The mission recommended that the international community condemn the coup and demand Zelaya's return.

The mission calls on the international community not to accept elections organized by the de facto Micheletti government and to continue to suspend international budget aid. It also calls on the international community to maintain the suspension of diplomatic relations with the Micheletti administration, including suspending diplomatic visas and freezing foreign bank accounts.

All these measures are intended to force the de facto government to accept the negotiations coordinated by Costa Rican President Oscar Arias. Arias seeks a peaceful return to democracy that will begin with Zelaya's return to the country.

The members of the mission were able to confirm that human rights have been violated, as people were arrested without formal legal accusations. The people who have been detained include not only Hondurans, but also foreigners, especially Nicaraguans.

The mission also confirmed several cases of violations of freedom of speech and expression and has had conversations with journalists that were forced to stop their activities.

In order to continue monitoring the situation in Honduras, the mission has decided to create a Human Rights Observatory.

Here are just two examples:

• Three quarters of a million civilians were killed in conflicts in Darfur, Congo, Iraq, and Afghanistan in 2006 alone.
• At the end of 2008, more than 42 million people had to flee their homes due to more than 30 different conflicts around the world.

“The killing of civilians has become commonplace in modern conflict” says Raymond C. Offenheiser, President of Oxfam America. “Levels of impunity and lawlessness in conflict zones throughout the world have reached crisis levels.”

Violations of the laws of war are committed by governments and non-state actors, including terrorist and rebel groups. Many government forces are not equipped to protect civilians, or make decisions based on political considerations that endanger innocent people. And the United Nations Security Council has failed to take effective measures to protect millions of people in conflicts.

Oxfam America is working actively to promote more respect for international humanitarian law like the Geneva Conventions, and is recommending the following measures:

• The United States and the United Nations should publicly challenge violators of international humanitarian law, even if the violations are committed by allies.
• Impose timely sanctions against political and military leaders responsible for violations of humanitarian laws, and monitor them to deter future war crimes.
• Improve the effectiveness of UN peacekeeping operations to protect civilians.
• Work with the UN to monitor conflicts and quickly deploy mediation and diplomatic teams at the earliest stages of a crisis.
• Adopt an arms trade treaty that would reduce access to illegal weapons used to wage war and violate humanitarian laws.

"Much like the Cairo speech, we are hoping the Accra speech will signal a new era of engagement, respect and partnership with Africa," said Raymond C. Offenheiser, President of Oxfam America. "This historic visit, so early in his presidency and on the heels of important commitments at the G8 in Italy, signals the importance President Obama places on African development."

Millions of Africans live in extreme poverty, and are now hit hard by the global economic and climate crisis. Sub-Saharan Africa alone is expecting losses of up to $245 billion this year as a result of the global slump, which is almost seven times the amount it receives in global aid. In Ghana, a resource-rich country, the life expectancy is a mere 58 years and 70% of people in the poor northern regions live on less than $1 a day. Despite the economic crisis, Africa continues to attract large investments to extract the riches that lie below ground, producing billions in government revenues. By 2015, oil revenues in African oil-exporting countries will exceed the amount needed to meet key social development goals by $35 billion annually—but investing this money wisely is not a sure thing.

"Africa is rich in natural resources like gold, diamonds and oil, but, too often, these resources have contributed to corruption, conflict, and human rights abuses," said Offenheiser. "But important progress can be made to turn this around. President Obama can help by supporting increased transparency and the disclosure of payments from US and other companies to African governments to help ensure responsible use of billions of dollars of government revenues per year."

Oxfam praised Ghana's recent commitment to transparency in the country's nascent oil sector and urged President Obama to encourage the government to follow through on these commitments and encourage other African governments to follow the positive steps the Ghanaian government has taken to date.

Oxfam also noted that key reforms are needed to make the US foreign aid system as effective as possible in reducing poverty and creating prosperous communities throughout the developing world. The US currently lacks a coherent assistance strategy for many of the countries it is trying to help. Oxfam is calling on the US to keep recipient country governments and their public informed on the nature and amount of American aid, help the recipient country to manage its own development, and ultimately, let each recipient country lead its own development agenda.

"American generosity is undermined by a reactive approach that prioritizes relief efforts—like food aid—that saves lives, but doesn't address underlying causes of poverty and hunger," said Offenheiser. "If the US wants to use its aid consistently help the poor in countries such as Ghana, it needs a global development strategy to guide the US government's efforts to fight poverty."

Climate change is already impacting the lives and livelihoods of millions of poor people in Africa, as a recent Oxfam report details. Tackling these impacts is essential to addressing food security and broader development objectives. President Obama must commit to help bring about a comprehensive global climate strategy that will help poor communities cope with the impacts of global warming, from failed crops to dwindling reserves of clean water and displacement caused by extreme weather events.

"Global hunger and poverty is a human tragedy exacerbated by faltering investments in agricultural production and the growing impacts of climate change," said Offenheiser. "We are pleased to see President Obama follow through on his commitments to reassert US leadership and address the challenges facing the billion people around the world without enough food."

With some champions in Congress and support from the White House, we're hoping to see domestic legislation that not only fines companies who pollute, but also uses some of these funds to help affected communities build their resilience. If we are successful domestically, we can lay the groundwork for a global deal at the UN Climate Change Conference this December—an agreement that will create a more hospitable climate for us all.

Also in this issue: A force of peace in Peru; Rebuilding in Bangladesh; Oxfam America's new role in Darfur.

In the DRC, increasing violence has forced people to flee from their homes, and led to the deaths of almost 1,500 people a day. Though no other conflict causes that kind of death rate, Oxfam's workers hear similar stories of murder, rape, and displacement from men and women from Colombia to Sudan every day. Sixty years after the main Geneva Conventions enshrined civilians' rights to protection, they are violated in every current conflict.

Some states and non-state actors choose to kill civilians, or pursue strategies in which civilians are too likely to die. Some governments choose to protect their citizens: to keep them safe. Some do not protect all of them, or not well enough. There are, however, successful examples of protecting civilians that show what governments and others can do when they choose to.

They have an interest in protecting civilians, because mass atrocities fuel the conflicts that, in an interdependent world, create security threats that cannot be contained. And an increasing number of governments have a "moral interest" too, because their electorates expect them to help prevent, not just condemn, the atrocities they see beamed around the world through modern information technology.

Governments and others can reduce the mass atrocities that blight the world in the early twenty-first century

To do so, they need to make four key changes.

• Make the protection of civilians the overriding priority in the response to conflicts everywhere—actively working to protect civilians, and upholding the Responsibility to Protect civilians from mass atrocities, agreed at the 2005 UN World Summit, as a cornerstone of policy;
• Adopt zero tolerance of war crimes—whether in counter-terrorism or elsewhere—applying the same standard of international opprobrium to war crimes committed by friends or foes alike;
• Act much more quickly to tackle the trends that threaten new or prolonged conflicts—including poverty and inequality, climate change, and arms proliferation—so that we can be better at preventing as well as reacting to conflicts;
• Join up effective action at every level, from local communities to the UN Security Council—so that international action works in conjunction with what works on the ground. To help achieve this, the way the UN Security Council works should be urgently reformed with greater transparency and accountability, in which the Council's members have to account for their performance in pursuing international peace and security, including their Responsibility to Protect civilians from mass atrocities. All permanent members of the Security Council should renounce the use of their veto when the Council is discussing situations of actual or incipient war crimes, crimes against humanity, ethnic cleansing, and genocide.

"You cannot compare the peace we got with what I lost," says Sarite Bonaya.

A 35-year-old Guji man, Sarite lives in the Oromia region near the Mormora River about a day-and-a-half's drive from the Ethiopian capital of Addis Ababa. Forced from his home during the conflict, Sarite lost much of his wealth, including 233 heads of cattle.

But under an agreement brokered by a newly formed Peace Committee, Sarite, who is responsible for the care of 25 family members, got something even more important back: the ability to return to his home and farmland.

The agreement, reached during a peace conference among the Borena, Guji, and Gebra in April, settles for good the recent crimes they committed against each other and lays the groundwork for punishing future offenses and settling disputes.

Erosion of the old ways

In the Borena and Guji Zones near Ethiopia's border with Kenya, herding is the main means people have of making a living—a lifestyle in which they move their animals in search of pasture and water. Although most of the people in this area share the same background and culture, they are divided along ancestral lines.

Each of the different clans has its own system of governing which is adept at solving disputes and punishing crimes within that particular clan. The problem is that the only justice for a person who has had property stolen from him or a family member killed by someone from a different clan is to take matters into his own hands. In an area where guns are everywhere, retaliation has the potential to get very ugly—and it has.

Scarce resources and greed-driven cattle theft have always sparked minor conflicts between different clans. In the past, however, the various clans had agreements with each other in order to keep conflicts from spiraling out of control. Due to a weakening in their traditional governing systems brought about by the introduction of a more formalized, central governing approach, the clans' old agreements had been undermined, allowing violence to escalate.

In early 2006 a series of killings and retaliations brought on by scarce resources and cattle theft sparked separate conflicts between multiple clans in the area. By August, thousands of people had fled their homes in search of safer territory after losing much of what they owned.

By April of this year, everyone in the area had had enough and they turned to the Ethiopian Red Cross Society for help.

A solution is found

With support from Oxfam America, the Ethiopian Red Cross Society, or ERCS, set up a conference in Alona village which brought together the Borena, Guji, and Gebra—the clans responsible for a great deal of the conflict. At the conference a committee was set up with 10 people from each of those clans. The clans elected the committee members, and they quickly got to work.

The committee reached a few key agreements to bring an immediate end to the violence. The most important of these was that people should not ask for compensation for what had been done to them in the past, and a repayment system was set up for future inter-clan killings and robberies in order to prevent retaliation. The Peace Committee saw this repayment system as the most effective way of keeping people from retaliating on their own.

Since April, the committee has met once a month in order to resolve outstanding issues and ensure that peace holds in the area. It has been conducting these meetings in various places where displacements had occurred. So far, the committee has been able to help people from six of the seven displacement locations return home. The most recent of these meetings was held in August in Darmee village—the place where thousands of Guji, like Sarite, fled from a year ago. A team from Oxfam America was invited to attend.

Across the river to Darmee

When we arrived at the village, we were quickly ushered towards the banks of the Mormora River. There, spanning the river, was what the villagers referred to as a bridge?a couple of steel cables, with some sticks tied between them, running 130 feet across the water. After a harrowing few minutes and many small, shaky steps we all made it safely over the rushing river 15 feet below.

After this experience it did not come as much of a surprise when, during the meeting, my translator leaned over and told me that people were identifying a root cause of conflict in this area as a lack of access to each other. Traditionally in this village the Borena live on one side of the river and the Guji live on the other, making casual social interaction a difficult task considering what they had to go through to cross the river. Members of both clans agreed that with more interaction they would act more like brothers and one clan would not have to feel threatened enough to flee the area as had happened last year.

The meeting—200 men strong—took place in the shade of trees in an empty school yard on the Guji side of the river. Soon, everyone had turned their attention to the fate of families displaced by the earlier violence.

A lively discussion took place between members of the Peace Committee, government officials, and those whose futures were being discussed. In the end, the displaced people agreed to return to their lands within the month under protections guaranteed by the arrangements reached in the Peace Committee.

However, they still remained adamant that something needed to be done about the bridge and the shortage of clean water which has led to outbreaks of waterborne diseases. They said that with better access to each other the Borena and Guji would act more like brothers and would not resort to violence in the future.

"I am very happy," said Qumbi Dhoto, 34, with a big smile when the meeting was over. He was one of those who had to flee his home there. "This discussion will help bring peace to the area."

The agencies—CARE, International Rescue Committee, Oxfam International, and World Vision—joined together to express alarm at the rising violence and deteriorating humanitarian access since the signing of the Darfur Peace Agreement on May 5. They warned the increasing insecurity is crippling their ability to reach people in need, with potentially disastrous consequences.

Besides the eight deaths, July saw many other aid workers attacked and intimidated, and there were more than 20 incidents of humanitarian vehicles being hijacked or stolen.

“The targeting of humanitarian workers is completely unacceptable,” said Paul Smith-Lomas, the regional director for Oxfam, one of several organizations to have a staff member killed in recent weeks. “Since the signing of the agreement, Darfur has become increasingly tense and violent, which has led to the tragic deaths of far too many civilians and aid workers. A full and comprehensive ceasefire must be implemented immediately.”

Tensions within many of the camps for the region’s two million displaced people have risen steadily due to opposition to the Darfur Peace Agreement (DPA). Violence is increasingly quick to break out, putting at risk aid workers who are delivering vital services. Meanwhile, the under-resourced and poorly supported African Union police and troops who are supposed to be providing security appear to have reduced the scope of their efforts to protect civilians since the DPA’s signing.

The four aid agencies called upon those responsible for protecting civilians and creating a secure environment for humanitarian workers, particularly the African Union, to prioritize having a presence around the clock and regular patrols in areas around the camps.

The humanitarian response in Darfur is the largest in the world and has managed to stabilize the horrific health and nutritional conditions that were seen in the early stages of the conflict. However, the agencies warned this response is now under threat. Some areas of Darfur are seeing levels of malnutrition once again on the rise and outbreaks of acute diarrhea in the vast camps.

“The danger is clear. If we cannot access the people who need assistance then the humanitarian situation is going to rapidly deteriorate,” said Kurt Tjossem, a spokesperson for the International Rescue Committee. “ As usual in Darfur, civilians are the ones to suffer, from being attacked, displaced, and also from being denied access to the assistance that they urgently need.”

In the last month, more than 25,000 people have fled their homes in North Darfur in the face of fighting and attacks on their villages. Three and a half million people throughout Darfur are dependent on humanitarian aid, yet vast areas such as the Jebel Marra mountains and virtually the entire northwestern region are almost completely inaccessible to aid agencies due to the violence and insecurity. Recent fighting has forced many agencies operating in and around Kutum in North Darfur to temporarily suspend their programs.

The agencies called on all parties engaged in the conflict—those who have signed the DPA and those who have not—to immediately adhere to the ceasefire and allow humanitarian operations unhindered access to the people in need. They urged the international community to do more to pressure all sides to end the ongoing violence.

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.

At a meeting with development organizations on Friday, The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) said that it would likely move ahead with its proposed Partner Vetting System (PVS). The meeting was called after non-governmental organizations (NGOs) raised serious concerns over the PVS. The screen would require all NGOs receiving funding from USAID to gather personal information on key staff members of all sub-grantees and vendors in developing countries. USAID has said that information gathered will be checked against its existing terrorist database.

“Development professionals at USAID and NGOs who are there to help people living in poverty are being pressured to act as intelligence gathering agents,” said Raymond C. Offenheiser, president of Oxfam America. “That’s not an appropriate role for people providing development and humanitarian assistance and certainly not what they signed up for.”

According to Oxfam, the PVS will hinder poverty relief because aid workers will be perceived as agents of the US government. Aid workers’ primary mission of reducing poverty will be masked with the perception that their role is to safeguard short-term US security interests. Such a perception will undermine their ability to work at the local level and endanger the lives of individual employees being asked to collect the information, and potentially even endanger the lives of beneficiaries receiving assistance.

“No one wants to see US taxpayers’ dollars supporting terrorism, but the PVS won’t actually help the US identify terrorists and stop them. Aid workers would be collecting information to check against a list of suspects the US already has,” said Offenheiser. “If individuals have already been identified as having committed or are planning to commit a terrorist crime, they should be arrested by law enforcement officials.”

The PVS is part of a larger trend, evident in US funding, that favors short-term political goals over US long-term security and development objectives. The percentage of US foreign aid administered by the Department of Defense has grown from 3.5 percent in 1998 to 18 percent in 2006. This trend will diminish US global standing, and in effect, increase long-term insecurity and leave millions of people living in poverty unnecessarily.

“Development is a critical part of our foreign policy. The PVS will not only undermine our ability to help the poor, it will further weaken our already damaged reputation overseas.” concluded Offenheiser. Oxfam proposes that if there are groups that openly and actively support terrorism against the United States, the names of those groups should be made public and NGOs instructed not engage with them or support them in any way as a condition of receiving US government funding.

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It is two years since the international community and Afghan government launched the ‘Afghanistan Compact’, in which donors pledged over $10bn of aid to the country. They resolved ‘to overcome the legacy of conflict’ by promoting development, security, governance, the rule of law and human rights.

It must now be acknowledged that many of the Compact’s targets are not being met, and that too many of the commitments made remain unfulfilled.

There has been undoubted social and economic progress in Afghanistan, but it has been slow and is being undermined by increasing insecurity.

Oxfam, which has had operations and supported partners in Afghanistan for nearly twenty years, wants world leaders to support a major change of direction in order to reduce suffering and avert a humanitarian disaster.

Oxfam believes there are five guiding principles which should underpin this change of course.

• Recognition that development and security are inextricably connected. It is inevitable that some Afghans turn to narcotics, criminality, or even militancy, if they cannot feed their families. Military action addresses symptoms, not the underlying causes or conditions. Bringing real improvements to Afghan lives, and better prospects, is not only the right thing to do, it is an essential, long-term means of reducing vulnerability to the spread of militancy.
• Assistance must be prioritized according to needs and impact. The majority of Afghans live in rural areas and depend for their livelihoods upon agriculture and rural trades. Yet only a fraction of international assistance has supported agriculture, rural development, or sub-national governance. What the US military spends in Afghanistan in six days, some $600 million, exceeds the total amount of aid on agriculture over the last six years.
• A comprehensive and long-term commitment will be vital. To achieve peace, dialogue with a range of actors is essential but it is no substitute for sustained peace-work at local level. For centuries, communal or tribal councils of elders have been the central authorities in Afghan communities, yet little has been done to help these institutions promote peace and development. On counter-narcotics, aggressive eradication will only drive farmers into the hands of the insurgents, and, given the limits of government authority, proposals to license opium are unworkable and would not reduce the size of the illicit crop. Instead we need to prioritize rural development and licit agriculture, thus reducing the poverty which forces farmers to grow poppy.
• Afghan ownership of development is essential. Too much assistance is top-heavy, prescriptive and supply driven. Processes of development, and indeed peace and reconciliation, must be owned and led by Afghans. Only measures which support what Afghans want and need will be sustainable.
• Too much aid is slow, wasteful, ineffective or uncoordinated. Urgent action is required to achieve greater donor coherence and aid effectiveness.