Global norms, organisational change: framing the rights-based approach at ActionAid

This article examines the adoption of the rights-based approach (RBA) to development at ActionAid International, focusing in particular on its Education Theme. Although there has been a considerable volume of work that examines the rise of RBA, including in the pages of Third World Quarterly, the power dynamics and conflict involved in shifting to RBA have largely gone unnoticed and explored. Using the methodological tools of discourse analysis and social movement theory on strategic issue framing, I examine how ActionAid leadership worked to ‘sell’ RBA to somewhat-resistant staff and partners. I argue that ActionAid struggled to reconcile its commitment to global rights norms with the ongoing needs-based programming at country-level. This raises important questions about the power dynamics involved when an NGO undergoes a process of organisational change, even when, as is the case with RBA, this is widely seen as a progressive and desirable transition

Redistributing Care Work for Gender Equality and Justice – a Training Curriculum

People contribute to the economy through their work in many different ways; such as small-scale trading in the local market or as casual labourers in commercial farms. Others are factory workers, miners, teachers, and domestic workers etc. Through their work women and men contribute to the productive economy by producing goods and services that people use every day. It is this work that is counted and measured by governments. Yet, the work of social reproduction – which refers to the activities needed to ensure the reproduction of the labour force – is not counted. Social reproduction includes activities such as child bearing, rearing, and caring for household members (such as children, the elderly and workers). These tasks are completed mostly by women and girls and support all the activities in the productive economy. Unpaid care work is a component of social reproduction relating specifically to all the activities that go towards caring for people within a household or community. This work is not paid, requires time and energy, and is done out of social obligation and/or love and affection. However, this is an essential component of the economy – care work sustains all other human activity. We know that care is critical in our lives – it has a widespread, long term, positive impact on well-being and development. However, prevalent gender norms – the ways in which women and men are expected to behave – and class inequalities lead to an imbalance in care work with women and girls living in poverty taking on a far greater share of unpaid and paid care work under difficult working conditions.UK Department for International Developmen

Annual analysis of Rwanda’s agriculture budget expenditure 2015-2016

ActionAid International Rwand

Measuring Political Commitment to Reducing Hunger and Under?nutrition: Can it be Done and Will it Help?

Food justice in India requires stronger governance and greater political commitment. This article introduces the Hunger Reduction Commitment Index (HRCI): a novel approach to assess governments' political commitment to reduce hunger and malnutrition. Cross?country comparisons and within?country analyses aim to demystify what such commitment may look like, in order to foster accountability and to provide practical policy directions for civil society, donors and governments. Unlike other hunger indices that typically compare outcomes, the HRCI ranks government efforts. It uses secondary data on three dimensions: policies and programmes; public expenditures; and legal frameworks. In addition, expert perception surveys conducted in Bangladesh and Zambia provide indications on what aspects of political commitment these governments do well, or less well. The HRCI 2011 is topped by Malawi. India takes thirteenth spot out of 21 developing countries, with a medium level of political commitment

How can power discourses be changed? - Contrasting the ‘daughter deficit’ policy of the Delhi government with Gandhi and King’s transformational reframing

Social policy impact is partly determined by how policy is articulated and advocated, including which values are highlighted and how. In this paper, we examine the influence of policy framing and reframing on outcomes, with particular reference to the policies of the Delhi state government in India that target the practices of female feticide, infanticide and neglect that underlie the ‘daughter deficit’. Using Snow and Benford’s categories for understanding reframing processes, the paper outlines and applies a ‘model’ of reframing disputed issues derived from looking at two famous campaigns – Gandhi’s 1930 Salt March in the struggle for Indian freedom from British rule and the African-American civil rights struggle of the 1950s and 1960s. It argues that ‘carrot and stick’ policy measures, such as financial incentives and legal prohibitions, to counteract the ‘daughter deficit’ must be complemented by well crafted discursive interventions

‘The Life That We Don't Want’: Using Participatory Video in Researching Violence

This article reports on the use of participatory video as a research tool for working in violent contexts. The research asked how people living in poor areas of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil can build a bridge between violence and citizenship through participatory social action. Working in violent favelas and housing estates, the process involved creating participatory discussion groups drawn from different segments of the community. Participatory video was one of several tools used in the research process. The main contribution of participatory video was not in generating empirical findings, but in challenging patterns of power and control

Transforming Power: From Zero?Sum to Win?Win?

Personal journey and predispositions. Being asked by the editors to describe my personal journey to a current focus on issues of power, and striving to do this in a spirit of critical reflection, has startled me with what I have found and how it has influenced the argument of this article. At some level, I already knew this but never before have I seen so clearly how it coheres

Robert Chambers

Professor Robert Chambers is a Research Associate at the Institute of Development Studies (IDS), University of Sussex (Brighton, UK), where he has been based for the last 40 years, including as Professorial Research Fellow. He became involved in the field of development management in the 1970s, writing, editing and co-editing several books on land settlement schemes in Africa and on rural development management more broadly. This drew on a dozen years of experience as an administrator, trainer and researcher in Africa (mostly Kenya). Later he worked in India as a researcher and networker during three periods in the 1970s, 80s and 90s. Over the years his focus and work moved on to irrigation management, and then to approaches and methods in research and for participatory development and practice, both writing about these and acting as a leading figure in the associated global knowledge networks and communities of practice. Chambers has worked in and with training institutes (Kenya Institute of Administration, East African Staff College, Administrative Staff College of India), research organizations (IIED), universities (IDS Sussex and IDS Nairobi), civil society (ActionAid and the Ford Foundation) and governmental and intergovernmental organizations (Government of Kenya and UNHCR). He has himself or with others written or edited sixteen books and numerous articles on development management, participatory approaches and methods, and critical reflections on development practice and development studies. The book that made him famous is entitled Rural Development: Putting the Last First (published in 1983). In his latest book, Provocations for Development (2012) he again aims to disturb some conventional development ideas and practices, and to put forward his own ideas to be tested and improved. Overall, his career is marked by a spirit of innovation and collaboration, listening and self-criticism. He has received three honorary doctorates in the United Kingdom, and will be receiving a Doctor Honoris Causa from Erasmus University Rotterdam (EUR) at its centennial celebration in 2013

Pinning Down Social Vulnerability to Climate Change in Sindh, Pakistan: From Narratives to Numbers, and Back Again

This paper reflects critically on the results of a vulnerability assessment process at the household and community scale using a quantitative vulnerabilities and capacities index. It validates a methodology for a social vulnerability assessment at the local scale in 62 villages across four agro‐ecological/livelihood zones in Sindh Province, Pakistan. The study finds that the move from vulnerability narratives to numbers improves the comparability and communicational strength of the concept. The depth and nuance of vulnerability, however, can be realised only by a return to narrative. Caution is needed, therefore: the index can be used in conjunction with qualitative assessments, but not instead of them. More substantively, the results show that vulnerability is more a function of historico‐political economic factors and cultural ethos than any biophysical changes wrought by climate. The emerging gendered vulnerability picture revealed extremes of poverty and a lack of capacity to cope with contemporary environmental and social stresses