Known as Section 1504 or the “Cardin-Lugar” provision of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, the law requires oil, gas and mining companies to disclose the payments they make to host governments for the exploration and extraction of oil and minerals. However, the American Petroleum Institute (API) and its oil company members are fighting back, threatening to sue the SEC, the regulatory agency responsible for issuing final rules, unless it withdraws its proposal and starts from scratch.

“The SEC has a strict mandate from Congress to follow the letter of the law and should not cave in to those who don’t want to,” said Ian Gary, senior policy manager of Oxfam America’s oil, gas and mining program. ”Our campaign aims to send a strong message that we’re watching, and ready to fight back if the regulatory agency issues weak final rules.”

The campaign, which includes a number of activities, will kick off on Friday in Washington, DC in front of the SEC, where activists will depict the oil and gas industry’s wooing of the regulatory agency.  Representing SEC commissioners and oil company executives, the activists will act out a number of scenes, including pillow fights, champagne toasts and snuggling to convey the message that they may be getting in bed together to undermine the law.

The activists will then head to Houston, Texas on February 16th to gather in front of the Chevron Building downtown. Dressed as the three wise monkeys embodying the principle “see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil,” the action will shine a light on the yawning gap between the transparency rhetoric of the industry and the reality of their actions, which has never been more apparent until now.

“The oil and gas industry loves to trumpet their support of international transparency initiatives and their tax contributions to the US government, but when a new law requires them to tell the public exactly how much gets paid to whom around the world, they bring out the lobbyists and lawyers,” said Gary.

To coincide with these activities, Oxfam America, Global Witness and a number of organizations are supporting a six-figure advertising campaign calling on the oil industry to stop fighting transparency. The ads will begin running February 13th online in the Washington Post, Politico, Huffington Post and The Hill and in print in the Wall Street Journal.

While the oil industry continues fighting transparency, some companies, such as Talisman Energy, Statoil, AngloGold Ashanti and Newmont Mining, are embracing it. They already disclose payments in every country of operation and in some cases they volunteer this information at a project level. Some companies have complained that local laws might prevent them from disclosing this information, but companies have been unable to show the SEC a single example proving their argument.

In fact, investors representing more than $1.2 trillion in assets under management welcomed the law and draft rules the SEC issued in December 2010. Furthermore, outside the United States, the transparency movement continues to grow rapidly with the European Commission introducing a legislative proposal in October 2011. The legislative directive requires similar disclosures by oil, gas and mining companies. The European Parliament and Commission are likely to issue a final law later this year.  Oil companies are also actively lobbying in Brussels to weaken the proposed legislation.

“It’s time to blow the whistle on the industry’s transparent hypocrisy,” said Gary. “For more than 1.5 billion people living on less than two dollars a day in resource-rich countries, there’s no time left to wait.”

“This Valentine’s Day give a life-changing gift through Oxfam America Unwrapped,” said Stephanie Kurzina, vice president for development and communications at Oxfam America.   “Favorites such as a dozen chicks or honey bees go a long way in fighting poverty and hunger around the world while giving you a unique way to show a loved one you care.”

Oxfam America’s Unwrapped catalog offers items that symbolically represent the organization’s lifesaving work, and each purchase is a contribution toward Oxfam’s many programs that help people living in poverty throughout the world.

Oxfam America is offering a selection of more than 70 gifts at a range of prices, including Valentine’s Day favorites such as goats, books for kids, or a grove of “miracle trees.” All gift contributions are general donations to support Oxfam America’s mission of fighting poverty, hunger and social injustice in over 90 countries around the world. Gifts are fully tax-deductible.  For more information on how to gift better this holiday season, visit OxfamGifts.com.

Camera-ready art and Oxfam America spokespeople are available to the press.

In a new report, Crises in a New World Order, Oxfam said that while governments’ and agencies’ response to emergencies has greatly improved it still remains ‘too little, too late’ and is often determined by the vagaries of media and political interest rather than level of human need.

“Coping with the expected strains on the humanitarian system will mean a shift from global to local. We are already seeing the center of humanitarian action moving away from the Western world to the local and the national but this move needs to accelerate.

International aid agencies cannot just pitch up, patch up and push-off, they also have to ensure that people and countries are better prepared to withstand future shocks. Having local organisations already on the ground that are primed to go will increase both the speed and the efficiency of the aid effort and ultimately will save more lives,” said Jane Cocking Oxfam’s Humanitarian Director.

This shift is vital as significant demands will be placed on the humanitarian system through the expected rise in the number of people exposed to disasters, the rising number of weather-related disasters and the failure to resolve conflicts adequately and turn round failed states.

Humanitarian work can be effective in an emergency but more emphasis should be placed on preventing crises from escalating. Not only would it save lives, but it would also save money. The UN estimated that in Niger in 2005 it cost $1 to save a malnourished child’s life. Once Niger’s food crisis was in full swing it cost $80.

Too little has been done to prevent and reduce the risk of disaster. Aid to programs that reduce the risk of disaster stood at only 0.5 per cent of total aid spending in 2009. National governments have committed themselves to this work by signing up to the international agreements on disaster risk reduction. While many have developed policies and legislation too little effective action has happened.

Bangladesh is an example of the importance of this work. In 1991 a cyclone struck Bangladesh killing an estimated 140,000 people. A similar sized cyclone hit the country in 2007 killing 3,406 people, still a high death toll but much reduced due in part to the government’s efforts at implementing early warnings and evacuating people to safety.

“Shifting more money to preventing and reducing the risk of disaster makes eminent sense but it does not mean taking it away from urgent humanitarian response. It is not the case of either or. We will still need the funds to immediately respond to dire human crises,” said Cocking.

This vision of a new humanitarian world is fraught with challenges. Ensuring the quality of aid and the principles that guide humanitarian action will not be easy.

Over the last two decades a great deal of effort has been done to lay down minimum standards and quality of humanitarian aid. National governments and local organisations will need a great deal of support, and in some cases encouragement, to adhere to these standards.

The more fundamental challenge will be upholding the principles of impartiality – aid based on need - and independence – aid free of political interest. Many Western donors tend to focus on their spheres of influence and interest which may not coincide always with meeting human need. Non-Western donors are now becoming more important funders of humanitarian operations. But they too have their own particular interests. For example the Arab and Muslim countries in 2011 gave generously to Somalia, Libya and Yemen. These decisions reflect political and cultural affinities but also raise questions of how aid is to be targeted to human need.

New entrants into the operations of humanitarian aid will pose challenges to impartiality and independence. The increased involvement of the private sector in supporting the aid effort is welcome and has many benefits but running aid programmes themselves will challenge humanitarian principles given that commercial interest sits uncomfortably with putting human need first and foremost.

 
Read the report here.

In the next stage of the CAO process, up to six months will be spent on clarifying the issues and concerns raised by the complainants and gathering information on how others involved see the situation. This will help the CAO and all relevant parties to determine whether and how they might be able to resolve the issues. The CAO will then publish a report containing its assessment of the situation, which will describe the proposed course of action that has been agreed by all.

Notes to editors:

Complaint letters were sent to the CAO from the affected communities in Kiboga and Mubende on December 20, outlining the adverse social impacts related to the NFC operations. Both Oxfam and the Uganda Land Alliance were co-signatories. To view the letters, visit: http://www.cao-ombudsman.org

The report, A Dangerous Delay, says a culture of risk aversion caused a six month delay in the large-scale aid effort because humanitarian agencies and national governments were too slow to scale up their response  to the crisis, and many donors wanted proof of a humanitarian catastrophe before acting to prevent one.

Sophisticated early warning systems first forecast a likely emergency as early as August 2010 but the full-scale response was not launched until July 2011 when malnutrition rates in parts of the region had gone far beyond the emergency threshold and there was high profile media coverage of the crisis. 

Save the Children and Oxfam says more funding for food emergencies should be sought and released as soon as the crisis signs are clear, rather than the current system which funds large scale emergency work only when hunger levels have reached tipping-point – by this time lives have already been lost and the cost of the response is much greater. The agencies are calling on governments to overhaul their response to food crises, as laid out in the Charter to End Extreme Hunger, a document that has already received backing from key international figures.

"We all bear responsibility for this dangerous delay that cost lives in East Africa and need to learn the lessons of the late response,” said Oxfam’s Chief Executive Barbara Stocking. “It’s shocking that the poorest people are still bearing the brunt of a failure to respond swiftly and decisively. We know that acting early saves lives but collective risk aversion meant aid agencies were reluctant to spend money until they were certain there was a crisis."

"We can no longer allow this grotesque situation to continue; where the world knows an emergency is coming but ignores it until confronted with TV pictures of desperately malnourished children." said Save the Children's Chief Executive Justin Forsyth. “The warning signs were clear and with more money when it really mattered, the suffering of thousands of children would have been avoided. All governments should sign the Charter to End Extreme Hunger to help ensure a crisis like this can never happen again."

While some positive action by governments did take place – such as improved early warning systems and social protection schemes that meant families were given some early support – much more was needed across the region.

Although it is impossible to calculate exactly how many people died as a result of drought, the UK government estimates that between 50,000 and 100,000 lives were lost between April and August 2011, more than half of them children under the age of five. Today, Somalia remains the most acute food crisis in the world, with hundreds of thousands of people still at risk.   

Some early action did take place. But overall, the scale of crisis outstripped these efforts, and more costly interventions had to be taken at a later stage. Trucking five litres of water per day as a last resort lifesaving intervention to 80,000 people in Ethiopia costs more than $3 million for five months, compared to $900,000 to prepare water sources in the same area for an oncoming drought. 

 Across East Africa, providing early support to families to keep their animals healthy and markets functioning would have helped prevent soaring malnutrition rates, as hundreds of thousands lost their livelihoods when their livestock was wiped out by drought.  

 The report, which comes ahead of global meetings at Davos and the African Union, is a timely reminder that the international community must act fast to avert disaster in West Africa, where a looming food crisis threatens to affect millions of people. A recent Save the Children assessment in Niger shows families in the worst hit areas are already struggling with around one third less food, money and fuel than is necessary to survive.

Kofi Annan, Chair of the Africa Progress Panel said: “Achieving global food and nutrition security is the challenge of our time, and our success in alleviating widespread hunger will depend, in large part, on our ability to identify the early warning signs of food crises, and respond immediately and effectively.”

Further reforms to tackle hunger crises like the East Africa emergency are set out in the Charter to End Extreme Hunger, a joint-agency initiative, which urges governments to fulfil their responsibilities and take concrete steps to stop catastrophic food crises from happening again.

To read the report, go here.

In the report, Haiti: The Slow Road to Reconstruction-Two Years after the Earthquake, Oxfam called on the Government of Haiti to implement a comprehensive reconstruction plan to rebuild the country and rehouse the approximately 520,000 people still living under tarpaulins or in tents. It urges donors to disburse the funds they have pledged to the reconstruction effort and calls on the international community to strengthen the government’s capacity to effectively coordinate reconstruction. 

Oxfam said that while the emergency relief effort following the earthquake was successful in saving countless lives and providing basic services to over a million people, much more needs to be done to meet Haitians’ long-term needs for housing, jobs, and basic services, such as education, water, and health care. 

“With a new government in place and billions of aid dollars pledged, Haitians are left asking why there has not been more progress in rebuilding the country, ” said Oxfam’s country director in Haiti, Cecilia Millan. “The second anniversary of the devastating earthquake must be a call to action. Despite the apparent slowness of reconstruction, this remains an opportunity for Haiti´s political and economic elite to address the chronic poverty and inequality that has plagued the country since independence. Haiti must move forward not backward.”

Two years on, there has been some positive progress made on reconstruction. Nearly half of all earthquake rubble has been removed, accounting for 5 million cubic meters of debris. That is significantly faster than the rate of removal in past humanitarian crises in areas not as complex as urban Port-au-Prince. In a country where only an estimated five percent of roads were covered in hard-top before the earthquake, some 430 kilometers (26 miles) of roads have been constructed or rehabilitated since the earthquake, providing vital infrastructure for economic recovery.

Major problems remain however. More than half a million people are still living under tents and tarpaulins; most Haitians do not have running water, a toilet, or a access to a doctor; cholera has claimed thousands of lives and remains a major threat to public health and more than 70 percent of the workforce is under or unemployed – many of these are problems that existed for years before the earthquake. 

The Interim Haiti Recovery Commission (IHRC) has made some progress on coordinating what reconstruction has been done, but little was achieved in bolstering the government’s ability to take critical, long term actions. With the mandate of the IHRC now expired, aid donors should support the creation of a national coordination body to take a strategic and collaborative role in reconstruction.

While Oxfam acknowledges that elections last year, followed by a political stand-off between the new president and parliament, have impeded progress on reconstruction, it calls on the new administration to take a strong leadership role and produce a comprehensive resettlement policy for those displaced by the earthquake with a clear timetable, as well as engaging more with Haitian civil society in the planning and management of reconstruction to ensure their priority needs are met.   

Billions of dollars of aid were pledged for Haiti’s reconstruction, but promises of funding haven’t always been translated into money on the ground. According to the UN, as of the end of September 2011, donors had disbursed just 43 percent of the $4.6 billion that they pledged for reconstruction in 2010 and 2011.

With some 70 percent of the Government of Haiti’s budget coming from development assistance, donor support is essential if the new government is to deliver on its promises to tackle some of Haiti’s most pressing issues.

“Donors must honor their promises to Haiti and stay the course. We must not allow impatience with the slow pace of progress to stand in the way of much needed support to those who remain without access to basic services or opportunities for a secure future. We must work together and keep our long-term commitments to the Haitian people,” said Millan. 

A local American bank announced last week it will be necessary for it to cease its financial wiring services with “hawala” money transfer companies to Somalia because the risk of violating US counterterrorism financing regulations is too high.  The bank is a major lifeline for Somalis and one of very few still offering this service.  In the midst of the current famine, where more than 250,000 Somalis are on the brink of starvation, US-based Somali Diaspora face being left without any means to help their families survive through the current crisis.

Oxfam urges the U.S. government, the bank and hawala merchants, whose networks disperse funds from the Diaspora to families in Somalia, to work together to find a cooperative solution that will not disrupt or delay the transfer of assistance from the Diaspora to Somalia. 

“It is estimated that $100 million in remittances goes to Somalia from the U.S. every year.  This is the worst time for this service to stop.  Any gaps with remittance flows in the middle of the famine could be disastrous,” Shannon Scribner, Oxfam America’s Humanitarian Policy Manager, said.  “The U.S. government should give assurances to the bank that there will be no legal ramifications of providing this service to Somalis in need.”

“The 2011 famine in Somalia would have been far worse had it not been for the extraordinary mobilization of remittances sent by the Somali Diaspora to both their extended families and to local charities -- and all those remittances were sent through the hawala system,” Ken Menkhaus, Somalia expert and associate professor at Davidson College, said.

Over the long term the US government, US banks and hawalas should establish safe and legal mechanisms to ensure there are no further obstructions, doing due diligence to make sure money is received by families. “Through remittances, American Somalis provide a lifeline to hundreds of thousands of people,” said Daniel Wordsworth, President of American Refugee Committee. “With famine and drought already impacting families throughout Somalia, the cessation of bank transfers will be devastating on a national scale.”

Oxfam’s partners providing lifesaving services in Somalia have already expressed concerns about the potential hold-up in US cash remittances into communities they are serving, where many are dependent on this source of money.

"My brother in USA used to send me US$100 at the end of every month. He doubled the cash for us after we got into this harsh drought and food prices started to increase dramatically five months ago. He called me a week ago and said he will be sending the last cash as the hawala might stop working.  My family is relying 100 percent on that cash and if it stops, we have no option but to move to Dadaab refugee camps in Kenya", Habiba Abdi Ali, a mother of six children in Badhaadhe, Lower Juba, said.

American Refugee Committee currently provides aid on the ground in Mogadishu and is concerned that further financial pressure may force additional Somalis from their homes in search of assistance.

“Private institutions and actors trying to provide a safe and legal lifeline to help the people in Somalia should not have to forego the only means to do so for fear of prosecution,” Scribner said.

“The United States and the broader international community must prioritize the long term development of Somalia and the humanitarian agenda over the short term political agenda.  Direct foreign investment in Somalia is very low and international aid efforts on their own are not enough. At a time when millions are in great need, it is critical that the flow of aid, including from the Diaspora, be protected and increased.” she added. 

/ENDS

American Refugee Committee programs are built from the ground up.  We work with people at the most vulnerable points in their lives, when they have lost everything to war or disaster.  They let us know what they need most, and we work together to develop ways to help them get it.  Our programs are as diverse as the people we serve, but they all work together for the same goal:  to help people take back control of their lives.  We have worked with refugees around the world for more than 30 years, and we help nearly 2.5 million people a year.  We are partnering with the Somali Diaspora community to strengthen community in the U.S. while addressing the humanitarian crisis in Somalia.  We are based in Minneapolis, MN.  To learn more, visit www.ARCrelief.org.

“There is an acute shortage of water supply, containers, and trucking capacity. Although the government, the private sector, and non-governmental organizations are working hard to provide water both for drinking and household use, it is still not enough. Sanitation facilities in evacuation centers are extremely limited such that people are resorting to defecating where ever they can. A serious disease outbreak is waiting to happen,” said Snehal Soneji, Country Director of Oxfam.

The worst-hit areas are those near the riverbanks. The survivors are now cramping in overcrowded evacuation centres which are facing serious sanitation problems.

Oxfam has already distributed water bottles to around 4,000 families in the cities of Cagayan de Oro and Iligan where the disaster hit on Friday. It is now stepping up assistance to help at least 5,000 more families and expand to other urgent issues.

“People need not only water, they also need immediate shelter and latrines. Without bathrooms, women are finding it hard to maintain personal hygiene. They also face the added burden of caring for sick children. Pregnant women face even more difficult times ahead,” Soneji said.

Eighty percent of Cagayan de Oro has no running water and will remain so for at least a month. Noel Pedrola, Oxfam Humanitarian Officer, said “This will exacerbate the poor sanitary conditions of evacuation shelters in the days to come, and has wide-ranging implications on public health.”

At least 1,010 deaths have been reported so far since the typhoon struck the area on Friday, injuring 1,603 people and affecting more than 500,000. More than 46 people are also missing. Some 262,280 people are displaced.

Oxfam dispatched experts to typhoon hit parts of the Philippines. The organization has a team of ten experts on the ground to assess the water and sanitation conditions in Cagayan de Oro City and Iligan City in southern Philippines, after the flash floods struck the two cities.

Donations to Oxfam's emergency response work worldwide can be made to the Global Emergencies Fund.

In a new report, “The politics of partnership: How donors manage risk while letting recipients lead their own development” released today as part of Oxfam America’s Ownership in Practice series, Oxfam examines the real challenges donors confront in building trust and support for local leaders as well as concrete ways the US can be a better partner and get the most out of foreign assistance.

“Real progress in fighting poverty requires bold, innovative approaches,” said Gregory Adams, director of aid effectiveness for Oxfam America.  “We can’t make real progress against poverty doing the same things we’ve always done.  And yet Congress is often reluctant to let development professionals take on the risk of innovating new approaches.  USAID is working to put more trust in poor people and governments; Congress needs to put trust in USAID’s new approach.”

When donors try to circumvent national governments and impose their own vision, it often leads to weak results. For example, following Haiti’s earthquake in 2010 the international community encouraged the creation of the Interim Haiti Recovery Commission to coordinate reconstruction because of Haiti’s long history of both corruption and capacity constraints. Although the commission was established by the Haitian parliament, it is not subject to government audits. There are also questions about whether the commission has improved coordination of aid or merely added to the multiplicity of development actors in the country.

“Instead of trying to avoid risk, donors should accept and manage the risks associated with building more-effective partnerships,” said Adams. “Meaningful partnerships are the only way for donors like the US to get the most out of foreign assistance dollars, especially over the long run.”

Highlighting research from Ethiopia, Guatemala, Haiti, Malawi, and Tanzania, Oxfam concludes that that the only way to yield real and lasting development successes is when the US and other donors trust and support local leaders and take concrete steps to manage risk across different contexts.

Said Ghanaian member of parliament Albert Kan-Dapaah, “In Ghana, just like in the US, we rely on independent media and citizen ‘watchdogs’ to keep those of us in government honest. US support to Ghana should help us strengthen that relationship of accountability and transparency, which is ultimately the only way to build a better and safer future for Ghanaians. The US government has not always pursued genuine partnerships with countries like Ghana, but this is slowly starting to change through Partnership for Growth and the Millennium Challenge Corporation.”

The report identifies nine steps that the US can take to pursue partnership and manage risk, instead of seeking to avoid it:

• How to deal with the risk of corruption in poor countries:
1. Identify and support promising leaders, agencies, and public efforts inside and outside government that are seeking to change things for the better.
2. Work to support political and civil rights that let citizens hold their governments accountable.
3. Pair investments in government capacity with investments in civil society “watchdogs.”
• How to deal with the risk that poor countries lack capacity:
4. Commit to support promising in-country partners for longer periods of time.
5. Make direct, long-term financial and technical investments in the success of local institutions.
• How to deal with the risk that poor people will make failed investments:
6. Partner to strengthen existing local rules and systems and resist setting up burdensome and duplicative rules and systems.
7. Fund the priorities that recipients have identified.
8. Demand performance.
9. Encourage and support transparency.

“As new donors emerge, the US risks losing influence if that influence is strictly based on accounting every dollar, rather than the overall results,” said Adams.  “Poor people need to shape how aid is invested to deliver the ‘right’ results. Including recipients in defining and managing aid offers new opportunities for the US in building long-term effective partnerships. However, it is up to the administration, Congress and taxpayers alike to support such efforts, beyond any partisan line, so the US can step up during this closing window of opportunity on the world stage.”

Governments across the region, who have already recognised the seriousness of the coming crisis, should scale up efforts to make sure people have money to buy food, receive animal feed for their livestock and emergency food is stocked and ready to be distributed.

Mamadou Biteye, Oxfam Humanitarian Lead in West Africa, said:

"The situation is looking extremely worrying for millions of people in West Africa, but the worst is not yet inevitable. The crisis has been identified early, and we know that there are cost-effective measures that can be taken now to protect those most vulnerable. This time we can act before the emergency hits."

Early warning systems have identified a range of factors that are contributing to the coming crisis. Low rainfall and water levels, poor harvests and lack of pasture, high food prices and a drop in remittances from migrants are all causing serious problems.

According to national early warning systems, cereal production is down compared to the five year average, with Mauritania and Chad showing deficits of over 50 percent compared to last year. National food reserves are dangerously low, while prices of some key cereals are up to 40 percent higher than the five year average.

While evaluations are still ongoing to identify those at most risk, early reports suggest six million people in Niger and 2.9 million people in Mali live in areas vulnerable to the coming crisis, while in Mauritania 700,000 people – over one quarter of the population – are reported as at risk of severe food insecurity. In Burkina Faso, official estimates are to be released soon but are likely to include over two million people at risk of being directly affected. In Chad, 13 out of 22 regions could be affected by food insecurity.

The Sahel region of West Africa last experienced a major food crisis in 2010, which affected ten million people.

Biteye added: "People are still recovering from the last crisis in 2010 and are incredibly vulnerable to any extra shocks such as rising food prices, poor harvests or the death of their animals. These people need help now to build their resilience before next year. Acting early could make a huge difference.”   

Oxfam is gearing up its work to address immediately the needs of the most vulnerable people. The agency is working in some of the affected areas helping communities to increase their resilience to the coming crisis and getting ready to provide food assistance.
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For example, in the Gorgol region of Mauritania, 1,300 women, as part of cooperatives, are benefiting from irrigation systems which pump water from the river for their vegetable gardens. In Burkina Faso, Oxfam has already started a response, with the support of ECHO, to help 50,000 people access food.

Whilst an early response to the coming crisis is crucial to protect people in 2012, Oxfam also warned that preventing future crises would require action to address the root causes and provide longer-term support for the poorest people in a region where 300,000 children die from malnutrition-related diseases in a ‘non-crisis’ year.