April 2026 – Debating Development Research

27/04/2026

The Consensus on Gender Equality was a Mirage: Reflections on CSW70

By Karmen Tornius and Lars Engberg-Pedersen

Speaking of the Commission on the Status of Women 70^th Session (CSW70), the UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres said: “The fact that the commission, for the first time in its history, went to a vote, tells us about the headwinds that we are all facing.” Many women’s organizations and feminists also rang the alarm bells. In all previous sessions, the CSW’s Agreed Conclusions had been adapted by consensus.

21/04/202621/04/2026

Reversing Agrarian Change and Restoring Hope in Ghana’s Mining‑Affected Communities

By Gyinadu Abubakar and Evans Odoom / Shaping Sustainable Futures conference series

From Cocoa to Gold: What’s at Stake

When classical agrarian theory points to rising food prices as the driver of land value, it assumes a single, agricultural use for land. David Ricardo’s rent model is a good example: more demand for corn raises the returns to fertile land and—because the soil’s productive capacity is essentially fixed—landowners capture higher rents. But in many contemporary rural landscapes this model misses a crucial detail: land is multi‑functional. Productive cocoa farms in Ghana—particularly in the Western North, Ashanti, Bono, and Eastern regions—sit atop significant gold deposits, creating a conflict between agriculture and mining.

14/04/2026

Geostrategic Axes and Transitions in Development Cooperation

By José Antonio Alonso

The international aid system is going through one of the most delicate moments in its history, largely due to its inability to respond effectively to changes in the global environment. The crisis affects the broad universe of development cooperation, but it is particularly acute in the case of Official Development Assistance (ODA), its most clearly defined component and the one whose foundations have been most eroded. The decline in Official Development Assistance (ODA) in 2025 is merely the epiphenomenon of a deeper and more structural malaise. Not only have the sources of aid’s legitimacy weakened, as noted by Molenaers, but so too have the power structures, doctrinal underpinnings, and value system upon which the aid architecture has traditionally rested.