DFID and the risk of corruption
The UK parliament’s Public Accounts Committee has warned that the amount of UK aid funding at risk of corruption will increase, as it targets more fragile and conflict-affected countries while...
View ArticleAs the crow flies: mapping the power of DFID at home
According to rumours, the UK’s Department for International Development is planning to move from its current office next to Buckingham Palace to the Old Admiralty Building, off Whitehall. This is of...
View ArticleIs Accountability of Aid the same as Countability of Aid?
Last week the Belgian Ambassador to the UK held a “salon” at his residence, on the subject of aid accountability and measurement, and a big focus was on Results. The three speakers were Paul Collier,...
View ArticleWhat Did the High Level Forum do for Conflict-Affected Countries? A scorecard...
This blog post was adapted from an article co-written with Dan Smith, and which appears on the International Alert website. Versions also appear on OpenDemocracy and the The Broker. At the end of...
View ArticleUnpicking the language of the New Deal
International aid donors and the poorer governments they fund have overlapping, but far from identical interests. They overlap in their common desire to spend donor money in support of development...
View ArticleTen ideas for lobbying David Cameron as co-chair of the post-2015 MDG High...
Framing development as history looking forwards Good news that UK Prime Minister David Cameron is co-chairing the UN High Level Panel to shape an international framework to replace the Millennium...
View ArticleThe post-2015 MDGs: to which tribe do you belong?
Discussions about how or whether to replace the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), after they “expire” in 2015 are gathering pace. I have argued elsewhere that although it is perhaps unlikely to...
View ArticleOlympic Games and development progress in the UK
Out running this morning in the beautiful countryside of the High Weald in South East England, I was (in my mind, at least!) combining athletics with quintessentially British surroundings. And so I...
View ArticleThe end of Aid Effectiveness?
I took part in a round table discussion in a post-conflict country recently, looking at aid effectiveness there. Among the salient details on the table, and which will be familiar from elsewhere: The...
View ArticleIs mining a development industry?
In an earlier post I wrote about how mining companies have evolved to take into account the needs of their host communities. I suggested ways they can broaden the application of their “social...
View ArticleWill the post-2015 goals be any use?
The post-2015 development goals need show how to reduce fragility and increase resilience in conflict-prone contexts. They also need to be designed as a system of genuine incentives for participation...
View ArticleHow might the ancient sages have responded to the latest SDGs proposal?
The Open Working Group released the zero consultation draft of 17 Sustainable Development Goals and 212 Targets this week. Examining them from the perspective of four criteria (Is there a coherent...
View ArticleJam today, versus honey tomorrow: temporal trade-offs and the SDGs
The SDG framework needs to reflect the fact that development processes are non-linear, and involve trade-offs between immediate and future benefits. Those few readers who follow my blog will have...
View ArticlePutting the peace and economy framework into practice
Taken as a whole, the framework for integrating peacebuilding into economic development set out in my blog post of 10th February may seem disempowering. It explains the importance of integrating peace...
View ArticleBuilding prosperity and peace: integrating peacebuilding into economic...
This is a draft of a document I’m working on for publication by International Alert in a few months. Therefore comments would be very welcome indeed. 1 Introduction Despite major gains for...
View ArticleSustainable Development Goals – how deeply embedded is Peace?
The ‘Zero Draft’ of the Sustainable Development Agenda – whose main elements are the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) – was published by the UN this week. Entitled Transforming our World by 2030:...
View ArticleA warm welcome to the Sustainable Development Goals on International Peace Day
This post also appears on International Alert’s website and in Peace Times. This week, the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) will be adopted by the UN General Assembly. This represents the...
View ArticleWhat’s not to like about the UK’s new aid strategy?
The UK’s new aid strategy, released this week, resonates quite harmoniously with peacebuilding. It is increasingly and widely understood, not least at International Alert, that peace is not just the...
View ArticleBread and Peace
Economic development and peace are both needed by the 1.4 billion people living in fragile, conflict-affected countries. The good news is, economic development initiatives can easily be designed to...
View ArticleIt’s right to question aid, but better to focus on effectiveness, rather than...
A version of this post is on Huffington Post and International Alert‘s website. In the UK, a parliamentary debate can be initiated by popular petition. On 13th June, Parliament will debate the...
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