Poor communities in the developing world are hit hardest by the impacts of climate change, while they are least responsible for the problem and most vulnerable to climate impacts, such as severe floods, drought, and storms. At the climate change negotiations in Bali in December 2007, governments recognized that adaptation should be central to the negotiations. In the Bali Action Plan, adaptation is one of the four building blocks besides mitigation, finance, and technology transfer, and the Plan provides a mandate to negotiate on 'new and additional resources' and the use of 'innovative finance mechanisms' to address urgent and compelling climate adaptation needs.
Topic:
Climate Change, Energy Policy, Environment, Globalization, and Poverty
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 whilst more aid is needed – the development process has to date been too centralised, 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.
Late in the evening of 15 November 2007, Cyclone Sidr struck Mahmouda's home and thousands of other villages across Bangladesh's southern coastal areas, leaving around 4000 people dead and millions homeless. The initial response to the disaster was prompt and vigorous, but three months after the disaster the affected communities' needs – particularly in terms of housing and livelihoods – remain staggering.
In failing to tackle climate change with urgency, rich countries are effectively violating the human rights of millions of the world's poorest people. Continued excessive greenhouse-gas emissions primarily from industrialised nations are – with scientific certainty – creating floods, droughts, hurricanes, sea-level rise, and seasonal unpredictability. The result is failed harvests, disappearing islands, destroyed homes, water scarcity, and deepening health crises, which are undermining millions of peoples' rights to life, security, food, water, health, shelter, and culture. Such rights violations could never truly be remedied in courts of law. Human-rights principles must be put at the heart of international climate-change policy making now, in order to stop this irreversible damage to humanity's future.
Existing measures to promote peace in Afghanistan are not succeeding. This is not only due to the revival of the Taliban, but also because little has been done to try to ensure that families, communities, and tribes - the fundamental units of Afghan society - get on better with each other. War has fractured the social fabric of the country and, in the context of severe and persistent poverty, local disputes have the potential to turn violent and to exacerbate the wider conflict. But there is no effective strategy to help Afghans deal with disputes in a peaceful and constructive way.
Topic:
Conflict Resolution, Development, International Cooperation, Non-Governmental Organization, and War
This series of programme insights papers highlights some of the work undertaken by Oxfam GB's partners in Southern Africa to popularise and lobby for the ratification, domestication, and implementation of the Protocol to the African Charter on Human and People's Rights on the Rights of Women (the Africa Women's Protocol).
This paper illustrates one example of how Oxfam GB Southern Africa Region supports the efforts of women's-rights organisations to popularise and lobby for the ratification, domestication, and implementation of the Protocol to the African Charter on Human and People's Rights on the Rights of Women in Africa (the Africa Women's Protocol) in Zambia.
Topic:
Security, Gender Issues, and Non-Governmental Organization
Oxfam's mission is to work with others to overcome poverty and suffering. Our interpretation of poverty goes beyond lack of finances to encompass lack of capabilities, powerlessness, and inequality. Our fight to overcome poverty and suffering focuses on the right to a sustainable livelihood, water, education, health, protection and security, a voice in public life, and freedom from discrimination. The promotion of gender equality and women's rights is therefore at the heart of our efforts.
Topic:
Gender Issues, Government, Non-Governmental Organization, and Politics
This paper illustrates the efforts of women's-rights organisations to monitor the domestication and implementation of women's human-rights instruments such as the Protocol to the African Charter on Human and People's Rights on the Rights of Women in Africa (the Africa Women's Protocol) in Africa, using the example of the Africa Gender Equality and Women's Empowerment Monitor (known as the Africa Gender Monitor or AGM). Oxfam GB Southern Africa supports the Africa Gender Monitor (AGM) .Oxfam GB works with others to overcome poverty and suffering and firmly believes that overcoming gender equality is critical to this endeavour.
Topic:
Gender Issues, Government, and Non-Governmental Organization
This programme insights paper highlights some of the work supported by Oxfam GB Southern Africa to popularise and lobby for the ratification, domestication, and implementation of the Protocol to the African Charter on Human and People's Rights on the Rights of Women (the Africa Women's Protocol) in South Africa and Mozambique.
Topic:
Gender Issues, Government, and Non-Governmental Organization