Rights in crisis

When disasters strike, we provide emergency assistance to those affected, particularly focusing on access to clean water and latrines. But at the same time we work with policy makers to ensure more is done to avert disasters in the first place. This can be achieved by building people's resilience to weather shocks like floods and droughts.

Case study - West Africa

Millions of people across West Africa are at risk of a serious food crisis.

Low rainfall, poor harvests, high food prices and a lack of pasture are all causing serious problems across the Sahel region. Oxfam aims to reach around 1 million with emergency support.

2,000 people die each day from armed violence. 26 million are currently displaced within their own countries by armed conflict. And around 30 conflicts still continue around the world today.

Case study: Afghanistan and the DRC

It's over ten years since the current war in Afghanistan started. Despite huge amounts of money spent, it remains one of the poorest countries in the world. International attention is focused on the war, often ignoring the Afghan people's needs - to break the cycle of poverty, gain sustainable futures and educate young people including girls. 

The crisis in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) is often forgotten about by the rest of the world. Yet in the last five years as many people have been killed there as died in the whole of the Second World War. People continue to be attacked and displaced. 

For more than 20 years the people of central Africa have suffered attacks from the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA), a rebel group responsible for widespread human rights abuses. Since 2008, they have killed over 2,300 people and abducted over 3,000 - and the numbers are increasing.

Millions of people in the DRC are vulnerable to attacks by the brutal LRA. With no phone coverage it is extremely difficult for them to warn each other of danger and ask for help. Find out more about the situation.

There are currently no legally binding, international rules regulating the arms trade.

This trade has catastrophic results - in an average year, small arms kill around a third of a million men, women and children - leaving hundreds of thousands more injured, disabled, and traumatised.

Oxfam is part of the Control Arms coalition, working to secure an international treaty to prevent the illegal trade in weapons which fuel atrocities.