Publications

Feminist perspectives on gender-just and sustainable urban development

Factsheet
Urbanisation is a defining characteristic of life across the globe in the 21st century. Cities offer many opportunities for different types of people to forge a livelihood and lead a fulfilling social life. The diverse options are taken up in particular by women and people who renounce traditional, binary gender roles and norms and are thus often subject to various kinds of discrimination.
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Perspectives #01/2021: African Feminisms Across Generations

Perspectives
Throughout the history of social and political movements in African societies, generations of women have, in one way or another, worked to oppose patriarchal domination, laws and practices in the pursuit of gender equality; advocating for their equal participation in all aspects of social, economic and political life. Despite this tradition of women- centred and anti-patriarchal organising, it is only in the last few decades, partly due to efforts to entrench women’s emancipation and gender equality in development goals, that feminism in Africa has evolved as an explicit ideological and political concept.

Debt-For-Adaptation Swap – Investment in Adaptation and Resilience

Low-income countries (LICs) are suffering from triple distresses: the mortal impact of Covid-19, increasing debt burdens, and climate change impacts. This paper brings the debt-for-adaptation swap into play as an alternative source to restore countries' ability to act and be resilient to climate change.

Plastic & health: The hidden costs of a plastic planet

In a joint effort, a group of authors from civil society and academia point out that the impacts that plastic and the chemicals in it have on our bodies need to be assessed in the full lifecylce of this enduring an ubiquitous material. You can read the executive summary of their study here.

Perspectives #01/2018: The Quest for Political Accountability: Change Agents, Openings and Dead Ends

Since the third wave of democratisation swept through the continent in the 1990s, the majority of African states have replaced military dictatorships and one-party-dominant systems with more democratic forms of governance. Today, 61 percent of sub-Saharan countries are “free” or “partly free” according to Freedom House’s 2018 survey – although this is down from a high of 71 percent in 2008.