Featured image for “The world is seeing more extreme heat – so why don’t we plan for it like other humanitarian disasters?”

The world is seeing more extreme heat – so why don’t we plan for it like other humanitarian disasters?

July 29, 2025
Despite the climate crisis driving more bouts of devastating heat, too much of the world remains poorly prepared. Nuzhat Nueary introduces new Oxfam/FCDO research that looks at the links between extreme heat and water scarcity and highlights glaring gaps in humanitarian response. Why is extreme heat not seen as an urgent priority for global action in the same way as other
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Featured image for “Women in the Global South know exactly how to support their own communities – so why don’t we get behind them?”

Women in the Global South know exactly how to support their own communities – so why don’t we get behind them?

July 7, 2025
What does it mean for international NGOs to truly shift power? At Oxfam, we think our fund for grassroots women’s rights organisations, which is founded on the principle that our partners should decide what to spend money on, holds some of the answers. Oxfam GB CEO Dr Halima Begum writes here about a project that last week won two 2025 Charity Awards. 
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Featured image for “School-age children aren’t getting the food they need in emergencies – why have they been forgotten?”

School-age children aren’t getting the food they need in emergencies – why have they been forgotten?

July 3, 2025
Here in Nigeria, and around the world, programmes too often fail to deliver the diet that children aged 5-19 need to thrive, says Tolulope Jayeola, who is a Youth Partner of the NGO Emergency Nutrition Network. She introduces a new paper that sets out how they can get better food and a real voice in programmes, with a core demand of at least one nutritious meal a day.
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Featured image for “Cities besieged, bakeries bombed, fields set alight: it’s time to end the use of starvation as a weapon of war”

Cities besieged, bakeries bombed, fields set alight: it’s time to end the use of starvation as a weapon of war

May 6, 2025
The blockade of food, water and relief that has brought so much hunger and suffering to Gaza is the latest example of the growing use of starvation as a weapon of war, say Lawrence Robinson and Désirée Ketabchi. That’s why Oxfam has become a founding member of the Coalition Against Conflict and Hunger – a group of civil society organizations set up last year to end the deliberate use of starvation tactics in conflict and promote the protection of civilians and humanitarian space.
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Featured image for “Leadership in a global aid meltdown – top tips from 25 people who know”

Leadership in a global aid meltdown – top tips from 25 people who know

March 6, 2025
FP2P’s Duncan Green has a shiny new blog about activism, influencing and change, hosted by the LSE, which we’ll be sharing highlights from here. You can also subscribe here. In this post from the new blog, he shares some advice from humanitarian leaders in this bleak time for the sector – including talk more often to staff and partners, “watch the fog closely” and “don’t blabber” – and offers a couple of thoughts of his own.
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Featured image for “How the surge in land seizures and violence by Israel in the West Bank adds up to a brutal new level of oppression”

How the surge in land seizures and violence by Israel in the West Bank adds up to a brutal new level of oppression

February 27, 2025
The incursion of Israeli tanks into the West Bank this week is just the latest step in an intensifying and systematic crackdown. Bushra Khalidi on five repressive tactics the Israeli government has been using, including new laws that will accelerate annexation. The strategy, she says, is now clear: make Palestinian life unlivable.
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Featured image for “A question from Lebanon to international humanitarians…”

A question from Lebanon to international humanitarians…

November 1, 2024
As organisations race to respond to the unfolding crisis in Lebanon, Nadine Saba – representing hundreds of Lebanese and Global South NGOs – spoke at the recent Grand Bargain humanitarian gathering in Geneva. Here, we share an edited transcript of her powerful address…
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Featured image for “Why Oxfam is involved in a court case on UK arms sales to Israel”

Why Oxfam is involved in a court case on UK arms sales to Israel

July 4, 2024
Oxfam has applied to formally intervene in a court case brought against the UK government over arms sales to Israel. Richard Stanforth explains why…
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Featured image for “Six big humanitarian policy trends for 2024”

Six big humanitarian policy trends for 2024

January 4, 2024
Irwin Loy and Will Worley have an excellent 2024 curtain raiser on The New Humanitarian, which is now by some distance my favourite aid blog. It’s a bit long by FP2P standards, so I’ve cut it down a bit: Money: Learning to do less with less  In 2023, humanitarians took a look in the mirror and admitted what everyone already knew: They don’t have
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Great new 110 page guide to humanitarian campaigning

July 6, 2016
Just been browsing through a brilliant new Oxfam guide to humanitarian campaigning. A treasure trove of 110 pages crammed full of wisdom, experience and 32 case studies on everything from addressing tribal conflicts in Pakistan to gender responsive work with Syrian refugees to influencing Australia’s humanitarian policy. And no sign of an executive summary. Sigh. To be fair, it would
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Is the International Humanitarian System hitting a tipping point on ‘going local’?

October 1, 2015
Marc Cohen, Senior Researcher at Oxfam America, is excited about the new World Disasters Report Over the past two years, a boatload of reports and studies has pointed to the need to shift to greater local leadership of disaster prevention, preparedness, and response. In part this is driven by mounting humanitarian needs and the growing gap between those needs and
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A Novel Idea: Would Fiction be a better induction to a new job than boring briefings?

March 31, 2015
A mysterious, anonymised, scarlet pimpernel character called J. flits around the aid world, writing a blog (Tales from the Hood – now defunct, but collected into a book, Letters Left Unsent) and fiction. He asked me for a plug for the latest novel, Honor Among Thieves. Here’s the plot blurb: ‘Mary-Anne has left East Africa and traded in her dusty
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