Issues
While Oxfam specializes in helping communities realize individualized solutions to their problems, our work takes on universal themes. From community to community and region to region, we see people facing like challenges—and pursuing like solutions to their needs.
Current issues
Poor countries are already suffering from the effects of climate change. Oxfam seeks to create equitable solutions to the crisis, including greenhouse gas reduction and financial assistance for the most vulnerable communities.
Our mission is to do whatever we can to reduce suffering and save lives during emergencies—whether they are caused by conflict or by natural events. We partner with local groups in a network that stretches around the world.
Worldwide, one in six people now suffers from chronic hunger. Oxfam is working on solutions to ensure that no one, no matter where he or she lives, has to go to sleep hungry.
Oxfam seeks fair government policies and corporate practices in the oil, gas, and mining industries, and supports the right of communities to participate in decisions about the use of natural resources.
US foreign aid under-performs and often fails to reach the people who need it most. Oxfam seeks reform of US foreign aid to make it more efficient, more modern, and more focused on ending global poverty.
Having a safe place to save or access to a small loan can help a family work its way out of poverty. Oxfam America has pioneered a microfinance model called Saving for Change, which self-replicates on a large scale and at a low cost.
An uneven and often incompetent recovery effort has left many residents of the US Gulf Coast struggling to rebuild. Oxfam is leading efforts to ensure the needs of the most vulnerable are fully addressed.
Farm workers in the US are often subjected to mistreatment and exploitation. Oxfam seeks to expose sweatshop conditions and human rights violations in America's fields.
We are hopeful that the new administration will re-engage with the international community, lead the fight against global poverty, and create positive long-term change that will result in a more prosperous, secure world.
The factors that make people vulnerable to poverty and HIV/AIDS are similar, including a lack of access to health care and education; violence; racial and gender discrimination; and other human rights violations.
In many areas of the world there is little respect for minorities or indigenous people. Oxfam specializes in the training and strengthening of organizations that call for changes in discriminatory policies targeting minority groups.
Oxfam helps farmers and native communities gain legal title to their land, manage it in environmentally friendly ways, and defend it against pollution and other threats.
Seventy percent of those living below the poverty line are women. Oxfam helps women and girls overcome gender discrimination, realize their potential, and become decision-makers and leaders in their communities.
For the world's small-scale farmers, farming can be a precarious way of life. From surviving climate change to being paid a fair price, Oxfam helps family farmers around the world earn a decent living.
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Feature Story
Photos from Afghanistan, which paint a grim picture of a country plagued by 30 years of fighting.
Feature Story
El Salvador: "We spent the whole day evacuating people."
"People had to go up on the roofs, or they hung from the walls of houses that have broken glass. There were so many injured people." This is the testimony of Emerita Rivas in Verapaz, El Salvador.
Feature Story
Verapaz: four days after the landslide
With her camera, Oxfam America's Tjarda Muller records the devastation in one community in El Salvador following torrential rains.
News Update
British High Court freezes mine company assets
Monterrico Metals will be required to compensate injured individuals and their communities if courts in the United Kingdom find the company to be responsible for the human rights violations inflicted on Peruvian farmers in 2005.
