News & Media

Oxfam warns of flood risk to Rohingya refugees as further monsoon rain forecast

July 12, 2019

Oxfam is warning that thousands of Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh are in danger after almost a month’s worth of rain fell in just a week.

Cox’s Bazar is home to the world’s largest refugee camp where more than 900,000 refugees live in fragile homes built from bamboo and tarpaulin.

Elizabeth Hallinan, Oxfam’s advocacy manager in Cox’s Bazar, said: “Days of heavy rain and landslides have left homes teetering precariously on the brink of steep ravines. Roads have turned into rivers and streams run down the steep hillsides between people’s houses.

“Oxfam is rushing to reinforce and repair vital infrastructures like toilets and handpumps. Our teams of Rohingya volunteers are ensuring that the most vulnerable refugees who have been forced from their flooded homes have basic household items and are in touch with the camp authorities.”

Safwatul Haque Niloy, Oxfam’s head of public health, said: “The mega-camp is built on hilly terrain and sandy soil that cannot withstand days of heavy rain. Low-lying areas are completely waterlogged and the ground has been churned up.

“People are worried that their homes will collapse. Our immediate concern is for children, pregnant women, older people and those with disabilities who will struggle to leave their homes in these dangerous conditions.

“We have also started monitoring for outbreaks of diarrheal disease which is a risk when there is contaminated water caused by flooding.”

Notes:

According to the IOM, more than 45,000 people have been affected by weather-related incidents since the end of April, and 5,600 people have been displaced.

Bangladesh is near the beginning of monsoon season, which will last until September. Weather monitoring stations in Cox’s Bazar registered 700mm of rain in the week to Monday 8 July. Average rainfall for July in Chittagong, the province in which Cox’s Bazar is located, is 733mm.

Oxfam and its partners are providing vital aid including clean water and food to Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh. So far, we’ve helped more than 266,000 people. You can donate to Oxfam’s Rohingya Crisis appeal here.

Let’s even it up with rules for all

July 4, 2019

Here at Oxfam we work hard to beat inequality.

We do this because inequality perpetuates poverty, erodes trust, fuels crime, makes us unhappy, negates economic growth, and robs opportunities from people who are struggling to get by. It even cuts short people’s lives.

How can tax fight poverty

It might surprise you to know, but one of the most important things we can do to build an inclusive world of abundance is to transform our international tax system.

The tax system is how we share resources to get the big-ticket items that we all benefit from: roads, schools, police, teachers, public libraries, nurses, clinics, rubbish collection, safe water, and electricity. These are the public services that everyone makes use of, but that people who are poor rely on. Evidence tells us that the tax system can be a powerful tool to end inequality and poverty.

Making the rules fair for all

Our international tax rules say what multinational corporations can do and what governments can tax. They are old, dating back to WWII. Multinational corporations have found ways to game the rules to drain profits away from countries where they should contribute taxes, to countries where they contribute next to nothing.

Multinational corporations have also used countries’ need for investment as leverage to drive down corporate tax rates to the lowest they have ever been. This bad behaviour robs opportunities from people across the world.

Preparing for a more digital future

Meanwhile, our economies are changing. More and more of our lives are online: we buy and sell things and information; and we create value for corporations through sharing our own information. This digital economy makes it hard for people in government to get multinational corporations – including digital corporations – to make their fair contribution where they actually operate.

In response to this, representatives from 129 governments around the world – including New Zealand – are coming together to talk about how to fundamentally change the rules to make the international tax system fit for the modern world.

If governments get this right, we could see the end of shadowy corporate tax havens and the damaging race to the bottom on corporate tax. It could mark the beginning of a new tax era with fair taxes; where countries get what they need to nurture their people and the planet.

Four things have to happen.

One. Let all countries take part in decisions about international tax rules

When decisions are being made that impact on us, it is only right that we have our say.

Yet, for decades the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) – a small club of only 36 wealthy countries, including New Zealand – has led decision-making about international tax rules. This has meant that countries that benefit from the rules have made the rules, leaving out countries that are poor.

This isn’t right, especially because countries that are poor rely most heavily on taxes from multinational corporations to provide services like health and education. They should be at the decision-making table.
The OECD has recently opened up to allow other countries to take part in decisions about international tax rules. But even now, only countries that have signed on to implement the OECD’s minimum tax standards are allowed to take part in decision-making. These 120 countries belong to what is called the ‘Inclusive Framework’. This means that many countries that are poor still don’t get a say in decisions about rules that impact on them.

Two. Simple rules that work for all

At the moment, the international tax system is incredibly complex. Even for New Zealand. When our people in parliament passed a law last year to help hold multinational corporations to account, the Specialist Tax Advisor said the legislation was “the most complex and technically challenging tax Bill that I have seen in the thirty years during which I have been a full-time tax professional”. *When an experienced tax accountant says something like this, you know it is bad.

Countries that are poor don’t have the resources to invest in sophisticated tax systems. This makes it more difficult for them to catch multinational corporations when they are gaming the rules and shirking from contributing their fair share. We need international tax rules that make the system simpler, not more complex. This will help us here in New Zealand, and also our neighbours across the Pacific region and beyond.

Three. Make rules that mean tax is paid where profits are made

For far too long, multinational corporations have been able to game the international tax rules to shift profits away from where they are made. They avoid contributing their fair share to the well-being of people in the countries where they make profits. It is time to make sure that the rules ensure all multinational corporations contribute their fair share, based on the actual profits they make in each country where they operate.

Four. Set a global minimum tax rate for multinational corporations

To beat inequality, we need a global minimum tax rate for multinational corporations – so they can’t get away with shirking their fair share. One way to stop multinational corporations driving corporate tax rates down and avoiding taxes across the world is for governments to agree on an ambitious minimum tax that all multinational corporations have to pay. This tax rate shouldn’t be too low – it needs to be set at a level that makes sure multinational corporations contribute their fair share in every country they operate. For this reason, the minimum tax rate also needs to be calculated at a country level – not just in the country where the multinational corporation has its headquarters.

*Turner, Therese, March 2018, Taxation (Neutralising Base Erosion and Profit Shifting) Bill, Report of the Specialist Tax Advisor to the Finance and Expenditure Select Committee, Turner & Associates: Wellington, Accessed on 2 September 2018 at: https://www.parliament.nz/resource/en-NZ/52SCFE_ADV_75623_942/041d34fc190035632c50dc2a00018cbee08b4fc7

Here’s how we’re helping rural farmers in Papua New Guinea

June 24, 2019

The onions from Steven Bare’s garden in the remote highlands of Papua New Guinea bring more smiles than tears. He’s thrilled to harvest another bumper crop.

Steven and his wife Maria have turned their family’s fortunes around since taking part in an Oxfam project that helps rural farmers improve the quality and quantity of their bulb onions.

Steven says, “In the past, we spent time in the gardens, but not as seriously as what we are doing today. When we got our heads together and started this group, Oxfam introduced the bulb onions to help us move forward. Oxfam funded the project, and with this came a lot of good things and change.”

Thanks to you, business is booming for Steven and the other families in his farming co-op.

“We became more engaged with this work and it has affected our way of thinking and working. We now have set aims and goals. Oxfam gave us bulb onion seeds. With this, our lives have changed a lot.

“This will be the third harvest. We distribute the income equally amongst the four families. With the second harvest’s sales, we put the money into school fees and invested more in bulb onions.”

The father of four daughters says, “In the past, we never thought we could live this type of life, living well … simply because we had no money. We did not have good things that make up a house, like nice plates, cups, mattresses, and pillows and blankets. But when Oxfam came in, we were introduced to bulb onions and this product brought money, just enough for us to buy what we always wished for.”

With a proud smile, he says, “This is life-changing.

Story originally featured in Oxfam Australia’s Voices July 2019.

Refugees the world over dream of rebuilding their shattered lives

June 20, 2019

Today is World Refugee Day, and with it comes a new world record: a global rise for the seventh year in a row in the total number of refugees, asylum seekers and forcibly displaced people.

Refugees the world over dream of rebuilding their shattered lives. Like us, they have experiences to share and ideas they dare to hope might one day turn into reality. Darren Brunk, a humanitarian specialist with Oxfam New Zealand, reflects on time spent in a refugee camp in Bangladesh.

DONATE TO OUR ROHINGYA REFUGEE RESPONSE

Both my grandmothers were expert quilters. My mother plays her sewing machine like Glenn Gould could a piano. I know a perfect stitch when I see one. But if you promise not to tell my mum, I’ll let you in on a secret; Sara beats them all, hands down.

I met Sara*, and others like her, at a women’s group in Teknaf; a refugee camp in Bangladesh. Sara and the fifteen other women sitting with me on the woven mat floor of a woven-walled shelter have fled vicious armed violence across the border in Myanmar.

The women laid out the most strikingly beautiful and intricate embroidery I have ever seen, making me think how much my mother and grandmothers would feel at home in this company. Proud women across many ages have shown me their work; colourful intricate patterns they hope to display on International Women’s Day, to share publicly the remarkable skills they’ve rarely been able to share outside the home. Skills they hope, if seen, can be used to generate money to alleviate some of the difficulties in their family’s frayed and stretched lives.

Sara has remarkable skills and also remarkable courage, to survive the horrors she has witnessed. And now, to join this women’s group, one of the first in the camps, where women are meeting publicly, some for the first time in their lives, to talk about the very different struggles men and women face in the camps. The burden for mending families and communities rests largely on women like Sara. In the Rohingya camps, women and girls are the majority. In the home, women invest 70 hours a week caring for other family members, compared to 11 for the average man.

Darren Brunk with women’s group in host community, talking about livelihood needs

In a very real way, in these camps, Sara is stitching her life back together. A needle and thread are her one hope for income in a country where, as a Rohingya, she is forbidden from work. The mats, walls and roof of her shelter are made of grasses woven expertly together by her hands. Even walking through the camps – a mad and tight patchwork of lanes and stairs twisting around sharp shorn hills – is like a needle stitching an intricate pattern; left to be unpicked to return from each trip to the latrine, community garden or string of corrugated iron shops lining the main roads.

Sara is a refugee. Today, World Refugee Day, belongs to her; it is a day to tell her story, to remember that in every aspect of her life, she is stitching and mending her way – and the way of her family and community – back to a full life. Last year there were more people displaced around the world than any time since the Second World War, including 25.4 million refugees. The numbers increased in 2018 for the seventh year in a row, including in Bangladesh where new arrivals add daily to the 900,000 Rohingya in the camps around Cox’s Bazar.

Darren with a men’s group talking about domestic violence and how to discuss with neighbours and community

As I sit with Sara and the women of this group; as I look at the art from their hands, I desperately wish I could buy one of these precious creations, and bring it home to New Zealand to better tell Sara’s story. But I can’t. I’m not here as a buyer. As a humanitarian, I am a partner to the whole group – a space where I have been welcomed, to sit and share their stories, so that I might learn how to best bring support to them all. If I choose one, what is the unwritten price that is paid? I may damage my ability to work with the others.

So I ask what the group needs; what are the tools we can help provide as they stitch their lives back together. To a woman, the answer is the same, ‘we want to go home.’

Looking at the beauty these women have made at their fingertips, I wonder at how much weaving they have yet to do in their lives, and if they will ever be able to follow the threads that tie them back to their homes.

There is still much work to do, by many. But for now I see that in these women’s hands, there is hope in its most tangible form.\

Folk singers singing songs about early forced marriage in Balukhali camp

*Name has been changed to protect identity.

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Oxfam confederation welcomes IC’s recommendations to continue culture change and safeguarding improvements

June 12, 2019

The Oxfam confederation welcomes the final report of the Independent Commission on Sexual Misconduct, Accountability and Culture Change.

“This is exactly the report we asked for following incidents of sexual misconduct in Haiti that came to light last year”, said Oxfam International Executive Director Winnie Byanyima. “We set up the Independent Commission to tell us hard truths about our organisation, and to be clear about where and how we can improve. Oxfam accepts the report’s findings and we welcome its recommendations.”

The report points to significant weaknesses in the global Oxfam’s reporting mechanisms, as well as safeguarding process failures and accountability gaps within country offices and individual Oxfam affiliates. While recognising that they are not universally in all Oxfam affiliates, the Commission also pointed to serious staff issues including a work culture that in some contexts can be unsupportive and even toxic. They also note that the complexity of the organisation of the confederation may be hampering Oxfam’s ability to comprehensively address the safeguarding and organisational culture challenges.

“As an African woman, I encounter both sexism and racism in many places I go. I am pained and angered that some colleagues have done so within our organisation. We are forcefully challenging such unacceptable behaviours. I am determined to ensure that Oxfam’s internal culture lives up to the values we espouse in our work around the world”, said Winnie Byanyima.

At the same time, the Commission recognises the progress that has been made by all Oxfam to strengthen its approach to safeguarding and the organisation’s “tremendous will, energy, and commitment to reform.” Since February 2018, the Commission notes that Oxfam has taken important steps, including but not limited to new confederation wide prevention of sexual misconduct and child protection policies, standard operating procedures for reporting misconduct and a single Oxfam-wide safeguarding network. The report notes that Oxfam globally also recently developed its first survivor supporter guidelines and is working together with partners to build their capacity to address and prevent misconduct. In addition, Oxfam has strengthened its annual performance review approach to ensure that all staff support our values, our code of conduct and our leadership expectations. These changes form part of the improvements that Oxfam has been making under its “Ten Point Action Plan” to transform its working culture and strengthen its global safeguarding systems

Winnie Byanyima said: “I thank the Commission for recognising and valuing the important changes we have already made. They have rightly said we must now be courageous in delivering further reform. I could not agree more. We are moving quickly in changing our workplace culture and will continue to implement all of the recommendations of the Commission.”

Additional actions that Oxfam is planning include:

Mobilising a new €550,000 (NZD 940,000) “Global Integrity Fund” to help strengthen safeguarding work of local civil society organisations;
Boosting its own safeguarding capacity and resources in the most fragile and challenging environments in which it operates;
Establishing two new global senior leadership roles of Chief Ethics Officer and Culture Lead

The report described Oxfam’s 10,000 worldwide staff as its “greatest asset” and noted that they are “eager to contribute to building a safer Oxfam.”

“I am constantly humbled by the sheer dedication of my colleagues, whose tireless work to combat global poverty and inequality is recognised in the report,” Byanyima said. “As the Commission says, our staff are passionate about and loyal to Oxfam’s values – they want to see Oxfam change and grow. We owe it to them to deliver, and they should be part of this process.”

The Commission also referenced its research into local communities’ experiences in three countries where multiple international and local agencies were working on major humanitarian responses. Where the Commission could identify information about a specific agency or individual, it was able to alert that agency to investigate. The Commission presented no new or specific allegations of sexual abuse against Oxfam staff from this research.

Nevertheless, Oxfam says that the levels of sexual abuse and exploitation of local people the Commission describes from this part of its research were shocking and deeply unacceptable.

Rachael Le Mesurier, Oxfam New Zealand’s Executive Director said that “while the Commission did not refer any specific new allegations of sexual abuse to Oxfam about our staff, that doesn’t lessen our concern or our duty to act”. Le Mesurier said that Oxfam abhors the sexual abuse of vulnerable local people and that “tragically we have not done enough in the past to ensure that the communities we work with are protected and able to live their lives with dignity. The IC has urged our sector to redouble its commitment in this area, and we are ready to play our part.”

Le Mesurier said: “The Commission says that Oxfam affiliates around the world, have taken an important step in being publicly committed to change and transparent in our work. I’m heartened that it says we have the potential to become a voice of leadership in wider sector reform, in all the countries where we work. But it has given a strong warning that we should not under-estimate the task ahead of us – and I, along with all of the Oxfam leadership, can assure everyone, we absolutely do not.”

UPDATE 28 JUNE 2019:

Since the publication of the Independent Commission’s report and issuing of this press release, Oxfam’s safeguarding team has conducted a review of background documents which had been passed to us during the final part of the Commission’s work.

This background material, which included testimony from confidential and anonymised focus groups conducted by Proteknon researchers for the Commission, has raised potential safeguarding issues of direct concern to Oxfam which we will now investigate. This is in addition to our continuing response to broader concerns arising from the Commission’s work, which it had raised directly with us at an earlier stage of its work.

We were extremely concerned to learn of this new information and are in contact with former members and staff of the IC to establish more detail. We will provide full support to anyone who wishes to make a formal complaint, and will do all we can to help identify any alleged perpetrators and hold them to account. We will also offer support to survivors who come forward.

Where there is evidence of an offence, we will, with the consent of the survivor, refer evidence to the appropriate authorities. The UK Charity Commission and relevant donors have been notified and we will keep them updated.

Oxfam is committed to tackling abuse and we are grateful to anyone with the courage to come forward.

We update once every six months on the outcome of completed cases as part of our safeguarding 10-point plan update.

-ends-

Notes to Editors:

Oxfam set up the Independent Commission in Feb 2018 and gave it a full mandate – independently and publicly – to investigate its work and highlight what more Oxfam needed to do. The Commission was joined by eminent human rights leaders, including a former Women’s Minister in Haiti and a global expert on Sexual Violence in Conflict. Visit the Independent Commission’s website here.

Find out more about Oxfam’s Ten-Point Plan to transform its working culture and improve its collective systems of safeguarding policies and practises here.

Oxfam New Zealand is a part of an international confederation of 20 independent affiliates, working to end the injustice of poverty worldwide.

Oxfam International Response To UK Charity Commission Report

June 11, 2019

Oxfam Great Britain has today welcomed and accepted the UK Charity Commission’s judgment following its investigation into serious sexual misconduct by members of Oxfam Great Britain staff in Haiti in 2011.

Oxfam Great Britain has apologised for its failings in its investigation and case management at the time and, as Executive Director of Oxfam International, I underline Oxfam Great Britain’s apologies and reaffirm the organisation’s abhorrence for, and zero tolerance of, abusive behaviour, sexual or otherwise.

It is a violation of everything Oxfam stands for. I would like to restate our confederation’s collective commitment to keep working hard to transform our workplace culture and improve safeguarding systems.

While this was the UK charity regulator’s report into Oxfam’s Great Britain affiliate, it is clear we can only challenge these abuses if we do it together as an international confederation.

In this light, I look forward to tomorrow’s publication of the final report of the Independent Commission On Sexual Misconduct, Accountability and Culture Change.

Oxfam set up the Independent Commission in February 2018 and gave it a full mandate – independently and publicly – to investigate Oxfam’s work and to highlight what more we needed to do.

The Commission was joined by eminent human rights leaders, including a former Women’s Minister in Haiti and a global expert on Sexual Violence in Conflict.

The UK Charity Commission and the Independent Commission – despite their different mandates – are both helping us tremendously, by holding us to account and providing advice, as we work to become an organisation in which every person feels safe, respected and dignified.

While we have made significant progress this last year, we are on a long journey of learning and improvement and we know that we have a lot more to do. We will continue to humbly listen, to understand and to change.

Winnie Byanyima, Oxfam International Executive Director, 11 June, 2019

Notes:
To read the report, visit the UK Charity Commission’s website to read the report.
Read more about the action Oxfam has taken to improve safeguarding policies and practices and to transform our organisational culture.