UK Government set out in January 2025 a ‘blueprint to turbocharge’ AI use. But the principles that guide international and state actors’ use of artificial intelligence (AI) have – and continue to be – at the centre of global conversations. International organisations and...
23 June 2025
World Refugee Day reminds us of the staggering numbers: according to UNHCR estimates, 49 million of those forcibly displaced were children, which includes roughly 19 million children registered as refugees or asylum seekers. But what if we shifted focus - not just to how many children are...
20 June 2025
The Spending Review was published in the UK this week, with the Chancellor Rachel Reeves setting out the government’s spending plans for the next few years. It is of course dismaying to see the reduction in funds associated with the Overseas Development Assistance (ODA) budget, and...
13 June 2025
Uganda is one of the countries most exposed to recent cuts in international aid, particularly with the dissolution of the US Agency for International Development (USAID). In 2023, about 5 per cent of gross national income – a measure of a country’s total income, including income from...
11 June 2025
These turbulent times strengthen the case for social protection – when there’s so much precarity, a solid floor is all the more important. And it’s clearer than ever that we can’t dodge the difficult questions: how do we deliver on global social protection promises in places where crises...
11 June 2025
On 30 May 2025, IDS Honorary Associate and former UN Humanitarian Chief Martin Griffiths described the situation in Gaza as genocide. Alongside IDS Research Fellow Philip Proudfoot, here he calls for a decisive realignment of humanitarian law and humanitarian action to halt genocide and other...
10 June 2025
Yolani Fernando, MA Governance, Development & Public Policy, Class of 2022-23, is the Co-Founder and Executive Director of Arutha, (Arutha on Instagram) a Colombo-based policy think tank focused on economic research and communication with a special interest in public debt and taxation. In this...
10 June 2025
