General

Some random observations from the ‘Ten Years of War Against Poverty’ conference in Manchester, before I head off to Edinburgh for tomorrow’s conference on ‘Making th

Mubashar Hasan visits Nowshera, Pakistan, where he is surprised by the resilience and positivity of children affected by flooding.

I’m spending a couple of days at a big development conference in Manchester. It’s called ‘Ten years of war against poverty – what have we learned?’ and it’s heaving – there are about 500 people here.

Many thanks to Madiha Shafi, Program Officer for our Girls Education programme in Pakistan, for sharing this documentary with us.
Millions of children, most of them girls, do not have access to quality education, particularly in developing nations.
This project, “Enhancing Girls Education in Remote Areas,” is funded by Dubai Cares, a non-profit organisation working worldwide to improve access to primary education for children in developing countries. The project is being carried out through Oxfam and its local partner Idara-e-Taleemo Agahi (ITA) in Pakistan.

I’m a big fan of Chris Blattman’s blog (as the number of ‘hat tips’ – [h/t] – on this one demonstrates), but he lost it a bit in his recent post on food riots. Here’s what he says:

Palestinians and Israelies may soon be sharing water unsafe for drinking. Willow Heske talks to human rights organisations in Israel about concerns that both groups should have over the water and sanitation situation in Gaza.

What, if anything, can today’s developing countries learn from Sweden? That’s the question that a new paper by Ari Kokko, published by the UN University’s World Institute for Development Economics Research, seeks to answer.

Duncan Green considers the differences, and success, of the Make Poverty History and Stop Climate Chaos campaigns.

Alex Evans discusses the Financial Times front page story on fears of a global food crisis
Eight disasters overlooked by the media in a year of climate and planetary chaos

“An uneducated person means a blind person,” says Hussein Kadir who, with his wife, is working hard to make sure their children have a chance to go to school.