Dr Stephen Devereux is a development economist working predominantly on food security, famine, rural livelihoods, social protection and poverty reduction issues. His research experience has mainly been in eastern and southern Africa, especially Ethiopia, Malawi and Namibia.
His books include ‘Fieldwork in Developing Countries’, ‘Theories of Famine’, ‘Food Security in Sub-Saharan Africa’, ‘The New Famines’, ‘Social Protection in Africa’, and ‘Social Protection for Africa’s Children’.
Social protection consists of policies and programmes aimed at preventing, and protecting people against, poverty, vulnerability, and social exclusion throughout their life cycle placing a particular emphasis on vulnerable groups (SPIAC-B, 2019, P-1). It plays a critical role in reducing poverty...
The Food Equity Centre exists to challenge the power and politics that make food systems inequitable. We conduct research and generate contextualized knowledge into the complex socio-economic factors that lead to certain people being unable to access affordable, nutritious food, or earn a...
The Humanitarian Learning Centre (HLC) brings together high-quality analysis, dialogue and debate with accessible, operational learning to improve humanitarian response, practice and policy.
The International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) is collaborating with the Institute of Development Studies (IDS) to conduct an impact evaluation of the Social Cash Transfer (SCT) programme in Oromia and SNNP Regions of Ethiopia for UNICEF Ethiopia.
At least 15 million South Africans suffer from food insecurity. That means they don’t have enough nutritious food to live healthy lives. This is due to a combination of factors, including unemployment, poverty, inequality and food system failures. More than 1,000...
26 February 2025
On 28 October 2024, the Israeli parliament voted 92-10 to ban the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), the single largest provider of humanitarian aid in occupied Palestine. The ban, if implemented, risks halting the delivery of already woefully insufficient lifesaving...
7 November 2024
Two decades ago, IDS published a working paper called ‘Transformative Social Protection’ that would prove to have enormous influence on social protection thinking and development policy. The fundamental idea was that social protection should extend beyond its narrow initial focus on...
28 October 2024
16th October 2024 is the 45th World Food Day, and the 30th since South Africa’s transition to democracy in 1994. What progress has been made on the constitutional right of everyone to “access to sufficient food”, and the constitutional right of every child to “basic...
16 October 2024
IDS Working Paper 613
This paper assesses the extent to which a famine occurred in Gaza. It concludes that, whilst the answer depends on which definition of famine is used, Israel’s use of food as a weapon of war against civilians in Gaza caused avoidable hunger and starvation deaths, and almost certainly...
5 November 2024
IDS Bulletin 55.2
Social protection features in numerous country policies and development agency strategies, as well as in several Sustainable Development Goals. However, following more than two decades of considerable expansion in policies, programmes, and research, the sector finds itself at a...
29 October 2024
WFP Social Protection & Resilience Policy Brief
This brief explores the relationship between social protection and resilience, aiming to clarify conceptual linkages and contribute to WFP’s effective positioning and contribution within this space. This brief explores the complementary and interconnected roles that social protection and...
13 March 2024
IDS Report
Globally, our food systems are highly inequitable. In a world with enough food, hunger is becoming normalised for large numbers of people, while diets are worsening and obesity is rising. Racialised minorities are more at risk from obesity than other groups; indigenous communities have...
26 June 2023
Following Israel’s declaration on 8 October 2023 of a “complete siege” of the Gaza Strip, a food crisis rapidly developed. But did the situation deteriorate into a full-blown famine? A series of food security assessments conducted by the international community in 2023-24 will be analysed...
In this Centre for Social Protection international conference we will discuss and debate the past, present and future roles of social protection as a development policy agenda, at a time of global uncertainty and multiple crises. Themes include social protection policy processes, social...
In just two decades since the early 2000s, social protection established itself as a vibrant social policy sector in countries across the Global South, from Latin America to sub-Saharan Africa to South Asia. Social protection appeared in several Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in 2015. Even...
10 November 2022
This short course is open to a wide audience of policy makers, practitioners, researchers and project managers who are already or will be working in the area of social protection. It aims to provide a platform for strengthening conceptual grounding and for engagement in critical debate about...