id21 Media: Special Features

id21 is a fast-track research reporting service funded by the UK Department for International Development (DFID). It aims to bring UK-based development research findings and policy recommendations to policy-makers and development practitioners worldwide, and recognises the importance of the mass media in doing so.

To this end, id21 recently began to commission special research features on timely issues within development. As with all of id21's written and audio material, any of these features may be freely reproduced and quoted, provided id21 and the originating author(s) and institution(s) are acknowledged. To arrange reproduction speak to or email the id21 media contact (click for details).

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Recent id21 Features

Holding up development: The effects of small arms and light weapons in developing countries
Cheap, portable and readily available: every year more than half a million people are killed through the misuse of small arms such as handguns, assault rifles and grenades. Millions more are crippled. With poverty providing an ideal breeding ground for small arms proliferation, African countries are currently the worst hit by a global epidemic of armed violence which threatens the safety and well being of people in developed and developing countries alike... (July 3, 2003, 947 words)

Is the UNHCR doing its job? Combining refugee relief with local development in Africa (special feature with audio sound clips)
Food and water deprivation, inadequate health and education facilities, prison-like restrictions on freedom of movement, ethnic and gender violence, ad-hoc justice and collective punishment: this is how Cairo-based refugee scholar Barbara Harrell-Bond recently described the plight of many refugees in UNHCR (United Nations High Commission for Refugees) camps in Africa. When id21 put this description to the UNHCR's Jeff Crisp, he largely agreed. Refugee camps are supposed to be safe havens for people fleeing war, persecution and natural disaster. Why then are they places where refugees are apparently deprived of their human rights and given little hope and even fewer opportunities to improve their lives?... (June 25, 2003, 2233 words)

Rolling back reality: making malaria control accessible to all
Effective tools to control malaria are available now but are not being accessed by the populations in need. The prime example is insecticide-treated bednets (ITNs). Most malaria-carrying mosquitoes bite at night. Thus ITNs have been proven to reduce malaria infection and death rates by forming both a physical barrier against mosquitoes and, in the words of the World Health Organisation (WHO) 'generating a chemical halo' around the bed, repelling and killing mosquitoes...(April 25, 2003, 561 words)