This rapid literature review, surveys evidence regarding the challenges specific religious minorities face in accessing humanitarian assistance. This review acknowledges that there remains a paucity of research on the presence, scale and diversity of religious groups, experiences, values, motivations and engagements in a range of humanitarian contexts and how these intersect to ...» more
Helpdesk Reports
These rapid-response reports provide digests of key research findings, lessons and expert thinking on specific questions from development practitioners and policymakers. If your question is not already covered below, ask us for a report (free for staff of agencies that we have existing arrangements with).
Preventing/Countering Violent Extremism Programming on Men, Women, Boys and Girls
Gender and age can have a big influence on people’s roles in relation to violent extremism: if they are vulnerable to recruitment, if they join violent extremist groups, the driving factors, what their participation in violent extremism entails, and – critically – what approaches should be taken to preventing or countering violent extremism (P/CVE). Hence, it is important not ...» more
Non-State Policing in Fragile Contexts
Non-state policing refers to the use of non-state (informal) actors, e.g. vigilante groups, private security firms, to carry out ‘law and order’ functions (preventing crime, investigating, detaining and punishing those responsible for crimes). Non-state policing is not a synonym for community policing (a much broader term, usually associated with formal police agencies) but ...» more
G7 and G20 commitments on health
The health issues that have received the most consistent attention in G7 and G20 summit declarations, having been addressed in more than half of the summits since 2015 and appearing in 30 or more commitments over that time, are: Health systems strengthening Infectious diseases (including HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, malaria, polio, neglected tropical diseases, and ...» more
Automation of government processes
This rapid literature review examines the impact of, and lessons from, automating government processes in middle-income countries (MICs) and fragile and conflict affected environments (FCAEs). ...» more
Drivers and enablers of serious organised crime in Southeast Asia
There are many definitions of organised crime. The UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) has developed a general definition: Organized crime is a continuing criminal enterprise that rationally works to profit from illicit activities that are often in great public demand. Its continuing existence is maintained through corruption of public officials and the use of intimidation, ...» more
Conflict analysis of The Philippines
This rapid literature review examines the main conflict and instability drivers in the Philippines ...» more
Options for managing a sudden rise in public debt
Debate has raged over whether and when debt reduction is appropriate, particularly in advanced economies. Arguments for lowering public debt are based on the costs and risks generated by high public debt; debt reduction is generally deemed appropriate when the risks associated with it are greater than those associated with debt-reducing policies (Best et al 2018: 2). The ...» more
Community cohesion projects to prevent violent extremism
This review looks at the use of community cohesion projects to prevent or counter violent extremism (P/CVE). It finds that such initiatives can be helpful in conflict-affected societies, but there are limited evaluations in the literature, and these generally do not make a direct causal link between interventions to promote social (community) cohesion and P/CVE. The retreat of ...» more
Lessons from environmental peacebuilding programming
This rapid literature review collates lessons from conflict resolution/peacebuilding programmes that include land, resource management, and/or environmental issues. This is a burgeoning area of research which draws on a number of interrelated concepts such as environmental peacebuilding, resilience building, and bottom-up peacebuilding. Ide and Scheffran (in Ide, 2017, p.545) ...» more
Technical Assistance and Capacity Building in International Development
This rapid literature review has been commissioned as an update to a previous report on technical assistance produced by the K4D programme in 2018 by Hannah Timmis. This report concentrates on technical assistance or capacity building in North Africa. This review found only one comprehensive study on technical assistance published after Timmis (2018) and a few recent examples ...» more
Benefits and risks of Big Data Analytics in fragile and conflict affected states
Big Data is an umbrella term for the large amounts of digital data continually generated by the global population. The main sources are data exhaust (largely from use of mobile phones), online information (e.g. social media), physical sensors (e.g. satellite imagery) and crowdsourced data (from citizens). Big Data for Development refers to sources of Big Data relevant to ...» more
International donor activity on climate change mitigation and adaptation in the G5 Sahel countries
This review provides a snapshot of current adaptation and mitigation projects being implemented by multilateral and bilateral donors in the G5 countries of the Sahel. Although not a systematic review, the research for this review has methodically examined key multilateral donor websites and bilateral donor websites for information on each of the G5 countries and climate ...» more
Public Sector Reform and Capacity Building in Small Island Developing States
Small Island Developing States (SIDS) experience capacity constraints relating to their small size, remoteness and dispersion (in the case of island archipelagos), which impinge on the quality of the public sector (Horscroft, 2014; Mycoo & Donovan, 2017). This rapid literature review summarises the evidence on public sector reform and capacity building initiatives in SIDS. ...» more
Implications of Not Addressing Mental Health and Psychosocial Support (MHPSS) Needs in Conflict Situations
This review of existing literature indicates that there are a number of significant implications of not addressing mental health and psychosocial (MHPSS) needs of children, youth, and adults in conflict settings. Mental health consequences of war are by now fairly well documented (see for example Murthy and Lakshminarayana, 2006; Werner, 2012; Betancourt et al., 2014; ...» more
Government Communication Capacity and Media Freedom
The aim of this rapid literature review is to examine the relationship between government communication services and media freedom. However, this relationship receives little mention in the literature on media development and media freedom. Hence, it is very difficult to reach a consensus on the relationship between government communication services and media freedom due to the ...» more
Legal Pathways’ Effects on Irregular Migration
Regular migration pathways include labour mobility regimes, sponsorship programmes for high-skilled workers, student visas and protections for refugees. In contrast, irregular migration pathways include illegal entry, overstaying a visa and befallen irregularity (where regular status is lost) (Vickstrom, 2014). The links between regular (legal) pathways for migration and ...» more
Current Trends in Violent Conflict
This rapid literature review presents the key literature that discusses current trends in violent conflict. The focus is upon recent ideas that are prevalent in literature from post-2015. The literature review draws on both academic and grey literature. The review includes both quantitative analyses of conflict data sets (Szayna et al, 2017a; 2017b; Watts, 2017) and qualitative ...» more
Place-based approaches to aid investment and development impact
This rapid literature review surveys the available academic and grey literature on place o area-based approaches to aid investment and its role in the delivery of effective and coherent development impact1. Place- or area-based approaches to aid investment and development refer to a broad array of interventions under which a place or area is identified as the main entry point, ...» more
Advantages and Value of Funding NGOs in the Global South
This rapid literature review examines the advantages or added value of providing donor funding directly to Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs) or Civil Society Organisations (CSOs) based in the global south, rather than channelling such funding through International NonGovernmental Organisations (INGOs). The literature reveals that United Nations (UN) agencies and INGOs ...» more
