Research

Decolonize! What does it mean?

This document introduces the key concepts of decolonial theory that inform many current calls to decolonize. It provides examples from Latin America, Africa, and North America of how activists have envisioned or realized decolonial futures. These movements led by Indigenous Peoples, people of color, women, and queer people articulate and define the possibilities of decolonial futures.

Since decolonial theory suggests multiple futures and not one single solution, this document does not address what decolonizing particular systems, such as international development, should look like. Rather, the document aims to introduce the reader to the tools of analysis that decolonial theory offers, give examples of decolonial theory in practice, and discuss some potential shortfalls of the decolonial framework.

Surviving Deterrence: How US asylum deterrence policies normalize gender-based violence

This joint report by Oxfam and the Tahirih Justice Center documents how migrants and asylum seekers experience gender-based harm as a consequence of deterrence-driven US asylum policies. First, it finds that US asylum deterrence policies foster conditions that cause gender-based violence (GBV) to proliferate at the US-Mexico border. Second, it finds that the US asylum process is woefully trauma-uninformed and systemically disadvantages and re-traumatizes survivors of GBV who are ultimately able to apply for relief. The report concludes that by choosing a deterrence-based approach to asylum, the US is complicit in systemically harming and devaluing the lives of women, girls, and LGBTQI+ individuals desperately seeking access to the asylum process as enshrined in US law. These policies, moreover, normalize GBV as an inevitable consequence of pursuing safe haven in the US.

As such, the US is repudiating its legal and moral obligation to protect the rights and respect the dignity of migrants. To rectify these harms, the US must fully abandon its punitive, deterrence-based approach to asylum in favor of one that honors the humanity of all. The report details concrete steps that the US government can take at the executive and congressional levels to begin to realize such a transformation and to mitigate the harm that current US policies engender.

Unaccountable Accounting: The World Bank’s unreliable climate finance reporting

Despite being the largest multilateral provider of climate finance, the World Bank supplies very little evidence to support its claims about the amount of climate finance it provides. Oxfam has attempted to recreate the Bank’s reported climate finance figures using public information for projects in the Bank’s FY2020.

Oxfam found that the Bank’s current climate finance reporting processes are such that its claimed levels of climate finance cannot be independently verified and could be off by as much as $7bn, or 40%.

Without better disclosure practices, the World Bank is asking us to take much on faith. Climate finance funding is too important for us to do that. The World Bank must be more transparent in its reporting so that it can be held to account. 

Full Oxfam Briefing Paper: Unaccountable Accounting: The World Bank’s unreliable climate finance reporting.

Download supporting documentation below.

The State of Local Humanitarian Leadership

A learning report on a series of LHL online convenings held in Asia, the Middle East and Northern Africa, the Pacific, and West Africa

Best and Worst States to Work in America - 2022

Each year, the Best States to Work Index ranks the US states on compensation and conditions for workers.

TOSSD Data for 2020: An overview of key trends in the data in support of sustainable development

Data on total official support for sustainable development (TOSSD) take a recipient perspective, in contrast to official development assistance (ODA) data, which take a donor perspective. The TOSSD metric captures development resource flows that are not included in donors’ reports to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development’s Development Assistance Committee, and are intended to link resource flows to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). For 2020, 98 donors reported TOSSD data, an increase of six donors from 2019. Reported net disbursements totaled $291 billion, including $62 billion reported only to TOSSD. The top five sectors in TOSSD reporting, accounting for 65% of net disbursements, were energy, donor administrative costs, in-donor refugee costs, health, and government and civil society.

For those disbursements linked to one or more of the SDGs, 61% went to the Health, Poverty Eradication, Climate Change, support for Decent Work and Sustainable Economic Growth, Ending Hunger, and Partnerships SDGs. The gender equality SDG was allocated just 4.5% of total net disbursements. TOSSD data provided a foundation of activity level detail to enable further research on allocations to SDGs. The picture that TOSSD data provide could be more complete if additional donors submitted reports to TOSSD, and if all donors reported on links to SDGs.