Browse by Theme: SDGs

Fifteen years ago today was the last day of the Gleneagles G8 Summit. I was there as the adviser for Africa and International Development for Number 10. This was the culmination of a campaign that saw 9 million brits demonstrate their support for aid to the worlds’ poorest people and 225,000 people joined the Make Poverty History march. It felt like a momentous day as the G8 made some huge commitments in response to the campaign. 

By Jay Goulden and Sofia Sprechmann

Virtually all international NGOs count how many people their programmes help: CARE does, and in 2018, our programmes reached nearly 56 million people. But while these numbers help give some sense of the scale of our work, they don’t help either ourselves or others understand the real difference this work is making in the lives of poor and marginalised people. For that, we need to measure the change in the lives of the people for whom we work.

As previously noted, the House of Commons Select Committee on International Development (IDC) has just published its report on DFID’s economic development strategy. In my earlier blog, I characterised the report as “lacking punch, misunderstanding gender but with some positives”. I want to highlight here one positive (as I see it), yet many of you might see it as a strange positive: DFID appear to be rowing back on the centrality of the ‘Asia model’ to their economic development strategy.

The House of Commons Select Committee on International Development (the IDC) has just published its report on DFID’s Economic Development Strategy. But it seems to have only ONE new recommendation. This compares with, for instance, the IDC report on DFID and Education, which features 19 recommendations.

A new report from CONCORD highlights 10 key principles which European political and financial institutions and companies need to follow to ensure that the private sector delivers positive development impacts as part of the drive towards the Sustainable Development Goals.

There is currently a great opportunity for everyone who is interested in women’s economic empowerment to push forward a key initiative to tackle the gender-based violence which plays a key role in the workplace in continuing oppressive working conditions, in diminishing women’s voices, and in breaching women’s rights. Achieving an ILO Convention on ending violence and harassment in the workplace will support the empowerment of millions of women.

The current UN High Level Panel on Women’s Economic Empowerment is highlighting the major attention being paid by governments, the development community and others to the importance of women’s economic empowerment to tackling poverty and ensuring women achieve the target of gender equality which the world has agreed to as Sustainable Development Goal 5.