Has anything changed? Today marks three years since George Floyd was killed by police officers in Minnesota, United States, propelling the Black Lives Matter movement

Gunnar Larson g at xny.io
Thu May 25 06:28:13 PDT 2023


Has anything changed?
Today marks three years since George Floyd was killed by police officers in
Minnesota, United States, propelling the Black Lives Matter movement. It
also sparked a racial reckoning that extended to the world of development,
which has always had fraught power dynamics between donors and the people
they’re “helping,” especially in light of the move to shift power from big
international players to local organizations on the ground.

“I’m hopeful because the racial reckoning launched by the murder of George
Floyd was not just a passing moment; conversations on racial justice and
what it means in int’l development continue to be meaningful and robust,”
Paul Weisenfeld, executive vice president of international development at
RTI International, tells us via email.

“At the same time, we all have to realize that diversifying the composition
of our organizations, especially at the leadership level, has a long way to
go,” adds Weisenfeld, who is part of CREED, or the Coalition for Racial &
Ethnic Equity in Development.

Indira Kaur Ahluwalia, founder and co-chair of CREED, said the organization
understands “the need to take collective responsibility to build racial and
ethnic equity (REE) to address gaps that could no longer be invisible under
our watch.”

“While we had a terrible moment three years ago that sparked motivation,
the sustainability of the REE movement is fundamental to our organizations’
morale and effectiveness, our programmatic efficacies, our locally led
development goals, and social and economic progress,” she writes to us.

At Devex, we’ve spent these last three years covering efforts to decolonize
aid and diversify the sector, so I picked out a selection of articles that
you might find interesting.

Racism ‘entrenched’ in development institutions, UNAIDS chief says
Has WFP failed to tackle racism in its ranks? Some employees say yes
USAID’s first diversity chief aims to make the agency more inclusive 
How ClimateWorks centers equity in its philanthropy 
What Wellcome Trust’s anti-racism struggles reveal about DEI efforts
Deep dive: Decolonizing aid — from rhetoric to action
Opinion: Decolonizing development is key to avoid path to irrelevance
Opinion: Why the Black Lives Matter movement should have us rethinking
humanitarian aid
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