23 February 2018 The Water Fight is all about making clean water and toilets a normal part of schools everywhere.

Lessons are particularly relevant to KS3 Geography, Mathematics and Citizenship, and last approximately an hour - though some activities may require a bit more time to complete.

Pupils are tasked with conducting audits and interviews in order to understand the importance of taps and toilets in schools, and how facilities in the UK have developed over the years.

The case studies then give an insight into what the current toilet and handwashing facilities are like in schools in some of the poorest communities around the world.

The under 18s petition is a great opportunity for your KS3 class to engage in active citizenship; pupils can add their voice to the Water Fight Campaign, which is asking the UK Secretary of State for International Development to make sure all UK Government plans for schools globally include taps and toilets for every child.

7 November 2017 - A new paper published by Development Pathways explores the scope and impact of social protection schemes by identifying whether they fall into what the author calls a ‘charity paradigm’ or a ‘citizenship paradigm’.

Outlining examples of schemes from around the world illustrating both categories, this study explores how they operate and challenges the idea that all social protection programmes have a positive impact on poverty reduction. It calls for the IMF and the World Bank to be more objective in assessing the long-term impact and effectiveness of the systems they promote.

23 October - 3 November 2017 - DFI has been contracted by UNDP as lead consultant for two missions to Cameroon and Comoros. The aim of the missions is to help both countries conduct a Development Financing Assessment (DFA) and to develop an Integrated National Financing Framework (INFF) to support the financing of their national development goals and the SDGs.

Consultations were held with government policymakers and officials, as well as representatives of parliament, civil society, the private sector and the donor community, in order to help governments identify key types of development financing which could be scaled up to support the SDGs. The missions also explored the key reinforcements which could be made to government policies and systems to ensure more successful mobilisation and utilisation of development financing. For more on DFAs and INFFs, see here.

13 October 2017 - DFI chaired a panel discussing the report of the IMF Independent Evaluation Office into the IMF and social protection. Held in the CSO Forum at the BWI Annual Meetings, the event allowed CSOs to hear more about IMF social protection policy, as well as social safeguards (spending floors) in IMF programmes.

Two key issues emerged: the need to include social protection spending in IMF social spending floors (it is often currently excluded) and the need to ensure that IMF spending recommendations are compatible with reaching the SDG aiming for universal social protection floors for all citizens (rather than targeting mechanisms at a small group of the poorest citizens).

10 October 2017 - Oxfam America hosted a Washington roundtable on the CRII, focusing on findings relating to the USA as well as broader findings for developing and developed countries. DFI presented key findings, especially the negative impact of planned Trump administration tax, spending and labour policies on the US position in the index. Approximately 30 senior experts on US and global policy attended and made excellent suggestions for improving the next round of the Index, as well as for applying it at a state-by-state level in the United States, and for maximising the policy impact of the Index in a US context.

17 July 2017 - New data compiled by GSW has been used for the new DFI -Oxfam Commitment to Reducing Inequality index (CRI). This new global index which ranks 152 governments on their policies in three areas critical to reducing the gap between rich and poor: social spending, progressive taxation and labour rights. GSW provided data on 152 countries for the social spending pillar.

The accompanying analytical report, launched today at a roundtable in New York alongside the UN HLPF, finds that no government in the world is doing enough to reduce inequality, and 112 of 152 are doing less than half of what they could. Sweden tops the index and Nigeria is bottom. Many low- and middle-income countries like Namibia and Liberia do well overall and on specific policy areas.

These conclusions are based on the latest available data from governments and global institutions, compiled by DFI into a comprehensive database, and validated by many Oxfam country offices, to build a unique perspective on the extent to which governments are tackling inequality. Full results and analysis can be consulted in the report and methodology document, and you can explore country results across the 3 policy areas in this interactive digital tool. 

The press release is available here.

The report calls for much greater concerted policy action by governments across the world to reduce inequality in all three policy areas, and for a dramatic scaling up of coordinated global and national investment to improve the data on inequality and policies to reduce it. The index will be updated annually, becoming an early warning system tracking progress on policy actions to fight inequality across the world.

17 July 2017 - A new report monitoring the policy advice and surveillance the multilateral organisations are giving on SDG-related spending is being launched today at a roundtable alongside the UN HLPF. DFI, New Rules for Global Finance and the Friedrich Ebert Stiftung are publishing Are The Multilateral Organisations Fighting Inequality? which analyses the impact that the UN, IMF, OECD, World Bank, FSB and G20 are having on supporting countries across the world to fight inequality more effectively.

The report scores and ranks each of the organisations for their impact across various policy transmission mechanisms, especially on tax, spending, labour and development financing policies. It finds that readiness and impact in fighting inequality is greatest in the UN, especially through its support to countries provided by UNDP and specialised agencies such as the ILO, UNICEF, UNESCO, WHO and UN Women. At the other end of the spectrum, the G20 has only focussed intermittently on inequality and has therefore achieved very little.

The report has been compiled through a lengthy process of consultation with experts from within each institution and inputs from independent representatives of civil society organisations working on inequality issues, including the ITUC, Oxfam, SOAS, Finance Watch, the University of Laval and RTpay. You can now consult the executive summary.

The full report and chapters on the other individual institutions will be rolled out in a series of launch events involving each of the organisations studied, during the remainder of 2017.

The report makes strong recommendations for each of the organisations (including the UN) to improve their performance and demonstrate clear impact on fighting inequality, and will be published annually in future years, shining a spotlight each year on the support the multilateral system is providing to fighting inequality.

2 June 2017 - The International Budget Partnership (IBP) has published a budget brief which explores good practices and lessons learned from monitoring government budgets and expenditure on the MDGs. The aim of this brief is to assist with monitoring, reporting, and accountability, in respect of the SDGs.

Featuring summaries of case studies from 11 countries, the brief presents findings from research by DFI in collaboration with IBP that draws on DFI’s Government Spending Watch (GSW) initiative, which monitored MDG-related spending across 72 developing countries. The research looked at budget transparency practices, the relative ease of identifying MDG, budget classification and presentation for both planned and actual spending.

To support this brief, DFI produced a background paper prepared for IBP which aims to establish lessons to inform advocacy efforts to promote greater budget transparency and accountability in the SDGs implementation framework.

24-27 January 2017 - DFI helped to facilitate an Oxfam Southern Africa workshop which aimed at designing programmes to achieve fiscal justice at regional and national levels. DFI presented on global, regional and national trends in tax policies, budget financing (aid and debt), and spending policies, and assisted Malawi, South Africa, Zambia and Zimbabwe to identify their priorities for future country and regional work. Among the key priorities emerging were a regional index on fiscal justice and inequality, incidence analysis, tax incentives, gender budgeting, and extractives revenue-sharing.

11 October 2016 - Drawing on the skills gained from monitoring government budgets in over 70 countries, Government Spending Watch (GSW) helped develop a toolkit on Domestic Financing for Education produced by the Global Campaign for Education (GCE) in collaboration with ActionAid International (AAI) and Education International (EI).

As the world embarks on the difficult task of putting into action the newly agreed SDG 4, and the accompanying Education 2030 Framework for Action (FFA), this toolkit aims to support CSOs and education activists across low- and middle-income countries to advocate and campaign on issues related to financing for education.The SDG 4 and the FFA contain collective commitments to ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and lifelong learning for all by 2030 - which will require ambitious new financing commitments to meet this goal.

The toolkit, based on 4 modules, is adaptable to different contexts, and aims to be as broad-based in its scope as possible. The toolkit can be used in its entirety, but each module is also designed so that they can be used as a standalone product, depending on experience, knowledge, context or interest.