“The pluses of pulses”: haricot beans and women’s empowerment in Ethiopia

This practical note demonstrates the role that haricot beans play in assisting women to become food and nutrition secure, to generate income, and to have sustainable livelihoods that are resilient to shocks. Based on qualitative research among female and male beneficiaries of a pulse innovation project implemented in southern Ethiopia, the note provides a summary of the critical voices of farmers, and the role that haricot beans play in empowering women. It also outlines some of the challenges that the project faced in achieving its empowerment objectives.     

The role of foreign donors in rebuilding the Ukrainian nation-state

The viewpoint discusses the role of foreign donors in rebuilding the Ukrainian nation-state. It argues that a gardener’s care is needed – not guidance, traditional teaching, or direction, but assistance. Foreign donors’ activities should be oriented principally to the support of internal points of growth, social and economic. The task of empowering actors that show promise to propel socio-economic development from within can and should be prioritised. The policies of empowering local actors (as opposed to financing the government and established businesses) involve first and foremost supporting bottom-up initiatives and start-ups that have demonstrated their relevance and promise.     

特朗普政府“印太战略构想”评析

特朗普政府推出“印太战略构想”是为了应对世界大变局,替代奥巴马政府“亚太再平衡”战略和保持有利于美国的地区战略平衡。其主要特点包括：在“有原则的现实主义”和“美国优先的国家安全战略”指导下,加强印太地区联盟和伙伴体系;构建“美日澳印四边形安全合作机制”;形成有利于美国的印太地区经济关系。特朗普政府“印太战略构想”将增加美国联盟体系的内在矛盾;美日澳印四边形安全机制面临印度弱角问题;“印太战略构想”目标与财政资源不相称;战略目标之间自相矛盾。特朗普政府“印太战略构想”将进一步增加中美关系的复杂性和竞争性;向美国的盟国和伙伴国发出错误信号;有利于日本加强自身军事实力和扩张海权势力范围。     

“Gendering” European security: policy changes,reform coalitions and opposition in the OSCE

The Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) has rarely been considered in scholarship on gender and security, even though it was one of the regional security organisations whose gender policy predated the United Nations Security Council’s call for more international attention to issues related to women, peace and security in October 2000. Based on an analysis of official OSCE documents and on semi-structured interviews, we trace the integration of gender issues in the OSCE and explore the rationale behind and the challenges associated with it. We identify two phases of gender policy change in the OSCE and show how the integration of UNSCR 1325 brought about an expansion of OSCE gender policy from an exclusive focus on “soft” security issues towards increased inclusion of gender in the area of “hard” security. Drawing on historical and feminist institutionalism, we argue that reform coalitions were crucial for the policy changes in the OSCE but that they encountered institutional and ideational barriers, which hampered implementation of the gender policy. In light of rising opposition, our analysis warns of a backlash that might jeopardise current achievements.     

Enabling collaborative synthesis in multi-partner programmes

Multi-partner consortia have emerged as an important modality for knowledge generation to address complex sustainability challenges. Establishing effective multi-partner consortia involves significant investment. This article shares lessons from the Collaborative Adaptation Research Initiative in Africa and Asia (CARIAA), which aims to support policy and practice for climate change adaptation through a consortium model. Key lessons include the need to facilitate collaborative spaces to build trust and identify common interests, while accepting that this is not a guarantee of success; the importance of programmatic leadership to achieve synthesis; and the value of strategic planning in supporting motivation and alignment between partners.     

Investing in multi-stakeholder dialogue to address natural resource competition and conflict

How can multi-stakeholder dialogue help assess and address the roots of environmental resource competition and conflict? This article summarises the outcomes and lessons from action research in large lake systems in Uganda, Zambia, and Cambodia. Dialogues linking community groups, NGOs and government agencies have reduced local conflict, produced agreements with private investors, and influenced government priorities in ways that respond to the needs of marginalised fishing communities. The article details policy guidance in four areas: building stakeholder commitment, understanding the institutional and governance context, involving local groups in the policy reform process, and embracing adaptability in programme implementation.     

Human rights and Nubian mobilisation in Egypt: towards recognition of indigeneity

How are global human rights localised in authoritarian societies? How and what human rights discourses are mobilised by indigenous peoples to further their demands? Building upon original fieldwork among Nubian activists in Egypt, this article explores the complexities regarding human rights framing through a discussion of recognition of Nubian indigeneity. The article finds that the history and political experience of Egypt’s Nubians bring about diverging opinions and also limitations as to how, and what, human rights frameworks rights claimants and their supporters are to employ. It argues that Egyptian nationalism not only affects how Nubian activists mobilise in general, but also helps explain the very limited appeals to a global discourse of human rights.     

The deep marketisation of development in Bangladesh

This article introduces the concept of ‘deep marketisation’ as a relatively new, contemporary phase of neoliberal development policy in Bangladesh. By looking into the development strategy of the country’s energy sector, the article shows how an emphasis on marketisation through public-private partnerships (PPPs) and other strategies advances a market fundamentalist agenda to strengthen the private sector and establish a world market. By drawing on interviews with development practitioners from various development organisations in Bangladesh, the article further reveals how development conceptualisations are shaped by the strategy of deep marketisation, leading to the impoverishment of development by constraining its field of actions to measures based on the primacy of economic growth and private sector-led economic development, at the same time leading to a re-legitimisation of flawed neoliberal development policies that result in further inequality, poverty and environmental degradation.     

Understanding contested women’s rights in development: the Latin American campaign for the humanisation of birth and the challenge of midwifery in Mexico

This article builds on the recent debates on human rights and development to discuss the case of reproductive rights and midwifery activism as part of the broader mobilisation for the humanisation of birth and against obstetric violence in Latin America and Mexico. Drawing on extensive fieldwork, the analysis shows how human rights continue to form a significant contentious and constructed terrain among women in the global South. The mobilisation for the humanisation of birth and against obstetric violence indicates how the clinical developmental view of reproductive rights is challenged by these activists as not necessarily safeguarding the rights of women during birth. In Mexico this campaign is essentially linked to the struggle to bring back and strengthen midwifery as a way of ensuring improved human rights in birth. The article concludes, however, that this campaign might be challenged by Indigenous rights in the near future.