Oxfam in Emergencies

Each year more than 30 million people flee their homes a result of conflict and natural disasters. Over 500,000 people are killed in war. The livelihoods of many more are destroyed, and families are broken up. Oxfam has an outstanding track record of responding to this most extreme form of poverty – we are currently working in emergency situations in over 30 countries around the world, some of which are in the public eye, others forgotten by the world’s media.

Oxfam makes the decision to launch an emergency response whenever lives, health, and livelihoods are threatened as a result of natural disasters or armed conflict. We will therefore respond to emergency situations anywhere in the world where we are confident we can save and protect lives. In any emergency, our primary goal is to reduce the incidence of death or sickness. But as well as responding after a crisis has happened, we help communities prepare for disasters which occur regularly in their area (eg monsoon flooding in Bangladesh) and stay on afterwards to make sure that people affected by the disaster can return to normal life wherever possible.

Food for Work/Recovery

Purpose and principles

The purpose of food for work is to provide food insecure households with opportunities for paid work from which to earn food- a livelihood, to be able simultaneously produce outputs that are of benefit to themselves and the community. The capable bodies or households should be identified in the community, preferably among the priority target groups. Informed bodies from within the target groups themselves could be consulted and activities should be selected by them and planned with their participation. Using local resources for sustaining the continuity of the program is essential. At the same time ideas previously studied from the same climate societies could be introduced and explored additionally to build local capacities. Activated should not be disincentive to local agricultural production nor should they undermine long term development projects.