18336 research outputs found
Sort by
The Limits to Cash-plus Provision in Protracted Crises
No full textMotivationCash-plus programmes have succeeded in places where different provisions (e.g., health, education, nutrition) are able to complement each other while augmenting a regular cash transfer payment. The institutional capacity to deliver an integrated support package has marked the effective functioning of these programmes. However, in contexts of conflict and protracted crisis and the associated disruptions of infrastructure damage, insecurity, distrust, and violence, the necessary institutional scaffolding for a well-functioning cash-plus programme becomes unstable and may collapse altogether. Despite this, cash-plus programmes continue to be implemented in these contexts.PurposeWe assess whether cash-plus programmes are designed and delivered to reduce vulnerability and promote livelihoods in protracted crises, and if their outcomes resonate with their objectives.Approach and MethodsWe develop a multidimensional indicator of protracted crisis, incorporating conflict, displacement, and climate change vulnerability, and map this against the strength of national social protection systems. We review 97 cash-plus programmes in 16 countries, examining design features, objectives, and outcomes.FindingsThe review exposes the weakness in relying on the usual small-lift aims of cash-plus interventions (such as the provision of seeds or poultry, or basic training in business) in contexts where household-level barriers to improving livelihoods are dwarfed by macro-level structural, political, and social ruptures. The evidence demonstrates that most cash-plus interventions are not designed or delivered in ways suitable for crises.Policy ImplicationsHousehold-level objectives will be stymied by institutional and political disruptions; therefore, programmes must also seek to help reshape the context in which people live. During active conflict (as compared to intermittent violence), cash-plus may simply be impossible: it may be better to focus on providing for basic needs, such as through humanitarian aid.</p
Transformation in the Context of Uncertainty and Compounding Effects: Insights from Marginal Environments in India and Bangladesh
No full textThe TAPESTRY project explores how deliberate transformation may arise from 'below’ in marginal environments with high levels of uncertainty. TAPESTRY is short for ‘Transformation as Praxis: Exploring Socially Just and Transdisciplinary Pathways to Sustainability in Marginal Environments’. TAPESTRY focuses on three ‘patches of transformation’ in India and Bangladesh – vulnerable coastal areas of Mumbai, the Sundarbans and Kutch which are experiencing diverse uncertainties emanating from climate change as well as anthropogenic factors including neoliberal urban development, economic growth and aggressive infrastructure development. The project focused on existing and emergent transformative alliances and asked how we can seek and support socially just and ecologically sound alternatives based on local people’s plural understandings of what transformation entails. What kind of hybrid alliances are emerging to facilitate these transformative processes in these locations? And what are the possibilities for scaling up and out of the positive learnings from these patches?A key conceptual innovation across all three patches was to think of transformation as praxis, by putting bottom-up change and the agency of marginalised people at the centre highlighting the practices and pathways of emergent changes and their barriers. In doing so, we address commonalities and differences across the three patches. A fragile coastline, shrinking and increasingly exploited mangrove forests, increasing exposure to climate hazards (such as cyclones, coastal erosion, flooding, sea level rise and extreme precipitation events), and diverse threats to marginal people’s livelihoods are the commonly observed factors. In terms of difference, we specifically focus on islanders in the transboundary Sundarbans forests (across the Bengal Delta in eastern India and Bangladesh), coastal fishing communities in the metropolitan region of Mumbai, and dryland pastoralists in Kutch in western India.Using a transdisciplinary approach, a central focus is on exploring pathways to transformation through a bottom-up approach using participatory methods including stakeholder roundtables, photovoice, and mixed methods. Through local and regional collaborations, we attempted to co-produce hybrid knowledge combining Indigenous understandings of ecosystem changes and climate impacts with science-based scenarios. The aim was to restore resource-based livelihoods by showcasing local community perspectives in local-level environmental governance.</p
Reframing the Accountability of Social Assistance in Crises: Emerging Evidence and Promising Practices
No full textThis review examines shifts and emerging trends in the accountability of social assistance during crises, based on findings from the previous 2022 review. It draws on primary research from the Better Assistance in Crises (BASIC) Research programme, including themes such as targeting, aid recipients’ lived experiences and digital risks, alongside the broader literature on accountability in crises. The paper addresses three critical accountability issues: disconnected, technocratic mechanisms; limited participation and trust between communities and aid providers; and conflicting accountability priorities. It explores how power dynamics, stakeholder participation and trust influence accountability, reviewing challenges in feedback mechanisms, donor approaches and the risk of aid diversion. The paper concludes with promising practices and identifies gaps for future research.</p
Meeting report: The impact of global aid funding cuts on people and programmes in South Sudan
No full textLow-income countries are reeling from the sudden and wide-ranging cuts to U.S. government foreign assistance, as well as from announcements that several European donor governments are also reducing their contributions. Among the worst affected is South Sudan, a country which is experiencing multiple, intersecting crises. These crises include a breakdown in the 2018 revitalised peace agreement, a severe economic recession made worse by the war in neighbouring Sudan, a food crisis, widespread chronic flooding and outbreaks of disease. Some groups of people are particularly vulnerable, such as internally displaced people, returnees and refugees from Sudan, Ethiopia and other countries who are living in South Sudan. South Sudan relies on international assistance to provide basic services to its people and support civil society-led peacebuilding efforts to avoid a return to war.To discuss these challenges and reflect upon how they have been amplified by recent global aid funding cuts, SSHAP and the University of Juba organised a roundtable discussion. Government actors, academics, development partners and journalists shared their reflections on the sweeping impacts on people and programmes in South Sudan.This report summarises the contributions from participants who were asked to reflect on the following topics:1. How are funding cuts to global aid affecting people and programmes?2. How is renewed conflict changing needs and programmes?3. What research or information may be needed to understand the changes going forward?</p
K4DD Humanitarian Evidence Discourse Summary May 2025
No full textThis monthly Humanitarian Evidence and Discourse Summary aims to signpost FCDO and others to the latest relevant evidence and discourse on humanitarian action. It is structured around FCDO humanitarian framework themes:Protect: Protect civilians, IDPs, refugees, marginalised groups including women and girls, and humanitarian access.Prioritise: Prioritise effective humanitarian assistance to people in greatest need.Prevent: Prevent and anticipate future shocks and rebuild resilience in protracted and recurring crises.This summary covers May 2025.</p
Question bank for healthcare workers during infectious disease outbreaks
No full textThis question bank is a menu of qualitative questions related to healthcare workers’ knowledge, perceptions and practices during infectious disease outbreaks. The question bank will generate qualitative data on healthcare workers’ subjective understandings of risks, case management, protection and wider outbreak operations. These data can be used to inform risk communication and community engagement activities as well as other response pillars. Some of the issues covered in these questions are complex, for example stigma or views on vaccine safety. These topics may benefit from more in-depth follow up where views and perspectives can be explored more thoroughly. For the purposes of this question bank, healthcare workers encompass those people involved in the care of sick (or deceased) people or people working in support roles where they are likely to encounter infectious people. Healthcare workers could include doctors, nurses, community health and care workers, surveillance teams, ambulance drivers, midwives, traditional birth attendants, traditional and religious healers, burial teams, hospital porters and cleaners, and laboratory technicians. The healthcare workers could be working in these roles in government run settings, nongovernmental organisations, and in informal or private healthcare sectors; and they could be working in routine care or in specialist outbreak treatment facilities. </p
Mpox question bank: Qualitative questions for community-level data collections
No full textThe mpox question bank is a menu of qualitative questions on mpox transmission and the response to mpox. It seeks to facilitate data collection on the capacities, behaviours, practices and perceptions of individuals and communities in relation to mpox prevention and management. The question bank can be used by field teams and/or local research teams working in communities with mpox transmission and those at risk of transmission.This question bank has been developed by SSHAP in collaboration with the Collective Service. It is one of a suite of question banks commissioned by the Collective Service to support the collection and use of consistent and high-quality social and behavioural data. It draws on those previously developed for cholera, COVID-19 and Zika. The Collective Service’s repository of mpox resources can be accessed at www.rcce-collective.net/resources/thematic-kits/mpox/.</p
Considérations clés : La riposte au mpox dans les établissements urbains informels
No full textL'Organisation mondiale de la santé a déclaré la deuxième urgence de santé publique de portée internationale (USPPI) en août 2024. Des cas de mpox ont été signalés dans des pays endémiques et non endémiques, dans divers contextes en Afrique de l'Est et en Afrique centrale. Dans les zones urbaines, le mpox se propage entre personnes par contact physique direct, y compris par contact sexuel. Les établissements urbains informels, qui connaissent souvent une forte densité de population, des habitations surpeuplées et des infrastructures inadéquates, sont particulièrement préoccupants. Il est important que la réponse au mpox soit adaptée à ces contextes uniques. La réponse au mpox doit s'appuyer sur un ensemble de capacités et de connaissances locales, y compris les stratégies que ces communautés ont utilisées lors d'épidémies précédentes.Cette note met en évidence les questions clés et les bonnes pratiques qui peuvent être intégrées dans la conception et la mise en œuvre des activités de riposte au mpox. Cette note est basée sur un examen rapide de la littérature publiée et de la littérature grise, s'appuyant sur des données de sciences sociales relatives aux urgences sanitaires dans les établissements urbains informels d'Afrique subsaharienne.Cette note complète la collection de ressources du SSHAP sur le mpox.</p
Implementation of Advance Pricing Agreements: The Case for Low- and Lower-Middle-Income Countries
No full textAdvanced pricing agreements (APAs) aim to prevent transfer pricing (TP) disputes, increase certainty, and ultimately reduce the TP risk. This is achieved through taxpayers and tax authorities agreeing in advance on the criteria for determining the arm’s length pricing of transactions. These agreements are typically valid for several years, assuming that critical assumptions remain unchanged.Interest in APAs has been steadily increasing, seemingly partly due to Action 14 of the Base Erosion and Profit Shifting (BEPS) project, which recommends the facilitation of effective dispute resolution mechanisms. This includes the use of Bilateral Advance Pricing Agreements (BAPAs) where feasible.Many studies on APAs have largely focused on high-income countries – when they feature low- and lower-middle-income countries (LLMICs) it is mainly China and India. The challenges LLMICs face when enforcing TP legislation are different to those faced by high-income countries. This paper addresses this gap by presenting the findings of a study on four LLMICs – Indonesia and Vietnam, which have active APA programmes, and Nigeria and Uganda, which have APA provisions in their legislation but have yet to operationalise their regimes.By examining the lived experience of these countries the study aims to interrogate the challenges faced, and provide recommendations for implementing APA regimes in LLMICs, which have not been as prominently featured in existing literature.Based on interviews with various stakeholders in the case study countries, we reasonably conclude that a properly implemented APA regime can benefit LLMICs. It can increase tax certainty, and improve the relationship both between tax authorities and taxpayers, and tax authorities and treaty partners.However, despite being beneficial, an APA regime should not be an automatic policy choice. A pragmatic approach should be taken, especially where a country’s TP regime is still in the early stages of implementation, or where, despite being present, the revenue authority has not built taxpayer confidence through consistent administration of TP regulations. Where a decision is made to implement an APA regime, investing in building the capacity of TP units plays a crucial role in developing and running a successful APA regime.Summary of Working Paper 220.</p
Technological Autonomy or Global Integration: Navigating Vaccine Dependency in LMICs
No full textVaccine hoarding during the Covid-19 pandemic exposed the urgent need for low- and middle-income countries to overcome technological dependency – not only to improve competitiveness and resilience but also to enhance global crisis response. Development scholarship has long emphasised the importance of building a distributed base of technological capabilities. But is technological capacity alone enough?This paper examines how pharmaceutical and biotechnology firms in five middle-income countries navigated Covid-19 vaccine development and production to address both competitiveness and resilience. We asked: which firms were better positioned to achieve these goals, and why?We identified two types of firms: technological autonomists, which developed vaccines using in-house research and development; and technology integrators, which relied on licensing and technology transfers from international partners. Although technological capabilities were essential for both, they were not sufficient to bring vaccines to market or scale production. Instead, socio-political capabilities – the ability to navigate regulatory systems, secure institutional support, build legitimacy, and forge strategic alliances – proved decisive.However, among autonomists, even strong firm-level technological and socio-political capabilities were not enough. A comparison with the UK underscores that robust, well-coordinated state capacities were critical to sustain and scale this more independent path. Our findings highlight the importance of politically embedded innovation systems in building vaccine resilience.</p