Today I met a girl whose face you'll never see because she's too scared about what will happen when she returns to Syria, "I don't want my photograph to be taken because I'm afraid that when we go back something might happen to us." If I quoted her on everything she said, you would say I made it up. She's 12 going on 25.
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The human cost of Syria's conflict has risen beyond all expectations. There are already more than 1.3 million Syrian refugees in neighbouring countries. Inside Syria itself, 6.8 million people struggle in urgent need of assistance. As we publish a new briefing note on the crisis, Ed Cairns describes how, as the numbers grow, the money to help some of those refugees and displaced people is running out.
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Advocacy officer Helena Whall on the forthcoming historic opportunity to create a binding robust treaty that will regulate the international trade in arms.
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After a difficult start, Oxfam's fragile states project Within and Without the State has been making significant and exciting progress in South Sudan over the last few months. The team are now at the stage of selecting civil society organisation (CSO) partners. Rama Anthony explains more.
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Samira. Photo: Luca Sola
Samira is a Syrian refugee. She arrived three days ago. She's living in a self-made shelter with just one room, which she shares with 12 other people.
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Caroline Baudot, humanitarian policy advisor, describes her experiences working with Oxfam in camps in Mauritania, Burkina Faso and Niger, hosting refugees fleeing Mali's conflict.
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Take a look at the hands of married women who've fled Syria to take refuge in neighbouring Lebanon and you'll notice that almost all aren't wearing any jewellery. Many families fled the fighting in Syria with little more than the clothes on their backs. Desperate, traumatised, and in severe need, families were forced to sell off whatever they had with them to get out of the country, find a flat or a space to shelter and buy...
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Ed Cairns, an Oxfam senior policy adviser, looks back on a very mixed year in humanitarian crises.
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Two weeks after the ceasefire. Six days after Palestine became a UN 'non-member observer state'. Where are we now? As Jabr Qudeih, a local aid worker in Gaza says: There's a truce, but all the key issues, the crossings, fishing, farmland, are still to be negotiated. Unless there's a fundamental political solution, everything is liable to collapse again.
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Last Sunday marked International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women. Why is this day important? Well, it serves as a reminder that violence against women happens across the world every single day. Not only is it a violation of human rights, it also continues to trap women in poverty. It must be stopped.
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