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Seen But Not Heard: Community voices on peacekeeping in CAR, DRC, Mali and South Sudan
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The UN peacekeeping operations have been deployed to CAR, DRC, Mali and South Sudan with the primary goal of ensuring the protection of civilians, and while the missions have succeeded at maintaining a partial level of stability, affected populations are still exposed to protection threats on a daily basis. With an increasing mismatch between resources and inflated mandates, a widening gap between populations’ expectations and reality, and increasing levels of distrust, UN peacekeeping operations have struggled to sustain their legitimacy. MINUSMA and DRC MONUSCO have already been expelled totally and partially by the national governments, raising questions about the future of peacekeeping and their role in ensuring the protection of civilians.
This study identifies key and fundamental shortcomings in the peacekeeping missions’ intervention and ways of working, to which it presents concrete and comprehensive recommendations. The study also highlights local and traditional community protection and conflict management mechanisms, which are promising and provide an opportunity for inclusive and durable peace.
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Promoting and Defending Civic Space: Strategic learnings from the FAIR for ALL programme
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This research report on civic space had been developed as part of the FAIR for ALL programme (2021-2025) implemented to strengthen global civil society in their work for more inclusive, just and sustainable trade and value chains. The program has been funded by the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs and is led by a consortium comprising Oxfam Novib, the Huairou Commission, the Centre for Research on Multinational Corporations (SOMO) and Third World Network-Africa.
Civic space has been strongly embedded in the design, implementation and evaluation of the FAIR for ALL programme and understanding the backsliding of civic space globally has have been essential for the effective implementation of the programme. This research study presents the following:
Civic space and its relevance in different contexts, while bridging the information gap at its intersection with inclusive and just trade and value chains.
Challenges and dynamics of civic space, identifying key patterns, factors, strategies and lessons that influence its defence and expansion across different contexts, especially in the field of value chains and trade work.
Strategies for supporting and enhancing civic space, considering the roles of CSOs/INGOs, government entities, donors and the private sector.
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Financing Critical Minerals but Failing Critical Safeguards: Are banks and investors doing enough to ensure the energy transition is fair for all?
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As the world seeks to transition towards cleaner forms of energy in response to climate change, the pressure to extract more critical minerals such as cobalt, copper, lithium, nickel and graphite has surged. These minerals are vital to sectors like energy, digital tech, healthcare, defense, and space, yet their supply chains are complex and fragile. The projected demand growth for critical minerals will put even more pressure on the environment and society, as severe negative impacts associated with mining are not sufficiently addressed.
Companies that produce or rely on critical minerals in their value chains play a vital role in the transition to a low-carbon economy. While this transition should be accelerated, it is crucial to ensure that these companies protect the environment and respect human rights, and avoid exacerbating existing inequalities or creating new ones, thereby contributing to a truly just energy transition.
Drawing on case studies from Brazil, Peru, Mozambique and DRC this research highlights the serious environmental and social issues associated with critical mineral production and highlights the urgent need for stronger safeguards and accountability in mineral production. It targets EU-based financiers and policymakers, focusing on five strategic minerals essential for batteries, EVs, and renewables. The analysis also considers the EU’s overall regulatory approach to the entire critical and strategic raw materials (CRM and SRM) market and proposes improvements for regulatory and policy solutions moving forward.
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An Unequal Future: Asia’s struggle for justice in a warming, wired world
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This report investigates how inequality, climate change, and digital exclusion intersect to shape Asia’s future. Drawing on data from across the region, the report reveals that how the richest 1% and 10% continue to accumulate wealth and power while billions remain trapped in poverty and vulnerability. It features how climate disasters, gender disparities, and unequal digital access reinforce structural inequalities and injustice, threatening social stability and sustainable development. The paper calls for radical policies for progressive taxation, universal public services, gender equality, reducing digital divide and climate justice—to ensure a fairer and more resilient Asia.
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Feminist perspectives on beyond GDP in Asia
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Asia's rapid GDP growth masks severe costs, including displacement, environmental depletion, and high inequality. A shift beyond GDP is essential, and alternatives must be feminist, ecologically just, and decolonial. While Asia explores wellbeing metrics, most merely complement GDP, failing to challenge the growth paradigm or address systemic injustices fundamentally. True transformation requires an equity- and justice-oriented approach that dismantles the political economy maintaining GDP dominance. Current "beyond GDP" metrics in Asia lack the political power to fundamentally challenge the growth-first agenda, often failing to capture intersectional inequalities or systemic environmental destruction. This paper highlights pathways for building alliances with feminist movements that embed transformative alternatives in the region.
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Tiding over socio-ecological vulnerabilities: experiences of two groups of cleaning/domestic women workers from Kerala, India
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This paper is a preliminary attempt to examine the experience of two groups of women cleaning/domestic workers in two cities in Kerala grappling with vulnerabilities induced by natural disasters and the pandemic. The groups are similar to each other in several crucial respects, as assetless or asset-poor workers of oppressed caste social origins who perform stigmatised work and carry burdens of social reproduction. However, they relate to their work in distinctly different ways. The first is of paid cleaning/domestic workers who entered work and negotiated for wages individually in the city of Kochi; the second is of workers who entered paid cleaning/domestic work as part of a local women’s collective aided by the local government in the city of Thiruvananthapuram. We found that though the first group secured better wages than the second, the latter tided over pandemic-induced vulnerabilities far better. Through this comparison, the paper demonstrates the relevance of collective bargaining and state welfare support in helping vulnerable women workers absorb and adapt to various shocks. However, the paper cautions against both romanticising the resilience capacities of informal collectives of women workers which can be rendered fragile by capitalist interventions, as well as treating them as necessarily anti-patriarchal.
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Change the Way You Do Business: Leading with women workers voices
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This second briefing in the Briefings for Business on Valuing Women’s Work series explores how systemic business practices perpetuate gender inequality through informal work, particularly in feminized sectors with large numbers of women workers, like tea and garments. Through women workers’ voices and case studies, the briefing reveals how patriarchal norms and inequitable practices exacerbate vulnerabilities and ruin lives. The briefing highlights the need for companies to address informal and precarious work, ensure safe conditions, tackle sexual and gender-based violence and pay living wages to advance gender equality and decent work. It also underscores the importance of fair corporate tax contributions to support public services, infrastructure and social protection. It calls for private sector accountability to create equitable and sustainable value chains, in order to make the vision of valuing women’s work a reality.
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Introduction: Transforming land rights, improving rural livelihoods, and carving just responses to the climate crisis
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This is the introduction to the Special Issue on 'Transforming land rights, improving rural livelihoods, and carving just responses to the climate crisis'.
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Land, Law, and Legacy: Reconciling gender equality with tradition in Northern Uganda
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The Acholi sub-region of Northern Uganda faces a tension in its post-conflict period: reconciling local peacebuilding approaches with national and international standards of gender equality. Women’s land rights lie at the heart of this struggle, with local practices of land management and dispute resolution frequently privileging men over women, conflicting with national statutes that promise equal land rights for both genders. This research investigates how localisation impacts gender equality in post-conflict settings, how women navigate and reconcile the tension between local practices and gender equality, and the broader implications of these dynamics for post-conflict peacebuilding. Through qualitative methods, including desk research and interviews with peacebuilders in Uganda, this research finds that the challenges stem not from the inherent nature of statutory or customary legal systems but from their distortion and misapplication. Colonial legacies, historical conflict, and entrenched patriarchal norms have warped customary practices in ways that undermine women’s legitimate claims to land. Simultaneously, a weak legal infrastructure and limited awareness among women hinder the enforcement of national statutes. This leaves women in a precarious position, unable to fully claim their rights under either system. Despite these challenges, Acholi women are demonstrating the efficacy of local negotiation within the framework of customary systems. This strategic approach allows them to both claim their land rights and subtly disrupt the very power structures that deny them those rights in the first place. By working within locally accepted systems, women are achieving progress through a seemingly traditional approach, slowly chipping away at entrenched patriarchal norms.
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Human Rights Impact Assessment of Bolton Food’s Canned Tuna Operations in Morocco
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This paper reports on the second human rights impact assessment (HRIA) carried out by Oxfam at Nouvelle Cosarno, Bolton Food’s tuna cannery in the coastal city of Agadir, Morocco. The factory employs more than 400 workers, 90% of whom are performing manual tasks (blue-collar workers). Women make up the majority of the manual workers (71%). The main objectives of the assessment are: to identify the company’s actual and potential human rights risks and impacts at the production stages of its Moroccan factory; to identify the root causes of these risks and impacts; and to make recommendations to Bolton Food and key stakeholders on how to address, mitigate or remediate the actual and potential impacts identified. One main group of rights-holders was identified for the purposes of this assessment: male and female workers employed in canned fish processing plants (including canned sardine, tuna and shrimp) in Agadir.
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