Publications

Building Solidarities: Gender Justice in a Time of Backlash

Significant progress on gender equality has been made in past decades, but in recent years gender and sexual rights are increasingly under threat from a global wave of gender backlash. This is not new. Feminists have long faced resistance while building strategic steps towards greater gender...

Key Considerations: Post-Trauma Impacts in Conflict-Affected Communities in Northern Nigeria

SSHAP Briefing

Since 2009, the Boko Haram insurgency has become the most prominent source of violence in northern Nigeria, particularly affecting the north-east. The group’s activities, including bombings, assassinations, and mass abductions, have resulted in over two million people being displaced and a...

Was There a Famine in Gaza in 2024?

IDS Working Paper 613

This paper assesses the extent to which a famine occurred in Gaza. It concludes that, whilst the answer depends on which definition of famine is used, Israel’s use of food as a weapon of war against civilians in Gaza caused avoidable hunger and starvation deaths, and almost certainly...

Stephen Devereux

SSHAP West Africa Hub: Addressing the Kush Epidemic in Sierra Leone

SSHAP Briefing

Sierra Leone has seen a sharp rise in the use of ‘kush’ – a relatively new drug formed through mixing several constituent drugs, including opioids, which is proving highly addictive and is having serious negative health and social consequences. In April 2024, the government declared a...

Key Considerations: Female Genital Mutilation Among Sudanese Displaced Populations in Egypt

SSHAP Briefing

Female genital mutilation (FGM) is a deeply entrenched cultural practice involving the partial or total removal of the external female genitalia for non-medical reasons. It is recognised as a severe violation of human rights. Worldwide, four million girls are subjected to this practice each...

Fellow’s Brief: Addressing the Humanitarian Needs of Forced Rural-to-City Migrants in North-West Nigeria with a Focus on Mental Health Vulnerability

SSHAP Briefing

This brief explores the humanitarian needs of forced rural area-to-city migrants in the north-west of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, with an emphasis on their vulnerability to mental health challenges. The brief presents key considerations in addressing the humanitarian needs and...

Catherine Grant & 3 others

Global Clean Energy Policy and the Inclusion of Women and Youth

CEDCA Clean Energy Brief 1

This Clean Energy Brief assesses the available evidence, opportunities, and challenges for the inclusion of women and youth, through micro-, small- and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs), for global clean energy policy innovations. In this context, policy innovations are understood to be the...

Kathryn Cheeseman

Social Assistance and Coping With Crises in Borno, Nigeria

BASIC Research Working Paper 31

This paper examines the relationship between social assistance, violent conflict, and intersecting crises, and considers how social assistance can help offset erosive forms of coping that could otherwise drive poverty and food insecurity.

Vidya Diwakar & 4 others

Zakat, Non-state Welfare Provision and Redistribution in Times of Crisis: Evidence from the Covid-19 Pandemic

Around the world, the Covid-19 pandemic drew attention to state social protection and its limitations. Less attention has been paid to what is likely the world’s largest system of predominantly non-state welfare provision: zakat, an annual Islamic obligatory payment of a percentage of...

Max Gallien & 2 others

Improving Revenue Collection in Malawi. Tax Collectors’ Perspectives

ICTD African Tax Administration Paper 38

Tax specialists have a great deal to say about how African tax collectors could work better. But they rarely seem to ask the tax collectors themselves. This paper reports from what we believe to be the first such survey. A random selection of 83 staff members working on domestic taxes at the...

Nyanyiwe Sulu

Mick Moore

Reimagining Social Protection

IDS Bulletin 55.2

Social protection features in numerous country policies and development agency strategies, as well as in several Sustainable Development Goals. However, following more than two decades of considerable expansion in policies, programmes, and research, the sector finds itself at a...

‘Those with big phones have the upper hand’: Political, Gender and Digital Exclusions in Cash and Voucher Assistance in North East Nigeria

BASIC Research Working Paper 25

The aim of this report is to improve understanding of the risks and benefits of the use of digital technologies to support cash and voucher assistance programming in North East Nigeria from the perspective of recipients.

Becky Faith & 2 others