Oxfam America Blog

As 2008 winds down, we’re highlighting photos we think best capture Oxfam’s work this year. Here is one of my favorites–with an explanation why. More to come from others.

Loko Dadacha, photographed by Sarah Livingston

In this supposed season of joy, trouble fills our world: a cholera outbreak and widespread hunger in Zimbabwe, a food crisis in Afghanistan that’s threatening five million people, bursts of violence in the eastern provinces of Democratic Republic of Congo that have forced a quarter of a million people from their homes, a conflict in Darfur that has dragged on for nearly six years and wrecked the lives of millions of Sudanese—the list goes on. And that’s the killer. Where is the hope in this bottomless pit of suffering?

I think I know. Read the rest of this entry »

As 2008 draws to a close, we’re highlighting some of the photos that we thought best captured Oxfam’s work this year. Here are my own personal picks; more to come from others.

Photo: Steve Thackston / Oxfam America

This portrait of Biloxi, MS resident Mary Meltz appeared in Mirror on America, Oxfam’s report on the state of US Gulf Coast recovery three years after Hurricane Katrina. Meltz stands in front of her new home, where construction is nearly complete, thanks to the efforts of her son Michael (an artist who covered the walls with elaborate murals), community groups, and teams of volunteers. Visible over her shoulder is the FEMA trailer where Meltz lived for nearly three years.

To me, this divided image–and Meltz’s look of weary, patient hope–captures the in-between state of many of the people I met when I visited Biloxi in June. Three years after the storm, they are still struggling to rebuild their lives, even as they look to better times ahead.

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Marina Nyandwi, 70, weaver and resident of Mugunga Camp, Goma, DRC, pictured with her grandsons. Photo: Rankin / Oxfam

Here’s Oxfam’s Louis Belanger blogging for the Huffington Post, on what the UN must do to help civilians in the conflict-torn Democratic Republic of Congo:

So earlier this week, the UN Security Council adopted unanimously a resolution that revised the mandate of UN peacekeepers to focus on the crisis in the eastern provinces of North Kivu and South Kivu. The force, known as MONUC, is authorized to have 22,000 soldiers and police.

Oxfam and the people of Congo`s call for prioritization of this “protection mandate” has been answered.

However, strong words on a piece of paper are not enough …

People caught up in this tragedy tell us that they cannot understand why the world’s biggest UN peacekeeping force is doing so little to help them. They are at the mercy of armed groups on all sides and offered little protection from rape, murder and abduction.

It’s time for UN peacekeepers to be led and given all the means to stop this madness.

Nearly one billion people suffer from chronic hunger. The cost of food from Ethiopia to Afghanistan has nearly doubled. The situation is urgent.

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Support Oxfam’s work to end hunger and poverty. You can save a life. You can make a difference.

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Rob Baker is Oxfam America’s Development Analyst for Web & New Media. In the three years he’s been with Oxfam, Rob has developed sites like Oxfam America Unwrapped and this blog, as well as produced and edited several short video pieces.

It was the kid who saw me first, his dark eyes glancing up to meet mine. About seven or eight years old, he nudged his father, who stood facing impassively out into the traffic on Massachusetts Avenue, one arm firmly around his son’s shoulders. With his other hand the father held up a handmade sign: “My son and I are homeless. Please help.”

I’d hurried past them at first, toughened to such requests in the manner of a longtime city dweller. Buffeted by a freezing wind, carrying a heavy bag of groceries, I was anxious to get to the subway and home. But something about the father and son made me stop short only a few feet from the station doors.

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Maleka Khatun sits in the doorway of her home near Kurigam, Bangladesh. Though Khatun said she completed her cooking an hour ago, there was too little left for her after her husband and children had eaten. She feared that this might be her family’s only meal that day. Photo: Oxfam

OK, so you know the global food crisis is affecting millions. But did you know that the crisis affects women even more than men?

That’s the subject of a recent brief by the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), Helping Women Respond to the Global Food Price Crisis. According to IFPRI,

Higher food prices increase the burden for women, who must stretch the limited food budget even further. Women often end up being the shock absorbers of household food security, reducing their own consumption to leave more food for other household members. In Bangladesh, even before the crisis, almost 60 percent of households reported that women skip meals more often than men.

As food prices rise and staples consume more of the food expenditures, households frequently cut back on both food quantity (caloric intake) and quality (dietary diversity), which provides micronutrients that girls and women particularly need…

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Heather Coleman, Oxfam America’s senior policy advisor for climate change, shares her hopes for the new year.

Oxfam International ice sculptures by the entrance to the conference center at the UN Climate Talks in Poznan. The message, that rich countries should "Stop Harming, Start Helping" could not be missed by the delegates and the media on their way into the building. Photo: Piotr Fajfer / Oxfam International.

I returned from the UN climate negotiations in Poznan, Poland at 1:00 am on Monday morning feeling drained and disappointed yet hopeful for what’s to come.

The conference was meant to be a key milestone between the start of global climate negotiations in Bali last year and the goal to reach a new global climate agreement in Copenhagen next year. But it exposed a shameful lack of progress. Developed nations failed to submit proposals to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions and provide adequate financing for poor countries to “adapt” to, or become stronger in the face of, climate change.

In contrast, many of the poor countries came to Poznan with clear proposals, a willingness to show flexibility, and a strong voice. They delivered a clear message that the world’s poor people have done nothing to cause climate change but are feeling the impacts first and worst. They told countless tales of island peoples who are being relocated to higher ground, of mothers who are forced to walk up to 10 miles just to collect water for their children, and of communities who have been ravaged by unprecedented floods and drought.

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