Rachel Wilshaw, Oxfam GB’s Ethical Trade Manager, explains why investors are key to improving working conditions in global supply chains. At the World Economic Forum in January, an exchange between Oxfam’s Winnie Byanyima and the CFO of Yahoo went viral. Why? Because it highlights two contrasting views of job creation. For many business leaders, a low unemployment figure is a …
Are supermarket canned tomatoes now free from labour exploitation?
Tim Gore shares three key findings from Oxfam’s human rights impact assessment of the Italian processed tomato sector. There have been a range of media and NGO reports in recent years about endemic labour exploitation in the Italian tomato sector. But as Oxfam’s The People Behind the Prices, shows, while some progress has been made, many of the root causes …
Imagining alternative futures
Programme Researcher, John Magrath, describes the process of applying ‘participatory scenario development’ to explore how Bangladesh might achieve zero hunger and zero carbon emissions by 2041. It is tempting to assume that the future will follow much the same trajectory as the past. Imagining alternative futures can be dismissed as dreaming, or science fiction. And if we do imagine the …
Making markets work in fragile settings
Oxfam OPT’s Economic Justice team shares four lessons learned from their market system development (MSD) work with small-scale farmers in the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT). Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian Territory affects 4.8 million Palestinians, nearly a quarter of whom live below the poverty line. Among other threats, at least 1.9 million Palestinians experience – or are at risk of …
Will business continue to feed climate change?
OPINION: As business representatives gather for a climate summit in London Irit Tamir explains why the food and beverage sector should play a prominent role in reducing global emissions. The Paris Agreement marked a major breakthrough in support for climate action from the business community, and later this week business leaders will gather in London for the Business and Climate …