You'll find links to his blogs, articles and speeches on Save the Children's work and broader humanitarian and development issues on our leadership page.
You can also follow him on Twitter at @KevinAtSave
Kevin Watkins
Blogs, articles and speechesKevin joined Save the Children in 2016, having spent three years as Executive Director of the Overseas Development Institute. He has held a senior academic role at the Brookings Institution and has also acted as an adviser to the UN Special Envoy for Education.
Cynics like to cast aid as a waste of money. Try telling that to Jasmine and her classmates in Afghanistan
Wednesday 25 September 2019
While the diplomatic pantomime of talks between the US and the Afghan Taliban was reaching its inconclusive final act earlier this month, Mumtaz Ahmad* was getting on with her day job. She was delivering maths and science classes to 35 children, most of them girls, in a remote mountain village in the hills outside Kabul.
High-level meeting on Universal Health Coverage: Making the right to health a reality for all
Friday 20 September 2019
Co-authored by Kevin Watkins, CEO of Save the Children UK and Rob Yates, Head of the Centre on Global Health Security, Chatham House. The global community has committed to work together to achieve Universal Health Coverage (UHC) by 2030 by making it a target in the Sustainable Development Goals.
SPEECH: How British leadership can help protect children in conflict
Wednesday 18 September 2019
Kevin made the following speech on Wednesday 18th September at the launch of Save the Children’s new joint report with RUSI, “The UK Strategy on Protection of Civilians”.
The Tragedy of Gaza’s Children
Thursday 8 August 2019
Children and mothers are bearing the brunt of the deepening humanitarian crisis in Gaza, which includes widespread malnutrition. Allowing the current situation to slide into a full-fledged catastrophe would be an indefensible dereliction of responsibility by the international community.
SPEECH: KEVIN WATKINS AT THE BLAST INJURY CONFERENCE
Tuesday 16 July 2019
It’s less than two years since Imperial and Save the Children organised a roundtable on paediatric blast injury.
CHILDCARE UNDER UNIVERSAL CREDIT ISN’T WORKING FOR PARENTS. HERE’S HOW WE FIX IT
Wednesday 7 July 2019
With the government struggling to establish a parliamentary majority capable of unlocking the complexities behind our national Brexit conundrum, there’s another big problem with an obvious solution they could adopt tomorrow.
Stopping the War on Children
Tuesday 14 May 2019
Around 420 million children are currently living in conflict-affected countries – more than at any time in the last 20 years. Many are deliberately targeted by armed combatants for heinous crimes, including killing, rape, and kidnapping.
Speech: Kevin Watkins at the See Me Safe Centenary Symposium
Wednesday 8 May 2019
The starting point for our new campaign is engagement with the public. We need to turn the spotlight on what is happening to children – but do this in ways that invite action rather than despair, anguish and impotent hand-wringing.
Our founder would be indignant - in wars across the globe children are being killed with impunity
Thursday 11 April 2019
Tucked away in Save the Children’s archive is a leaflet produced in 1919. It shows a shocking image of two severely malnourished Austrian children under a stark headline: “Our blockade has caused this – millions of children are starving to death.” That leaflet is more than a piece of quaint agitprop memorabilia. It’s part of our national DNA.
CEO's Update: Cyclone Idai
Thursday 28 March 2019
Save the Children worked with the Disasters Emergency Committee (DEC) to launch an appeal to help the millions of people affected by the devastating consequences of Cyclone Idai – over 1.8 million in Mozambique alone. Since then, the appeal has raised over £21 million – a fantastic response.
CEO Updates, January and February 2019
Monday 11 March 2019
Even with the extraordinary pace of medical advances, this is the only Save the Children centenary any of us will ever experience (sorry to break that news!), so let’s start with a quick reminder of where we came from.
Dfid isn't broken – let's not inflict a damaging blow to one of Britain's prime assets
Saturday 19 January 2019
Ayesha was 14 months old when I met her at one of our emergency nutrition clinics in Hodeida, the port city at the centre of Yemen’s war. Weighing just 8lbs, the average birthweight of a baby in the UK, and suffering from pneumonia and diarrhea, she wasn’t expected to survive. But with a lot of fight and a little aid from the UK, Ayesha recovered.
Meet Kevin: Yusef asks our CEO the tough questions
Monday 14 January 2019
11 year old Yusef is an inspiration to us here at Save the Children. He’s raised over £2,000 and has dedicated every birthday since he was 8 to helping less fortunate children through our work. We couldn’t think of anyone better, as we mark our centenary, to interview our CEO Kevin Watkins about the past, present and future of our organisation.
Reflections and hopes for 2019
Friday 21 December 2018
Scanning the 2019 horizon, it would be easy to drift towards a state of pessimism.
SPEECH: KEVIN WATKINS AT THE GRADUATE INSTITUTE, GENEVA
Wednesday 5 December 2018
I work for a charity created 100 years ago to respond to the impact of a conflict – the First World War – on children.
CEO updates, November 2018
Wednesday 21 November 2018
A few weeks ago I was at the IMF-World Bank Annual Meetings in Bali, during which the World Bank’s President, Jim Kim, launched a new Human Capital Project (HCP).
CEO updates, October 2018
Thursday 4 October 2018
As I write this, our teams our responding to the devastating earthquake in Indonesia.
Time to act on refugee education
Wednesday 25 September 2019
One year ago Daniel was part of the human exodus that saw 1 million refugees fleeing South Sudan’s murderous war for the safety of northern Uganda. After two days of walking he arrived carrying only the clothes on his back and his most treasured possession – a science book retrieved from his school before he fled.
Mind the gap – getting our children ready for school
Saturday 7 September 2019
Parents across the country are battening down the emotional hatches, staying calm and trying to exude an air of quiet confidence. The reason: this week is the moment thousands of parents have waved goodbye at the school gates to children starting their first day at primary school.
Thoughts from the Global Disability Summit
Wednesday 24 July 2019
Disability is at the heart of some of the greatest challenges facing children around the world. The scale of that challenge is difficult to quantify, not least because the problem is often hidden from statistical surveys
What we do is simply too important to fail
Tuesday 19 March 2019
At the beginning of the month, alongside my colleagues from across the international development sector, I joined the Safeguarding Summit. Hosted by the Department for International Development and the Charity Commission, we came together to agree strategies aimed at strengthening our safeguarding and protection systems.
Speech: Kevin Watkins at the Bond annual conference
Tuesday 27 February 2018
This session is on the theme of 'The UK's vision for International Development'. My starting point is that we cannot credibly plan ahead without an honest assessment of where we stand today.
Pneumonia is the single biggest killer of children in the world's poorest countries
Tuesday 6 February 2018
Pneumonia claims almost 900,000 lives annually.
Getting serious about the SDGs and education
Wednesday 31 January 2018
It's not every week that aid workers have a chance to put their money behind a great cause, with returns that would have most investors straining at the leash - but this week is one of them.
Speech: Kevin Watkins at Wilton Park Dialogue on the mental health needs of children and adolescents affected by armed conflict
Wednesday 17 January 2018
It strikes me that education has a distinctive role to play in supporting children traumatised by violence - but it cannot be 'education as usual'.
Those who focus on New Labour in Gordon Brown's memoir neglect his international legacy
Tuesday 16 January 2018
The former Prime Minister’s book is a reminder we should not be complacent about Britain’s commitment to international development.
Educating Myanmar's youngest refugees
Tuesday 9 January 2018
The Rohingya crisis is also an education crisis, as tens of thousands of refugees remain unable to access schooling in their temporary homes.
Cancel debt and give Somali children a chance
Tuesday 9 January 2018
Writing off IMF arrears would unlock access to finance from the World Bank's International Development Association and other donors helping children whose lives are hanging by a thread.
When it comes to protecting children in war zones, the UK should set an example by ending arms sales to Saudi Arabia
Monday 1 January 2018
What we are dealing with is not a failure of the law, but a culture of impunity surrounding the perpetrators of heinous crimes against children.
Saving Somalia through debt relief
Friday 17 November 2017
Somalia needs humanitarian aid to stem its short-term suffering, but that cash will not break the country's deadly cycles of drought, hunger, and poverty. To do that, the IMF must forgive Somalia's crushing debt, just as it has for nearly every other heavily indebted poor country.
Fighting for breath
Thursday 2 November 2017
Having just finished my first year as CEO at Save the Children, this feels like a good moment to share some thoughts on a campaign as important as anything I have ever worked on – and one that I’m personally determined to make a success.
Jo Cox Memorial Lecture
Friday 20 October 2017
Declaring it a privilege to deliver any memorial lecture is a convention. In this case, it is beyond a privilege.
Partnering to get every child learning
Tuesday 19 September 2017
The world is witnessing the highest levels of human displacement on record since World War II. Of the unprecedented 65.3 million people forced from their homes, almost one-third are refugees, seeking protection from violence or persecution.
Speech: Kevin Watkins at the UNICEF executive board
Thursday 14 September 2017
There is no prospect of us delivering on our collective promise for children without a step-change in our response to humanitarian crises.
Broken promises for Syria's children
Thursday 3 August 2017
Last February, at a meeting in London, international donors promised to get all of Syria’s refugee children into school by the end of 2017, and pledged $1.4 billion to make it happen. Six months later, that promise is about to be broken, dashing the hopes of millions of Syrian children.
Our life-saving ship: what Katie Hopkins needs to know
Wednesday 26 July 2017
The intervention of the anti-immigrant, so-called "identitarians" - who are heading for Sicily to make political capital out of human misery - is not only misguided but threatens to cost lives.
Education restores hope: Daniel's lesson from the world's biggest refugee camp
Wednesday 21 June 2017
You don’t have to tell Daniel, a quietly spoken but fiercely smart 14 year old, about the value of education. Six months ago an armed group went on a rampage in his village near Yei, the capital of South Sudan’s Central Equatoria province, killing his father, and abducting his mother and sister.
"I want to finish my education and become a doctor. Learning is my only hope for a better life," says Daniel.
The price of hope: Uganda's Refugee Crisis
Wednesday 21 June 2017
Value for money is the defining international aid mantra of our age – and rightly so. These are fiscally straitened times in donor economies. We need to ensure that every last aid dollar delivers results for the world’s poorest people. But what price do you put on hope?
Celebrating our brilliant volunteers
Thursday 1 June 2017
This week is Volunteers’ Week, an annual event where the whole country comes together to celebrate the 23 million people who give their skills and time to great causes.
Speech: Kevin Watkins at the London Somalia Conference
Thursday 11 May 2017
As the UK public's overwhelming response to the recent Disasters Emergency Committee appeal for Somalia and other countries demonstrated, compassion, empathy and concern for others are integral parts of our national DNA - and the aid commitment is a powerful expression of those values.
‘Where is the help?’: black tea and dark despair as Somalia edges closer to famine
Thursday 20 April 2017
Arcane rules mean that debt accrued decades ago is denying Somalia access to funding that might stave off famine. Officials should simply write off the arrears.
Famine warning signs were clear, so why are 20 million lives now at risk?
Tuesday 7 March 2017
South Sudan, Somalia, Nigeria and Yemen are on the brink of catastrophe, thanks to conflict, drought, and a shocking failure in our international response.
Government can’t walk away from child refugees
Thursday 23 February 2017
The government must not walk away from the Dubs amendment, which was passed in a spirit of generosity. This was a pledge to help the most vulnerable children.
Educating Nigeria’s Survivors
Tuesday 21 February 2017
Aid donors will soon gather in Oslo to mobilize international support for northeast Nigeria. Success could bring hope and the prospect of recovery for millions of vulnerable people, while failure will cost lives.
How to free children like Samira from Somalia's cycle of drought, conflict & hunger
Monday 9 January 2017
When you look at 7-month-old Samira (name changed), it’s hard to think of anything other than whether she’ll survive.
Don't tell anyone that you can cut overseas aid painlessly
Thursday 5 January 2017
We should always care about value for money - but we should be proud of our commitment to the world's poorest.
Kevin Watkins shares his reading list
Sunday 18 December 2016
I am currently reading The Silo Effect by Gillian Tett. It is about how large organisations often fail to share the right type of information internally, which makes it hard for them to achieve external goals.
It's time to take on the world's biggest killer of children
Saturday 12 November 2016
Five years ago a three-month-old Kenyan baby called Umi became a symbol of survival and hope. Brought to a Save the Children emergency clinic at the height of a devastating drought in the Horn of Africa, Umi was malnourished, dehydrated and on the brink of death.
Boris Johnson wants Britain to use soft power. The first place must be Mosul
Friday 21 October 2016
The Iraqi advance on the Islamic State-held city has trapped civilians, including 600,000 children. UK influence could help get them out safely.
Girls Have Mountain To Climb To Achieve Same Opportunities As Boys
Monday 10 October 2016
In the time it takes you to read this article, at least 45 girls under 15 will marry. That’s one girl every seven seconds.
Three giant steps towards a global Britain
Tuesday 27 September 2016
The children of Aleppo won’t be listening to the leaders’ addresses this party conference season. But if we are to fulfil Theresa May's ambition for a thriving, post-Brexit 'Global Britain', the words of our leaders must matter to people in countries where war is devastating lives and destroying opportunity.
Get Involved
Your browser or network settings do not allow features used by this page. Please try a different browser or network.