Kevin Watkins

Executive Director

Kevin Watkins joined ODI as Executive Director in June 2013. He is a former nonresident senior fellow with the Center for Universal Education at the Brookings Institution, and was previously director and lead author of UNESCO’s Education for All Global Monitoring Report. His research focuses on education, globalization and human development.

Outputs

Education without Borders - a summary

Publication - Research reports and studies - 23 September 2013

Kevin Watkins

The humanitarian response the conflict in Syria has fundamentally failed to address the education crisis facing Syria’s children. Providing education for all of Syria’s refugee children will require an international response and strengthened partnerships. This report proposes an international plan of action to deal with the refugee education crisis, of which Lebanon is on the front-line.

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Access to Water and Sanitation in Developing Countries, Dhaka, Bangladesh

Public services for all: the politics of delivery

Event - Public event - 18 September 2013 16:30 - 18:00 (GMT+01 (BST))

Despite significant progress on the MDGs, promising growth patterns, increased financing through aid, private investment and other flows, many citizens still lack access to quality basic services, delivered equitably. This debate will ask why has progress in this area remained slow or uneven, and how can we do better?

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Letter to Barclays Bank - "No winners from the closure of Barclays’ Somali accounts"

Opinion - Letters - 2 September 2013

Kevin Watkins, the Executive Director of the Overseas Development Institute has called on Barclays Bank to reconsider its decision to close its Somalia accounts, describing the move as 'unwarranted, unnecessary and a threat to some of the world's most vulnerable people’.

He cites new research from the Humanitarian Policy Group in ODI on a major cash transfer programme introduced in response to the Horn of Africa famine.

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Jim Kim’s ‘science of delivery’: what role for politics?

Opinion - Articles and blogs - 13 August 2013

When the World Bank adopts a new idea, trickle-down effects swiftly follow. So when Jim Kim, the Bank’s President, announces that ‘the science of delivery’ will be a hallmark of his tenure, we should all sit up, pay attention and ask the obvious question – the science of what?

Recently, I’ve been conducting a strictly non-scientific survey aimed at answering that question.

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This gamble on carbon and the climate could trigger a new financial crisis

Opinion - Articles and blogs - 1 August 2013

'Developing countries such as India and China are already investing heavily in wind and solar power. But if emerging markets are to break their dangerous addiction to coal and other fossil fuels, they need financial support to phase out their carbon-intensive stock.'

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