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Locusts swarm into northern Uganda as Oxfam looks toward a $5m humanitarian response across region

Locust infestations have just hit two new districts in northern Uganda as they continue to plague Kenya, Ethiopia and Somalia, and threaten Sudan and South Sudan. There are also reports of the swarms now in Tanzania.

“Everyone is in panic and trying to make noise to drive the locusts away, says Oxfam’s Ethiopia Country Director Gezahegn Gebrehana.

This is the worst locust crisis in 70 years for Kenya alone. Locust breeding is continuing with more juvenile insects developing now, so the swarms could still get bigger, more widespread and last until June if not brought more quickly under control. There are already 22.8m people living in acute to severe food insecurity in those six countries following consecutive failed rainy seasons, unusual floods and storms.

The fast-moving locust swarms have been made worse by climate change because they have been encouraged to feed on newly “greened” vegetation, the result of unusual weather patterns. They are devastating pastures and grasslands and could ruin new food crops from the March-to-July growing season.

“We depend on livestock and if there is no fodder for our livestock, life will be difficult for us, we ask for help urgently,” said Mohammed Hassan Abdille, a farmer from Bura Dhima in Tana River, Kenya.

Oxfam is gearing up its humanitarian operations and will work closely with local partners and communities. It will aim to reach over 190,000 of the most vulnerable people with cash assistance, livestock feed, seeds and health services.

In Somalia, together with our partners, it aims to reach 11,670 households of the most vulnerable people. In Kenya, Oxfam will work inside the Arid and Semi-Arid Land (ASAL) Humanitarian Platform that has members in seven of the 13 affected counties and aims to assist 3000 households in the first phase of operations, and another 5,000 in the second. In Ethiopia, Oxfam aims to reach another 5,000 households with similar aid.

Oxfam will need to secure more than $5m to mount this response. Oxfam teams in South Sudan and Sudan are also preparing against the likelihood of new infestations there.

Oxfam says that lessons from the last local plague in the Sahel in 2003-5 showed that a two-pronged attack was vital, to control the pests as well as work to do everything possible to protect local people’s livelihoods and restore them as quickly as possible.

Oxfam continues to urge international donors to fully fund the FAO’s $76m appeal as soon as possible. The current total stands at around $18m. “This is the time for decisive action,” said Gebrehana.

Notes to editors:

  • Nearly 22.8 million people are severely food insecure (IPC 3 and above) as follows : in Ethiopia (6.7 million people), Kenya (3.1 million), Somalia (2.1 million), South Sudan (4.5 million), Sudan (5.8 million) and Uganda (600,000).
  • Given the scale of the current swarms, aerial control is the only effective means to reduce the locust numbers. In Ethiopia, ground teams and four aircraft are conducting control operations against swarms – nearly 8,000 hectares were treated in the first two weeks of January 2020. In Kenya, four aircraft are currently spraying, but operations have been limited due to available capacity or collective experience – Kenya last faced a Desert Locust invasion in 2007”
  • The outbreak, which has primarily been driven by the recent climatic shocks in the region, comes after Oxfam warned of a potential outbreak in Uganda end of last month.
  • The swarms which could grow 500 times bigger by June are devastating pasture and food supplies across parts of Ethiopia and Kenya and could also put South Sudan, Eritrea and Djibouti at risk, making it the worst of such situation in 25 years.
  • In Kenya, the locust swarms have increased significantly over the past month in across 13 counties including Isiolo, Samburu, Wajir, Garissa, Tana River, Marsabit, Laikipia, Mandera, Kitui, Baringo, Meru, Embu and Turkana

Millions of swarming locusts devastate crops

Photo: Nana Kofi Acquah/Oxfam

 

Swarms of locusts that are sweeping across Ethiopia, Kenya and Somalia could grow 500 times bigger by June and invade Uganda and South Sudan unless they are immediately brought under control, says Oxfam.

The plagues have hit the region at a time when it is already facing very high levels of food insecurity after countries there had been hit by huge droughts and in some areas flash floods.

“Currently, 25.5 million people in Burundi, Ethiopia, Kenya, Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan and Uganda are already suffering from hunger and severe malnutrition. These infestations of hundreds of millions of locusts need to be quickly contained before the next main cropping season of March to July,” said Lydia Zigomo, the Regional Director of Oxfam in Horn, East and Central Africa (HECA).

A large desert locust plague can contain up to 150 million individuals per square kilometre, with half a million locusts weighing approximately one tonne. One tonne of locusts eats as much food in one day as about 10 elephants, 25 camels or 2,500 people. The insects can destroy at least 200 tonnes of vegetation per day.

“Ethiopia has been in continuous drought since 2015 and then recently hit with floods that have all but destroyed the harvest. This locust infestation has now destroyed hundreds of square kilometres of vegetation in the Amhara and Tigray regions since November 2019. The cyclone in early December 2019 made the presence of locusts stronger. Local authorities are addressing the situation, but they need more help,” Zigomo said.

The locust swarms have increased significantly over the past month in across 13 Kenyan counties including Isiolo, Samburu, Wajir, Garissa, Tana River, Marsabit, Laikipia, Mandera, Kitui, Baringo, Meru, Embu and Turkana. These same counties have experienced devastating droughts and floods in recent years and over 3 million people there have been facing extreme levels of food insecurity. The swarms are destroying pasture for livestock and which will likely devastate the upcoming planting season.

In Somalia, tens of thousands of hectares of land have been affected in Somaliland, Puntland and Galmudug (Mudug), as mature swarms hit the Garbahare area near the Kenyan border. Locusts are also reported to be travelling south to Somalia’s Gedo region leaving a trail of destroyed farms. Operations are underway in the northeast (Puntland) to control the swarms that continue to move towards the central and southern areas. Insecurity in some of these parts is hampering efforts to survey and control the infestations.

Oxfam is part of a network of local partner organisations that is monitoring how much further damage the locusts will cause to local food crops. “We are making plans that include providing cash assistance to people most-in-need, particularly small-holder farmers and pastoralists, so they are able to buy food and fodder for their livestock,” said Zigomo.

The UN Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO) estimates that Ethiopia, Kenya and Somalia need $70m between them to tackle the plague. Oxfam is calling on donors to fund this response immediately, in order to avoid more people falling hungry and using up whatever assets they have to buy food.

Oxfam reaction to International Court of Justice decision on Myanmar

Rohingya

Reacting to today’s decision by the International Court of Justice to order Myanmar to carry out emergency provisional measures, Oxfam’s Head of Humanitarian Campaigns, Fionna Smyth, said:

“This ruling is an important step towards justice and accountability for the Rohingya people. We urge Myanmar to implement these measures immediately and call on all nations to support this independent judicial process.

“Rohingya people along with many other ethnic groups in Myanmar tell us that they continue to face violence and abuse. Over 100,000 Rohingya people remain confined to squalid camps where they have no access to emergency healthcare or formal education.

“As a matter of urgency, the Myanmar government should grant Rohingya people full citizenship, freedom of movement and basic human rights. It should also give investigators, humanitarian agencies and the media full access to central and northern Rakhine.

“More than 100 civil society organizations across Myanmar have voiced their support for this case and other ongoing accountability processes. We support their calls for justice.”

Unpaid care work traps millions of women in poverty

Care worker tending to her husband
Arlene Cinco is a shop owner and mother to 4 children in the Philippines. She spends all day working to earn money and doing all the care work for her family. Arlene’s husband, Eduardo, suffered from a stroke in 2016 and was consequently paralysed. She works several jobs to earn money for food, electricity, school fees and her husband’s medicines. Photo: Jed Regala/Oxfam

New Oxfam Report Reveals Sexist Economy

Women and girls put in 12.5 billion hours of unpaid care work each and every day, a contribution to the global economy of at least $10.8 trillion (NZD$16 trillion) a year, and more than three times the size of the global tech industry, reveals a new report from Oxfam today ahead of the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos, Switzerland.

Oxfam’s report, ‘Time to Care’, shows how our sexist economies are fuelling the inequality crisis – enabling a wealthy elite to accumulate vast fortunes at the expense of ordinary people and particularly poor women and girls:

  • The 22 richest men in the world have more wealth than all the women in Africa.
  • The world’s 2,153 billionaires have more wealth than the 4.6 billion people who make up 60 percent of the planet’s population
  • Getting the richest one percent to pay just 0.5 percent extra tax on their wealth over the next 10 years would equal the investment needed to create 117 million jobs in sectors such as elderly and childcare, education and health.
  • The minimum estimated value of unpaid care in New Zealand is NZD$41.4 billion.

Global inequality is shockingly entrenched and vast and the number of billionaires has doubled in the last decade. Oxfam India CEO Amitabh Behar, who is in Davos to represent the Oxfam confederation this year said: “The gap between rich and poor can’t be resolved without deliberate inequality-busting policies, and too few governments are committed to these.

“Women and girls are among those who benefit least from today’s economic system. They spend billions of hours cooking, cleaning and caring for children and the elderly. Unpaid care work is the ‘hidden engine’ that keeps the wheels of our economies, businesses and societies moving. It is driven by women who often have little time to get an education, earn a decent living or have a say in how our societies are run, and who are therefore trapped at the bottom of the economy,” added Behar.

Davos 2020, Women cleaning
Ruth is a mother of 7 in the Philippines.  She is the first to wake up, feeding the kids and getting them ready for school, and the last to sleep after she cleans the house and washes everyone’s clothes. If Ruth had more free time, she would want to run her own small business. Photo: Jed Regala/Oxfam

Women do more than three-quarters of all unpaid care work. They often have to work reduced hours or drop out of the workforce because of their care workload. Across the globe, 42 percent of women cannot get jobs because they are responsible for all the caregiving, compared to just six percent of men.

Women also make up two-thirds of the paid ‘care workforce’. Jobs such as nursery workers, domestic workers, and care assistants are often poorly paid, provide scant benefits, impose irregular hours, and can take a physical and emotional toll.

The pressure on carers, both unpaid and paid, is set to grow in the coming decade as the global population grows and ages. An estimated 2.3 billion people will be in need of care by 2030 – an increase of 200 million since 2015. Climate change could worsen the looming global care crisis – by 2025, up to 2.4 billion people will live in areas without enough water, and women and girls will have to walk even longer distances to fetch it.

The report outlines practical and powerful ways we can recognise, reduce and redistribute this care work. One solution is to make essential public services and infrastructure free and available to all –  services like primary healthcare, public transport, early childhood education, water, and care for people who are sick or older. This can be funded through taxing wealth.

Oxfam New Zealand’s executive director Rachael Le Mesurier said Kiwis have an opportunity during an election year to challenge the status quo and demand politicians create change.

“This year, we need to put the global economy on the right track so that we value the right things – including the care work of millions of women and girls – instead of billionaires’ wealth.

“Extreme inequality exists because we have designed our economies to spiral wealth to the very richest people, at the expense of ordinary people. But we can build an economy that values everyone, not just the wealthy elite.

“Governments use tax revenue to invest in the public services that are vital to reducing inequality and poverty. By taxing wealth properly and increasing investment in public services, we can recognise women’s care work for the massive contribution it is to our societies, and help reduce the unfair burden of care work on women so they can get an education, earn a decent living, and have a say in how our societies are run.

“Let’s reset the economy to look after each other, not billionaires’ fortunes. Properly taxing wealth can help us do that.”

 

Notes

The report, summary and methodology document explaining how Oxfam calculated the figures is available here.

Oxfam’s calculations are based on the most up-to-date and comprehensive data sources available. Figures on the share of wealth come from the Credit Suisse Research Institute’s Global Wealth Databook 2019. Figures on the very richest in society come from Forbes’ 2019 Billionaires List. Billionaire wealth fell in the last year but has since recovered.

Oxfam is part of the Fight Inequality Alliance, a growing global coalition of civil society organisations and activists that will be holding events from 18-25 January in 30 countries, including India, Kenya, Mexico, Pakistan, South Africa, Uganda and the UK, to promote solutions to inequality and demand that economies work for everyone.

Currencies were converted using Reserve Bank of New Zealand figures on 31 December 2019.

 

Oxfam’s annual Generosity Index highlights most giving Kiwis in Aotearoa

Bertha with the chickens she raises with support from Oxfam's livelihoods project in Vanuatu.
Bertha, 54, with the chickens she raises with support from Oxfam partner FSA. Oxfam Unwrapped donations support projects like Oxfam’s livelihoods work in Vanuatu, which provides training, tools and other support to women like Bertha. Photo: Artur Francisco/Oxfam

Oxfam New Zealand has published the results of its annual Generosity Index, revealing the most generous towns, cities and regions in the country.

Nelson-Tasman has been named New Zealand’s most generous region in 2019, beating the rest of the country for the biggest hearts. Last year’s winner, Wellington, came in second place with Otago rounding out the top three.

Every year, the Generosity Index ranks the most generous towns, cities and regions based on the number of Oxfam Unwrapped gifts purchased per capita.

Wellington City topped the list of most gifts per capita for a town or city, followed closely by Christchurch City and Auckland.

Rachael Le Mesurier, Executive Director of Oxfam New Zealand, said: “We’re incredibly thankful to all the wonderful Kiwis who chose to make a difference with their gift-giving this past year. It’s heartening to see more people making conscious purchasing decisions that empower others around globe. It’s that generous spirit that is helping to change lives.

“Oxfam Unwrapped is a unique way to give gifts that matter, through your donations to Oxfam’s work. Your continued support means that we can keep doing these vital projects in the Pacific and work with our local partners to support the world’s most vulnerable communities.

“Each and every one of the most generous regions, towns and cities have something to be proud of – congratulations and thank you for choosing to support Oxfam Unwrapped. Your generosity is truly inspiring, and is creating long-lasting change for people living in poverty.”

Oxfam Unwrapped is a charity gift catalogue and one of Oxfam New Zealand’s biggest fundraisers. When Kiwis purchase an Unwrapped gift, they receive a card relating to a particular Oxfam project. The funds are directed to where they’re needed most, giving someone living in poverty the chance of a better life.

The donations are vital in supporting Oxfam’s life-changing programmes in the Pacific and beyond, helping to improve access to water and sanitation, support vulnerable families in creating sustainable incomes, and promote gender equality.

The gift cards range from honey bees that support beekeepers and the ever-popular goat, to school supplies that assist children with learning and solar lamps that bring light. All the cards are symbolic representations of different to areas of Oxfam’s work. Donations go towards the related projects or wherever it’s needed most – meaning communities receive the type of support they truly need.

Gift cards can be purchased at oxfamunwrapped.org.nz or by calling toll-free on 0800 600 700.

The top ten most generous regions in Oxfam Unwrapped’s 2019 Generosity Index are:

  1. Nelson
  2. Wellington
  3. Otago
  4. Auckland
  5. Canterbury
  6. Manawatu-Wanganui
  7. Taranaki
  8. Marlborough
  9. Hawke’s Bay
  10. Waikato

The top ten most generous cities in Oxfam Unwrapped’s 2019 Generosity Index are:

  1. Wellington City
  2. Christchurch City
  3. Auckland
  4. Lower Hutt City
  5. Dunedin City
  6. Nelson City
  7. Palmerston North City
  8. Hamilton City
  9. Tauranga City
  10. New Plymouth District

Notes:

  • The Generosity Index is formulated by calculating the number of gifts given per capita from available population data.
  • Oxfam Unwrapped has raised over $6 million for Oxfam New Zealand’s work in the Pacific and around the world since its inception in 2005.

Open letter: New Zealand’s contribution at Global Refugee Forum

We, as members of civil society, former refugee leaders, resettlement, humanitarian and faith-based organisations in New Zealand collectively note the historic step of the inaugural Global Refugee Forum taking place in Geneva on the 17 and 18 December 2019. The Global Refugee Forum represents a significant opportunity for states and non-state actors to work together to respond to the challenges and opportunities of international forced displacement, and to uphold the rights and dignity of refugees around the world.

WE NOTE:

The commitment from the international community, including New Zealand, through the Global Compact on Refugees (GCR), affirmed by the United Nations General Assembly in December 2018, to strengthen solidarity with refugees and the communities that host them.

The unique opportunities that exist for New Zealand to contribute further to the development of the Global Compact on Refugees strategy towards 2021 which seeks to:

  • Grow resettlement, including with more protection places;
  • Advance complementary pathways by improving access and developing opportunities;
  • Build strong foundations by promoting welcoming and inclusive societies.

WE COMMEND the recent actions of the New Zealand Government in contributing to these goals, including:

  • The doubling of the Resettlement Quota to 1500 per year from 2019;
  • The piloting of the Community Organisation Refugee Sponsorship Category as a complementary pathway in 2018;
  • The removal of the “family link” criteria under the resettlement quota for refugees from the Middle East and Africa.

WE RECALL the urgent and increasing need to:

  • Actively build welcoming and inclusive communities in New Zealand and to prevent and eliminate all forms of violence and discrimination;
  • Establish new and sustainable pathways of safety for people fleeing conflict and persecution around the world with resettlement needs doubling in recent years, and 1.44 million refugees requiring resettlement in 2020.

WE CALL on the New Zealand Government to take the opportunity of the first Global Refugee Forum to commit to timely pledges that will complement those of civil society, advance the objectives of the Global Compact and build more welcoming, inclusive communities in New Zealand:

  1. Strengthen former refugee leadership, including youth leadership and capacity, in policy-making;
  2. Establish the Community Organisation Refugee Sponsorship category as a permanent and additional pathway in New Zealand’s broader refugee and humanitarian programme;
  3. Increase the number of places available per year under the Refugee Family Support Category.

Signed,

Amnesty International New Zealand

Asylum Seeker Support Trust

Aotearoa Resettled Community Coalition

Belong Aotearoa

Changemakers Resettlement Forum

Empower Youth Trust

Oxfam New Zealand

Refugees as Survivors New Zealand

Refugee Family Reunification Trust

South West Baptist Church

Tearfund New Zealand

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Oxfam is a worldwide development organisation that mobilises the power of people against injustice. Oxfam Aotearoa is a registered charity with the New Zealand Charities Register (registration CC24641). Donations are tax refundable.

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