I’m really proud of this. We know that social protection is no silver bullet, but increases agency, empowerment and opportunities if delivered well. Happy #IWD UK in Ethiopia 🇬🇧 Paul Walters Alicia Herbert OBE

At the back of the head every time we contemplate ‘development’

This is grave. The unsustainable situation needs urgent action, now. The held up aid must get in: food, water, medicines, and sanitation. What is going in is nowhere near enough. Crossings need to open. There must be an immediate pause to the fighting.

Do ultra-poor graduation programmes build resilience against droughts? 🇪🇹 Last month on VoxDev, Kalle Hirvonen, Dan Gilligan, Jessica Leight, Heleene Tambet IFPRI & Victor Villa CGIAR outlined evidence from rural #Ethiopia: voxdev.org/topic/social-p…

Ahead of the High-level Pledging Event for the Humanitarian Situation in Ethiopia, the UK hosted a meeting for senior officials from development partners along with 🇪🇹 Government, UN OCHA and the Ethiopia Humanitarian INGO forum.   Read the full statement about the meeting:

Food insecurity in Ethiopia is at a critical level. We need to act fast and act now to save lives. Last week, the 🇬🇧 hosted the Govt of 🇪🇹, development partners, UN Humanitarian and NGOs ahead of the 🇪🇹 pledging conference, supporting lifesaving efforts to help people and communities.

Nice to talk to WFP Ethiopia today about restoring trust and shifting the portfolio towards more cash based assistance. WFP want 20% of their 🇪🇹 portfolio to be cash. A fundamental step to provide dignity to recipients.

Why is the global financing architecture for social protection so rubbish? One of the most effective interventions in our locker, yet progress on financing remains elusive GiveDirectly💸 World Bank International Labour Organization UNICEF - SP as important as health + education.

Kant loved a stir fry

New publication funded by the Cash & #IPV Collaborative, hosted by IFPRI! For more▶️cash-ipv.org CGIAR Transfer Project #socialprotection

Start of journey to systematically reflect on the conflict here in 🇪🇹 & implications for livelihoods. Perhaps too little, too late, but challenging to create the space for these discussions in a fragile environment.

Super interesting research from CGIAR implying that relatively light touch livelihoods support might be better value for money than $200 grants for resilience to shocks. Lots of caveats. New evidence from World Bank due on this issue next year.

Highlights the importance of communicating clearly and widely on the outcomes of settlements, and then implementing the agreements!

2 new papers released today by Institute of Development Studies on social protection & conflict in Ethiopia: ids.ac.uk/publications/c… & ids.ac.uk/publications/c… Thanks to Jeremy Lind, Rachel Sabates-Wheeler et al for all their fantastic work on Ethiopia over the years!

I wrote a short blog about social protection and crises that I wanted to share. Please comment on what I've missed, what I've got wrong and how we can improve adaptive social protection in the future! linkedin.com/pulse/shock-re…

Change begins now.