Philip Proudfoot
banner
philipproudfoot.bsky.social
Philip Proudfoot
@philipproudfoot.bsky.social
Researcher of activism, labour, accountability, and humanitarianism in the Arab World & elsewhere | co-founder of The Accountability Archive | Personal account, views, especially the bad ones, are my own.
Read in the style of Adam Curtis: “People thought that by putting flags on lampposts, they were taking back their country. But those symbols of sovereignty were made thousands of miles away by workers who’d never heard of Britain. And while the flags fluttered, nothing had changed.”
September 8, 2025 at 8:49 PM
Reposted by Philip Proudfoot
"When the legal threshold for genocide is met, we must call it genocide – and act accordingly."

Read the commentary from Martin Griffiths, former UN humanitarian chief and @philipproudfoot.bsky.social

https://ac.pulse.ly/q5ldukwti0
June 11, 2025 at 3:00 PM
Reposted by Philip Proudfoot
"When the legal threshold for genocide is met, we must call it genocide – and act accordingly."

Martin Griffiths, former UN humanitarian chief, writes for IDS and calls for action to prevent genocide in #Gaza 👇

https://ac.pulse.ly/yuhzem0hlv
It is genocide: Humanitarian law must be enforced in Gaza - Institute of Development Studies
On 30 May 2025, IDS Honorary Associate and former UN Humanitarian Chief Martin Griffiths described the situation in Gaza as genocide. Alongside IDS Research Fellow Philip Proudfoot, here he calls for a decisive realignment of humanitarian law and humanitarian action to halt genocide and other atroci...
ac.pulse.ly
June 10, 2025 at 10:39 AM
With Martin Griffiths, former UN ERC, we write:

"But above all, how we classify the carnage in Gaza matters. Words carry consequences & must trigger concrete steps. When the legal threshold for genocide is met, we must call it genocide – and act accordingly @ids.ac.uk

www.ids.ac.uk/opinions/it-...
It is genocide: Humanitarian law must be enforced in Gaza - Institute of Development Studies
On 30 May 2025, IDS Honorary Associate and former UN Humanitarian Chief Martin Griffiths described the situation in Gaza as genocide. Alongside IDS Research Fellow Philip Proudfoot, here he calls for ...
www.ids.ac.uk
June 11, 2025 at 6:48 AM
Reposted by Philip Proudfoot
👋 Are you on BlueSky and coming to #DSA2025

We've spotted @keetieroelen.bsky.social with a paper on poverty, stigma and dignity in Bangladesh and @philipproudfoot.bsky.social on labour, social protection and livelihoods analysis 📊

🔎 Who else is coming to the conference at @cdsbath.bsky.social
June 6, 2025 at 7:19 AM
Reposted by Philip Proudfoot
Martin Griffiths, former UN Chief and IDS Honorary Associate and @philipproudfoot.bsky.social call for the law to be enforced to halt genocide in Gaza:

www.ids.ac.uk/opinions/it-...
It is genocide: Humanitarian law must be enforced in Gaza - Institute of Development Studies
On 30 May 2025, IDS Honorary Associate and former UN Humanitarian Chief Martin Griffiths described the situation in Gaza as genocide. Alongside IDS Research Fellow Philip Proudfoot, here he calls for ...
www.ids.ac.uk
June 10, 2025 at 4:15 PM
One thing AI is actually amazing at is languages. I’ve been asking it to read out loud Arabic news as I’m trying to keep up my fus7a and it’s unlike any other language tool. And chatGPT can also speak and recognise and hold a conversation in pretty much all spoken Arabic dialects too
February 12, 2025 at 8:25 PM
Trump is emboldened to announce he will commit war crime because the global north establishment — for 15-months — decided that Israel can act with total impunity.

They destroyed the pretence of entire rules based order. And now they have the audacity to cry about consequences.
February 12, 2025 at 12:08 AM
February 8, 2025 at 4:13 PM
Brilliant as ever is Alex de Waal in LRB on Famine Classification in Gaza

www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...
Alex de Waal · How to Measure Famine
During the past year, as starvation started to appear in Gaza, Israel has clashed with the United Nations and aid...
www.lrb.co.uk
February 8, 2025 at 2:42 PM
It’s a real struggle to not just collapse into a deep depression; always see myself as an optimist but everywhere is burning, the left is busy organising “networks” and “spaces” and a continued rightward slide feels inevitable.

Feeling particularly doom-pilled today.
February 7, 2025 at 3:58 PM
Google Earth / Maps is now updating its satellite imagery of Gaza.

We now have a top-down view of some of the worst atrocities committed since the Second World War.
February 6, 2025 at 12:03 PM
For Development Studies / Academic BlueSky (if it exists here) … our new paper on the politics of social assistance in Lebanon is out, with the BASIC programme @ids.ac.uk

It explores how Lebanon’s fractured social contract remained in place during the fiscal crisis.

www.ids.ac.uk/publications...
The Politics of Social Assistance in Lebanon - Institute of Development Studies
This brief examines the politics of social protection amid ongoing financial crisis in Lebanon. It finds that Lebanon’s political settlement remains characterised by sectarian-clientelism and fracture...
www.ids.ac.uk
February 5, 2025 at 1:14 PM
Michael Burawoy was killed on Monday in a hit and run.

Horrendous. Burawoy was one of the greatest sociologists of labour.

www.mercurynews.com/2025/02/04/o...
Oakland resident dead in hit-and-run crash at intersection
The collision happened around 7:10 p.m. Monday near the entrance to Children’s Fairyland.
www.mercurynews.com
February 4, 2025 at 11:30 PM
The main takeaway from this is that it confirms proscription in Britain is a political tool not objective application of law:

Countless journalists detained for writing about Palestine, but these two jokers can have a chat with the leader of a still proscribed organisation.
February 4, 2025 at 6:15 PM
Aid — since it was formalised and linked to gov — has always served as a state arm.

Trump merging USAID to the DoS is an acknowledgement of that fact. The same as DFID into FCDO.

In some sense, this was inevitable, given the decline of activism and rise of donor-power.

We need a new model.
February 4, 2025 at 8:50 AM
Over at the other place, people seem to have not heard of a printer.
February 3, 2025 at 12:04 AM
Reposted by Philip Proudfoot
In-person course announcement!

Develop your knowledge and skills to bring participatory action research into your social change work.

Using Participatory Action Research to Improve Development Practice.

📅 May 12 to 16, 2025
📍 IDS, Brighton, UK

Apply now👉 bit.ly/3B7s0gS
January 30, 2025 at 11:06 AM
Free speech protects us from tyrants, gifts us an open society, free debate, and scientific progress.

Pretty shit, then, that what its advocates actually mean is being racist online and bullying trans people.
February 2, 2025 at 7:24 PM
Reposted by Philip Proudfoot
Maybe #Labour needs to focus on inequality & improve the lives of ordinary people instead of obssessing with runways, bats & top-down growth models. #UK www.theguardian.com/politics/202...
Reform UK can win scores of Labour seats in England and Wales, says study
Analysis of a mega poll shows Keir Starmer would lose more seats than Tories amid voter discontent with main parties
www.theguardian.com
February 2, 2025 at 11:03 AM
What will Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the UAE possibly do without USAID!? …..

Trump should really fix the American education system. Oh well.
February 2, 2025 at 3:48 PM
These people cannot conceptualise that if your democratic "choice" is between neoliberal A Team or neoliberal B team, with slightly different visions of how to tinker around the edges, then, perhaps, it doesn't feel like a choice. In this nightmare, an authoritarian who promises change is appealing.
February 2, 2025 at 12:59 PM
Reform’s surge is easy to understand. It is the same as Brexit.

People are fed up. The economic model Britain has pursued since the 1980s has failed. They want change — any change — and they don’t trust establishment parties to deliver it.

Reform is an empty vessel, it just means “different”.
February 2, 2025 at 11:33 AM
You don’t hear much from the Stameroids these days — I think some might finally accepted you can’t just wear a nice suit and tell the economy to grow.

And others, who believed he secretly had a plan, have learned that isn’t the case.

It’s a shame this folly will cost us fascism.
February 2, 2025 at 12:40 AM
Reposted by Philip Proudfoot
After 15 months of destroying Gaza, the UK reiterates that "Israel is an important regional partner for the UK" and that "the Ministry of Defence routinely conducts bilateral Defence engagement with the Israel Defense Forces".

#DCUKparliament
January 30, 2025 at 8:19 AM