What Oxfam is doing

Oxfam advocates directly with corporations, financial institutions, and governments to ensure respect for the rights of communities. We support new ideas for greater corporate social responsibility; global campaigns to create new human rights and environmental standards; and greater transparency of oil, gas, and mining revenues.

Advocating just policies and practices

  • Oxfam successfully pressed the Inter-American Development Bank to adopt unprecedented social and environmental safeguards for its loan for the Camisea gas pipeline project. We worked with indigenous organizations in the culturally and environmentally sensitive pipeline area of the Peruvian Amazon to create a role for them to monitor the social and environmental effects of the pipeline.
  • Oxfam America is working with the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) to create a common mining convention for all of West Africa. The new code will help the 15 member countries adhere to uniform standards created jointly by governments and citizens, and increase protection of human rights and the environment while promoting investment. Oxfam America is working with representatives of West African civil society to help ensure that their concerns are reflected in the new convention.

Campaigning for change

Learn more about Oxfam America's Right to Know, Right to Decide advocacy campaign.

Local partnerships

Oxfam is helping local communities strengthen their organizations and defend their right to participate meaningfully in decision-making about oil, gas, and mining projects so that they can benefit from these projects while protecting their natural resources and culture. We do this by providing financial support for strengthening local organizations and for technical training, including environmental monitoring. This helps communities engage effectively on proposed or existing mines or hydrocarbon projects, as well as articulate their concerns to governments and companies.

  • In Peru, Oxfam supported a training program for local community representatives to help villages affected by a copper mine explain their concerns about land seizures and pollution, and develop a proposal for compensation. Oxfam America and Oxfam Australia encouraged the owner of the mine, BHP Billiton, to engage in negotiations with the communities. This resulted in a program of compensation including 7,000 hectares (17,000 acres) of new farm lands, assistance with infrastructure improvements like road construction, and a development fund to help relocated farmers restart their businesses.
  • Oxfam is working with civil society organizations and governments to reform mining legislation in Honduras, El Salvador, and Guatemala to protect the rights of affected communities.
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