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Links & Contents I Liked 388

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Hi all, One thing I realized this week was how our sector likes to talk about reforms of the #globaldev & humanitarian system...and then you come across an investigation into the UN's Ebola response & all the talk about 'coordination saves lives' seems just that...this week there's even more on language, jargon & visual representations, the strange case of Portuguese returnees from Angola in 1975 & much more! Enjoy! My quotes of the week Australia will spend nearly $1.2bn on offshore processing this financial year, even though fewer than 300 people remain in detention in Papua New Guinea and Nauru. That’s roughly $4m for each person. (Budget blowouts: offshore processing costs $1.2bn for fewer than 300 people) “We need to move away from the world of people sitting behind desks, moving bits of paper around, to making the real heroes of the project the person that is really delivering the school … Strangely we've created a world where too often all the

Links & Contents I Liked 387

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Hi all,  We have a full #globaldev reading schedule this week! From Plexiglass to child soldiers, from MSF to UN & FCDO, from Bolivia to Bangladesh & so much more! Enjoy! My quotes of the week These institutions were designed under colonialism and they remain in key respects colonial in character. (Apartheid in the World Bank and the IMF) The first priority of the FCDO’s strategy should be to ensure the UK lives up to its values domestically and in its relations with other countries, if it wishes to have its efforts taken seriously. (To promote open societies globally, the FCDO must be more realistic, politically savvy and self-aware) In a younger, angrier, increasingly impatient world, a distant club of men in dark suits is doomed to irrelevance. Where the UN matters is on the ground, deploying its remarkable mandate to fight for those who need it most. (Slow Death or New Direction for the UN?) As we deploy more and more plexi barriers to support our own purity and security,

Links & Contents I Liked 386

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Hi all,  I am tired. I know we all are. I was fortunate to talk with great students in Edinburgh and Malmö this week about media, development, reflective practice and how important empathy is when you 'do' #globaldev. I hope you are also managing and have time to read a little bit this weekend, especially if you are tired from US  Thanksgiving & the global spread of Black Friday and need critical food for thought... My quotes of the week The event, which included performances of music, dancing and drumming, began with a reading by Cyndi Celeste, whose poem “This Space” aptly conveyed a timeline of how colonialism turned the enslaved “from human to cattle, from person to chattel” — and how Barbadians are now reclaiming the space for themselves: It is interesting how many tales the cobblestones of a place can hold How many times a space can dawn a new face, How many new stories unfold: Watch this space. Watch the way this square transforms before your very eyes […] (Barba

Links & Contents I Liked 385

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Hi all, Sitting down on Friday afternoons to compile my weekly #globaldev links has become part of my weekly routine without actually being a routine at all...but this fascinating mix of not-so-good news from the aid sector & the many creative, surprising, beautiful responses to all sorts of challenges seems very 2020. From road death in Pakistan to fashion from old bags and the plight of delivery drivers-very often the topics here are re-cylcled, come back in different costumes & find new ways of often exploiting people. 385 link reviews in (almost exactly 9 years ago, on 17 September 2011 my very first post went up (I wonder what has happened to Crocheting for Peace ...) and I'm pretty sure next week will be more of the same-yet different ;)! Enjoy! My quotes of the week In Pakistan’s Balochistan province, thousands die on ‘killer roads’ each year “Roads accidents kill between 6,000 to 8,000 people annually in Balochistan,” Balochistan’s Deputy Inspector General (DIG) o