How do you install safe and sustainable toilets in crowded refugee camps which are on boggy or rocky ground? We might have the answer. For World Toilet Day Lucy Polson discusses the merits of the urine diversion dry toilet and the tiger worm toilet. How can we build sustainable and user-friendly toilet options for refugee camps? It’s an ongoing challenge …
No environmental justice without gender justice
Gender equality and women’s rights are core to attaining sustainable, just human development. Editor, Caroline Sweetman, introduces the natural resource justice issue of the Gender & Development journal. 2017 is on course to be the deadliest year yet for environmental activism: 150 women and men have so far been murdered for defending natural resources and the communities who depend on …
Cracking down on tax dodging, cracking down on poverty
Following the ‘Paradise Papers’ leak of financial documents Mark Goldring explains why Oxfam is calling for greater tax transparency. When businesses dodge taxes the poorest people suffer the consequences: lack of funding for public services. Through Oxfam’s work fighting poverty around the world, I see the devastating impact that not having access to basic services like education, clean water and …
Tax is an attitude: not just a set of rules
A huge new leak of financial documents this week has revealed how some multinational companies secretly make use of tax havens. FTSE 100 energy company SSE believes it should be the norm to report tax payments on a country by country basis, as they already do. Here Alistair Phillips-Davies, SSE’s Chief Executive, explains why paying taxes matters to them. SSE …
Being a better partner in conflict situations
A new report from Oxfam and International Alert looks at how violent conflict impacts local civil society and how international partners respond. Here Harriet Lamb, CEO of International Alert and Mark Goldring, CEO of Oxfam GB, reflect on the key findings and their implications for future and current partnerships in conflict. Violent conflicts cast a shadow every day over millions …
Keeping education alive in South Sudan
‘Our country had suffered from war and under-development for generations, but we knew education could help us find a better path’. Martin Lubajo shares his journey from refugee in Uganda to teacher and trainer in South Sudan, striving to ensure that children do not miss out on their education even amid the ongoing war and humanitarian crisis. In 2009, I …
Why partnerships are vital to our work in South Sudan
From borehole drilling to peacebuilding Oxfam partners in South Sudan are responding to people’s needs in ways that only local organisations could. Tim Bierley reflects on the strengths of Oxfam’s South Sudan partnerships. There’s risk of a cholera outbreak on islands deep into the Sudd, South Sudan. People are relying on the often-contaminated swamp for their drinking water. New boreholes …
How Oxfam has influenced for change over the last 75 years
In advance of the Oxfam Research Network’s Evidence for Influencing conference (Soesterberg, Netherlands, 23-24 October), Ruth Mayne, Chris Stalker and Andrew Wells-Dang look back over Oxfam’s history of influencing and future challenges. Influencing policymakers is in Oxfam’s genes. Right from its inception in 1942, Oxfam called on Prime Minister Winston Churchill to lift the Allied blockade of Nazi-occupied countries to …
Women’s work? Challenging gender roles in the Philippines
‘We forget our tiredness when the kiss is there.’ Nikki van der Gaag reports from the Philippines on a partnership that is changing ideas about men’s and women’s roles in the home. There is a bright red advertisement on the road from Tacloban airport to the town. It has a photograph of a woman with pale skin and red lipstick …
A practical tool for listening to the people that matter
Jessica Fullwood-Thomas introduces a new online tool by Oxfam, which can help practitioners to better listen to the viewpoints of the communities we’re working in. TS Elliot famously said, ‘Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge? Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?’ Increasingly we have ever greater quantities and sources of data, but do we …