18336 research outputs found
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Understanding Digital Rights: Definitions, Conceptions, and Myths
No full textThis Digital Explainer introduces digital rights, the reason why this area of rights has developed, how digital rights are defined, where they come from, and digital rights organisations. Three conceptions of digital rights are discussed in turn: digital rights as legal entitlements, as a framework, and as collective action. The document further addresses three common myths about digital rights, the limitations of digital rights, and the potential approaches to power analysis in relation to digital rights. </p
The Role of Social and Humanitarian Assistance for Supporting Lives and Livelihoods During the 2021-2022 Tigray Crisis
No full textLittle is known about how conflict and climate interact with social assistance to affect poverty and livelihoods outcomes. Even less is understood about how conflicts disrupt government- and donor-provided social assistance, and whether emergency humanitarian assistance can fill provision gaps in situations of acute crisis. This paper draws on a bespoke household panel dataset collected in Ethiopia’s Amhara region, just before and after the recent Tigray conflict reached the study area. In addition to the acute conflict spilling over into Amhara, enduring climate variability and drought have been hallmarks of vulnerability and food insecurity in the region for decades. The data provides a rare opportunity to study conflict impacts on households and the role of the national Productive Safety Net Programme (PSNP) and humanitarian support. We are interested in how government-provided assistance and humanitarian assistance mediate the impacts of conflict on food security and poverty in climate-stressed environments.We find that while conflict significantly and negatively predicts impacts across nearly all the outcome indicators, negative climate shocks were equally harmful to outcomes. This suggests that an effective strategy would be to lean into climate-related interventions even during acute conflicts; for instance, through continuing public works interventions where possible, or ensuring continued support to livelihoods resilience initiatives even if at a reduced level. Multiple crises require multiple interventions. The results illustrate that as the PSNP rolls back and conflict scales up, humanitarian assistance supports many people who are no longer served by the PSNP – a heartening dynamic. An analysis considering only the PSNP would conclude it had not positively impacted livelihoods. Yet, when considered alongside other support forms in a dynamic way, we see that households experiencing higher levels of conflict were served by a sequencing and combination of both the PSNP and humanitarian aid over the period in question. This research highlights the need to coordinate support through different providers during multiple crises, especially when the state is unable to provide it.</p
The Politics of Social Assistance in Lebanon: Social Protection, Sectarianism, and Lebanon’s Fragmented Social Contract
No full textThis working paper explores the contemporary politics of social assistance (and social protection more broadly) in Lebanon, filling multiple gaps in existing academic and policy literature on Lebanon’s ongoing financial crisis. First, it tests common but hitherto unevidenced assumptions that the country’s worsening protracted crisis would either discredit or, conversely, expand Lebanon’s underlying socio-political system, which is characterised by sectarian-clientelism and fractured sub-state loyalties. We show that, in fact, both assumptions are false and instead the status quo is largely being maintained. Second, by drawing on evidence from focus groups with economically vulnerable Lebanese citizens, we demonstrate that one of the means by which this has been achieved has been through Lebanon’s splintered social protection regimes, which both reflect and uphold the country’s broken social contract. Third, we focus on both formal (internationally supported) assistance and informal politically motivated responses alike, whereas previous research has explored these modalities in isolation. The informal, we argue, hinges on relational dynamics, meaning that even if assistance might have slowed, an expectation of future support remains. By contrast, even where formal social protection responses have assisted vulnerable people, they have not altered those informal relational dynamics that bind individuals to local actors rather than the national government. Finally, we conclude the paper by exploring the implications of the government’s National Social Protection Strategy (adopted in February 2024). The strategy, if implemented fully, represents the first potential policy avenue that might begin to strengthen Lebanon’s social contract through cohesive rights-based social protection reform.</p
Why Invisible Power and Structural Violence Persist in the Water Domain
No full textThis article argues that inequality in access to water and sanitation is largely caused and legitimised by different forms of invisible power that prevent universal access. It shows how invisible power combined with structural violence and experiences of unequal citizenship result in dismal access to water that cause systematic harm to poor and marginalised women and men. The article also argues that invisible power and other forms of power imbalance have ended up naturalising water inequalities around the world. While the inalienable universality of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and their focus on inequality must be celebrated, unless the power imbalances that perpetuate inequality are tackled head on by both policymakers and activists, the SDGs will not achieve social justice. It is thus important for both the sufferers of water injustices as well as water justice advocates to challenge structural violence and invisible power in the water domain.</p
Reclaiming the Cerrado – A Territorial Account of a Disputed Frontier [Introduction]
No full textAs global agri-food systems come under increasing stress, debates on their future have become highly polarised, exposing fundamental differences in understandings and priorities: industrial production versus traditional rights; short-term yields versus longer-term sustainability; cheap versus healthy food. Brazil is at the core of these debates, with the Cerrado being centre stage since the soybean-powered Green Revolution. Accompanied by deforestation, soil degradation, and depletion of water resources, Brazil’s agricultural production frontier has now moved northwards into the Matopiba region. This issue of the IDS Bulletin explores the ongoing territorial transformation, considering the violent logics of extraction in frontier zones, the grabbing of nature, and the dynamics of resistance in local and international spheres. Exposing both the material and discursive appropriation experienced by the Cerrado, this issue profiles it as a key site of multi-scalar injustices against people and nature that need to be addressed by efforts to secure more just and sustainable agri-food systems.</p
Climate Justice for Whom? Understanding the Vernaculars of Climate Action and Justice in Marginal Environments of India
No full textAs calls for climate action gain momentum, governments and international organisations are committing to ambitious climate targets and scaling up their climate action. In this article, we argue that to address climate change, ‘just’ climate action is required which moves away from portraying local communities as ‘victims’ and/or ‘beneficiaries’ and focuses on investing in their social and material capabilities so that they determine their futures and pathways of change. Climate action will have little meaning or will produce counterproductive results unless it is mobilised to question deep-seated inequalities and unjust framings that feed into epistemic closures and foreclose possibilities of plural pathways towards radical social change. Drawing on our research with front-line communities in India, we emphasise the importance of processual aspects of addressing climate (in)justice. We underline why climate action must be steered from ‘below’ for transformative change, and why this requires attention to more ‘vernacular’ forms of action.</p
How Can Relational, Decolonial and Feminist Approaches Inform the EU Bioeconomy?
No full textIn this commentary we argue that, to transform the bioeconomy sectors towards ecologically less harmful and socially fairer outcomes, the bioeconomy policy project must be questioned, re-politicised and fundamentally reframed and reinvented. We firstly identify some of the main root causes for continuity of extractivism and injustices in the bioeconomy policy and, more broadly, in the green transition (“Root causes of today’s socioecological crises and why they matter for the EU bioeconomy project” section). Secondly, we outline the largely neglected ideas and concerns emerging from relational, feminist and decolonial approaches and perspectives (“Moving beyond growth while enabling marginalised voices, knowledges, and practices that nurture web of life and wellbeing for all” section). Finally, we compile a list of 11 actions and 47 suggestions for decisionmakers, practitioners and academics to contemplate on how to cocreate bioeconomies founded on ethics of care, relationality and socioecological justice. Ultimately, the aim is to reject socioecological domination, extractivism and exploitation and foster collective wellbeing for all beings, human and other-than-human.</p
Political Perspectives of Social Assistance Amidst Economic Shocks in Nigeria
No full textEconomic shocks represent an important dimension of protracted crises characterised by conflict and climate-related extremes. This note examines views of different actors in Nigeria on whether and how social assistance should be used to help households negatively affected by these shocks. It identifies the political outlook of those who view social assistance as: 1) A fundamental right espoused in the social contract focused on marginalised groups; 2) A right but focused on technocratic aspects of delivery; 3) A tool to maintain financial discipline, applied to respond to crises when systems fail; and 4) A means of strengthening political influence. The power of groups with these perspectives offers insights about the underlying constraints of social assistance.</p
K4DD Conflict Evidence and Discourse Summary October 2025
No full textMonthly Conflict Evidence and Discourse Summaries aim to signpost FCDO and others to the latest relevant evidence and discourse on conflict. This summary is organised by geographical region.</p
Integrating Pro-Government Auxiliary Forces into State Security Forces in Fragile and Conflict-Affected and Low-Income Settings
No full textThis rapid evidence review explores different approaches to integrating pro-government auxiliary forces/militias into state security forces in fragile, conflict-affected and low-income settings. It broadly considers what has been most effective in terms of militia integration and under what conditions. The review combines evidence from five country cases (Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Nigeria, South Sudan, Sudan and Yemen), global data on pro-government militias, and selected multi-country studies of security integration during peace-making.</p