Research & reports

In Her Own Words

mborum — 2009-05-29T20:37:53Z

The plight of women in Iraq today has gone largely ignored, both within Iraqi society and by the international community. For more than five years, headlines have been dominated by political and social turmoil, the chaos of conflict and widespread violence. This has overshadowed the abysmal state of the civilian population's day-to-day lives, a result of that very turmoil and violence.

The specific hardships that some of Iraq's most vulnerable individuals cope with on a daily basis, as told by them, have overwhelmingly gone unheard.

Oxfam and the Al-Amal Association, the Iraqi partner organization that conducted the survey in the five provinces of Baghdad, Basra, Kirkuk, Najaf and Nineveh, do not claim that the information they gathered from 1,700 respondents represents the situation facing all Iraqis, or even all women in Iraq. However, it does provide a disturbing snapshot of many women's lives and those of their children and other family members. The information presented in this paper was collected over a period of several months, starting in the summer of 2008.

Community Peacebuilding in Afghanistan

mborum — 2009-05-28T23:28:12Z

Peace work at a community level strengthens community cohesion, reduces violence, and enhances resistance to militants. It is an essential and complementary part of a wider strategy to secure a lasting national peace, including concerted measures to promote better governance; rural development; and the professionalisation of police and security forces. In Afghanistan, a national strategy for community peacebuilding is already five years too late: with increasing levels of violence, there is no time to lose.

Smart Development

mborum — 2011-07-13T17:02:15Z

Forty percent of the world's population lives on less than $2 a day. As poverty and injustice persist, so do the transnational security threats they help to generate. To tackle these threats, the US government seeks to use "smart power" that balances the hard power of the military with the soft power of US diplomatic and development efforts. But Oxfam is concerned that the drive to use smart power is not adequately focused on smart development.

Instead of getting smarter, US foreign aid is increasingly overwhelmed by short-sighted security concerns and a fixation with "results" of the wrong kind. Current US aid policies face two paradoxes:

US foreign aid will not make the world safer for all while it remains overly focused on short-term security;
The more that policy makers aim to control US foreign aid to make it effective, the less effective it becomes.

If the US wants to become a global leader in smart development, it must reform the legislation, organizational structure, strategy, and implementation of its foreign aid to empower effective states and active citizens to lead their own development.

Afghanistan: Development and Humanitarian Priorities

mborum — 2009-04-30T22:04:44Z

This paper outlines urgent action necessary to address immediate challenges in Afghanistan and to avert humanitarian disaster. It does not seek to address all issues of concern but focuses on essential policy change in development and humanitarian spheres.

While aid has contributed to progress in Afghanistan, especially in social and economic infrastructure—and while more aid is needed—the development process has to date been too centralized, top-heavy and insufficient. It is has been prescriptive and supply-driven, rather than indigenous and responding to Afghan needs. As a result millions of Afghans, particularly in rural areas, still face severe hardship comparable with sub-Saharan Africa. Conditions of persistent poverty have been a significant factor in the spread of insecurity.

Donors must improve the impact, efficiency, relevance and sustainability of aid. There needs to be stronger coordination and more even distribution of aid, greater alignment with national and local priorities and increased use of Afghan resources. Indicators of aid effectiveness should be established, and a commission to monitor donor performance. Despite progress in some ministries, government capacity is weak and corruption is widespread, which is hindering service delivery and undermining public confidence in state-building as a whole. Further major reforms are required in public administration, anti-corruption and the rule of law.

Urgent action is required to promote comprehensive rural development, where progress has been slow, through building local government to deliver essential services, reforming subnational governance, and channeling more resources directly to communities.

Oxfam Impact January 2008

mborum — 2009-03-25T20:41:50Z

After centuries of discrimination and a decade of legal work supported by Oxfam, Bolivia's indigenous Chiquitano people have finally won the title to their ancestral land.

Oxfam International Third Year Report on the Tsunami Response

mborum — 2009-06-30T22:01:40Z

A remarkable amount has been achieved in tsunami-hit countries since the wave smashed its way across the Indian Ocean almost three years ago. The vast amount of money donated by ordinary people around the world has made—and continues to make—a huge difference to the lives of affected communities. Most of the people made homeless in the catastrophe now have a home and are back at work. Three quarters of the way through our tsunami response, we are proud of what we have achieved.

Financing Adaptation

mborum — 2009-05-28T21:48:35Z

Oxfam estimates that adapting to climate change in developing countries is likely to cost at least $50 billion each year, and far more if global greenhouse gas emissions are not cut fast enough. Yet international funding efforts to date have been woeful. In the year that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) issued its direst warnings to date of the impacts of climate change on vulnerable developing countries, the rich and high-polluting countries increased their contribution to the Least Developed Countries Fund (LDCF) for urgent adaptation needs by a mere $43 million.

It is now time for the dissonance between the science and the policy rhetoric to end. But on the evidence to date, rich countries are very unlikely to provide the scale of adaptation finance needed on a voluntary basis. Outcomes at the Bali UN Climate Conference must, therefore, include a commitment to identify and establish new finance-raising mechanisms, so that vulnerable communities in developing countries will have the resources and support they need to protect themselves from the worst impacts of climate change.

Climate Alarm

mborum — 2009-06-09T21:28:03Z

Climatic disasters are increasing as temperatures climb and rainfall intensifies. A rise in small- and medium-scale disasters is a particularly worrying trend. Yet even extreme weather need not bring disasters; it is poverty and powerlessness that make people vulnerable. Though more emergency aid is needed, humanitarian response must do more than save lives: it has to link to climate change adaptation and bolster poor people’s livelihoods through social protection and disaster risk reduction approaches.

Investing for Life

mborum — 2010-08-10T20:45:05Z

There are major shortcomings in the pharmaceutical industry's current initiatives to ensure that poor people have access to medicines. To shore up its own flagging economic performance, the industry is increasingly looking to the potentially huge markets within emerging economies. Yet, poor people who live in these countries still desperately lack affordable and appropriate medicines. The time is ripe for a bold new approach. The industry must put access to medicines at the heart of its decision-making and practices. This is both a more sustainable long-term business strategy and would allow the industry to better play its role in achieving the universal right to health.

Up in Smoke? Asia and the Pacific

mborum — 2009-05-29T21:29:11Z

The fifth report from the Working Group on Climate Change and Development

The human drama of climate change will largely be played out in Asia, where over 60 per cent of the world's population, around four billion people, live. The latest global scientific consensus from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) indicates that all of Asia is very likely to warm during this century. Warming will be accompanied by less predictable and more extreme patterns of rainfall. Tropical cyclones are projected to increase in magnitude and frequency, while monsoons, around which farming systems are designed, are expected to become more temperamental in their strength and time of onset. This report asks, will global warming send Asia and the Pacific 'up in smoke'?

Sink or Swim

lmcfarlane — 2009-05-29T20:41:32Z

International development agency Oxfam calls for a radical rethink in the way South Asian governments implement policies to defend against floods and respond to their aftermath.

Rising to the humanitarian challenge in Iraq

rbaker — 2009-05-29T20:45:04Z

While horrific violence dominates the lives of millions of ordinary people inside Iraq, another kind of crisis, also due to the impact of war, has been slowly unfolding. Up to eight million people are now in need of emergency assistance.

This figure includes:

four million people who are 'food-insecure and in dire need of different types of humanitarian assistance'
more than two million displaced people inside Iraq
over two million Iraqis in neighbouring countries, mainly Syria and Jordan, making this the fastest-growing refugee crisis in the world.

Oxfam Impact June 2007

rbaker — 2009-03-25T20:44:26Z

For many Cambodian families, rice provides the primary means of making a living and the main staple of every meal. With valuable financial support from Oxfam America, our partner is teaching farmers how to raise their yields and use those extra profits to improve the quality of everyday life. (This edition of Oxfam Impact includes a separate special report.)

Shut Out

mborum — 2009-06-08T16:11:46Z

The current version of the US Farm Bill represents a broken promise to America's rural communities particularly African-American, Hispanic, Asian, and American Indian farmers and ranchers. Farm policies have created a faulty system that favors big farms over small farms, rewards overproduction of commodity crops instead of conservation and diversified operations, and disproportionately benefits white farmers. US minority farmers receive 1 percent of all commodity payments. The remaining 99 percent is distributed to their white counterparts. Reauthorization of the Farm Bill, which is currently being debated in Congress, provides a rare chance to redress these inequities.

Impacts of Reductions in US Cotton Subsidies on West African Cotton Producers

lmcfarlane — 2009-06-08T16:09:27Z

One of the first studies of its kind after the US reformed a controversial export subsidy program called “Step 2,” Paying the Price estimates how much farmer incomes in West Africa could increase after further subsidy reform, and what these gains would mean in practical terms for a typical West African cotton farming household.

The report confirms that substantial reform of American cotton subsidies in the 2007 Farm Bill could lead to increased income to feed an additional million children for a year or pay school fees for at least two million children living in poor West African cotton-growing households.