Andy Jarvis at CIAT & Bioversity International's presentation on the impact of climate change on crop production around the world. Photo credit: Neil Palmer / CIAT.

Growing and selling food depends on a huge number of people, inputs and processes, from producers and buyers, through to infrastructure for transport, distributors and retailers. But if you were to select the most important factors that the rest of the system depends on, they would be good land and a favourable climate. The latter is now under threat.

With an increasing world population, and rising demand for meat and dairy products (which are much more wasteful in land and other input requirements) producing enough food is already a challenge. And to top it off we also have to deal with a rapidly changing climate. There are currently 1 billion hungry people in the world and the number is rising. The plight of these, and the millions of others who are already being hit hard by climate change, is highlighted in a new report published by Oxfam today. The report ‘Suffering the Science‘ highlights how erratic weather, in combination with other pressures, has resulted in failed harvests and increasing hunger across the developing world.

So what should we do? At the International Science Congress in Copenhagen earlier this year, I was asked what I would do if I had a million dollars. I jokingly replied that I would bribe some politicians to commit to radical reductions in greenhouse gas emissions when their countries meet in the same city in December, to hammer out a climate deal.

But the truth is that the single most important investment society must make - right now - is to ensure that the deal struck in Copenhagen takes a major stance on curbing emissions. Whether it takes a million or a billion dollars or more. One single dollar spent today will avoid countless dollars of economic losses and serious human suffering in the future. We must act now, at the political level, to drastically cut emissions and keep below the 2 degrees C “safety zone” for increases in temperature. If we don’t, it will create innumerable challenges for our food system.

Unfortunately, it doesn’t stop in December. No matter what, we’re going to have to confront the growing challenge of climate change. We should have acted 50 years ago, but back then we were clueless about how we were damaging our planet. Now we have the knowledge and the scientific proof - we have to act now. Tackling emissions is just the beginning. Agriculture needs to become “eco-efficient” and use resources and inputs more sustainably.

We at the International Centre for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT) have been looking at a range of scenarios for the likely impact of climate change on agriculture. I’d like to highlight one study we did in Latin America, on coffee.

In Colombia alone, there are over half a million smallholder coffee farmers who depend on the crop. In Central America, coffee is the second greatest source of rural income for the 20 million-or-so farmers in the region. If you take into account the associated rural businesses that buy, transport, process and export the crop, you realise that coffee is a major contributor to GDP for most countries in the region.

We looked into the future of coffee production in Central America, to see what climate change has in store. The findings are shocking. For example, Nicaragua will lose half of its potential coffee-growing area if temperatures increase by 2 degrees C. That means a large proportion of the country’s GDP will be wiped out and 2.5 million rural coffee farmers will have to find an alternative means of feeding their children. And for all you coffee lovers out there, we find the first thing to disappear is quality. So as the world acquires a taste for decent coffee, climate change will reduce significantly the global capacity to produce a quality cuppa. And that means higher prices for the consumers.

So what do we do about it? Well first, lobby and campaign for serious curbs in emissions when world leaders discuss ways to tackle climate change at the end of the year. Then we need to identify the most vulnerable elements in our food system, and work with farmers to help them adapt to the changes that are coming. As a global society, we need to prepare ourselves for a very challenging future.

Read the report: ‘Suffering the Science‘

Find out more: Oxfam and climate change

Tents at Johir Ad Dik. Photo credit: Oxfam.

On top of this, six months ago people in Gaza endured a three-week Israeli military operation and intense conflict with Palestinian armed groups.  More than 4000 homes were destroyed.  Schools and factories, hospitals and flour mills were bombed and shelled.  Water wells and electricity lines were blown up. Fields and olive groves were torn apart.  Over 1400 hundred Palestinians died, some were armed fighters, most were not.

Two days ago I revisited Gaza yet again.  Hamas is still in control and people say more organised than before.  The Oxfam office now has 20 staff and an annual budget of more than £8 million pounds mostly for humanitarian aid.  That’s a seven-fold increase in misery if our response is proportional to the need.  I took a trip out of Gaza City to see what this looks like.

I had visited Sameh El Sawafiri’s family chicken farm before.  The first time I was impressed by the noise.  Forty thousand chickens eating and laying eggs.  Oxfam was buying 15,000 eggs each week for the poorest 500 families in Gaza City.  The eggs were part of our poor-to-poor fresh food aid programme.  The second time I visited, this February I was impressed by the smell.  40,000 dead chickens rotting where the Israeli army had used bulldozers or tanks to crush them in their cages.  This time I was impressed by Sameh’s determination to rebuild his business.

Sameh El Sawafiri's chicken farm after it was destroyed by Israeli ground forces. Photo credit: Oxfam.

“Five families depend on my business for everything,” he told me, “I have no choice.”  He explained that he has paid £30 a bag for two tons of cement. Before the blockade, it cost 33 pence a bag.  Labour to recycle mangled cages and metal building supports cost three times as much as new materials.  These are not available because of the blockade.  Sameh is deep in debt.  The 10,000 chickens he has been raising from eggs have two more months to grow before they start laying.  They eat £700 worth of food each week.

I asked if the blockade affects anything else.  “Everything,” he said, “When the Israeli troops were in my house they broke all the furniture and electrical equipment.  They even cut holes in my mother’s clothes and underwear.  I can’t replace any of it because of the blockade.”  I didn’t see the damaged clothing but all the plastic chairs and the table we sat around to drink sweet tea were neatly mended with strips of wire or metal plates fixed with nuts and bolts.  Holes punched by ammunition in cement block walls were uncovered and raw as they had been when I saw them in February.

Sameh explained the problems he faces now.  “I can’t mend the damage to the house until the blockade on building materials is lifted.  Even if I get compensation money I will use it to pay off my debts.  If the blockade stays and I get no compensation it will take me 10 years to save enough to rebuild the rest of my farm.  The building work itself is a six month job.”  This is living on the front line of collective punishment.

Further south, east of the main Salah Ad Din Road lies Johir Ad Dik.  What is left of this ravaged village sits close to the Israeli border.  Driving round the tidied piles of building debris and the battered school I counted dozens of pale green nylon tents.  Scattered amongst the grey smashed concrete they reminded me more of an Everest base camp than the tents of refugees.

Um Shetewe described how she has pulled together a two tent shelter for her family of eight.  Water comes from the local municipality through a surface pipe that somehow escaped damage.  Electricity was restored after only three months.  She is not so fortunate with the toilet which is a hole under a small cloth cubicle.  She says at least they have it to themselves.  Children and parents all use a bowl at the back of the sleeping tent for bathing.

Um Shetewe listed Oxfam amongst several agencies that had provided parts of the support she relies on.  Her husband lost his job when the municipality car he was paid to drive was crushed during the Israeli military occupation of their village.  In February, the Palestinian Authority provided a single hardship payment of £2,500 that she has used for all their living expenses since then.  It is almost all gone now.

One humanitarian agency gave her a coupon for £75 that helped to replace the kitchen equipment the family lost.  Oxfam and Unicef provided a hygiene kit (plastic bowls, soap, shampoo toothbrushes, toothpaste, combs, sanitary towels etc), parts of which she is still using.  Her daily juggling act with money means that sometimes her daughter cannot get to her university course because Um Shetewe does not have £1 for the fare to get there and back.  She is supposed to attend 5 days a week.  Her brothers walk for an hour to get to school since the bicycles they used to use were flattened along with their house in January.

It was hot standing talking to Um Shetewe outside her tent.  It would have been hotter inside.  Now I have some idea what misery looks like, although I can’t know exactly what it feels like any more than I know what it feels like to live under the threat of rockets from Gaza.  There is no justification for illegal actions, no matter what the size.  There is no justification for making civilians suffer in this way.  It’s time to open Gaza. Now.

Crisis in Gaza: Oxfam’s response

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Manahil, Ruksana's baby daughter. Photo Credit: Oxfam.

“I gave birth in a car. There was no woman present - I had to go through the pain by myself. “Here [in the school] we have no facilities for pregnant women or those recovering from childbirth.”

“Its hard to live here with men and women who we don’t know. I am pregnant and don’t like men staring at me,” says Pari Jan, who sixth baby is due in four months. Along with several other families, she is living in a school building in Mardan district.  Her sister-in-law, Shakeela lives there too and is just one month away from labour. Pashmina, another woman living in the school, says she is five months pregnant.

These three women are worrying whether they will make it to their homes before they go into labour. “My doctor was advising me to walk, drink and eat fruit during pregnancy for the health of the baby,” Pari Jan says. “We can’t walk, can’t take proper rest, food is always short, medicine is unaffordable and getting some fruit is out of the question. Just a few days ago a woman was suffering from labour pain in this building. She was taken to a nearby clinic and the doctor refused to help her without a fee. We raised Rs 5000 from people living in the school and the nearby village. The doctor helped her after he received the money.

“Since we have been displaced from our homes in Swat, I haven’t had a proper medical check-up. A lady health worker comes to see me but if I need medicine I don’t have the money to buy it. We don’t even have enough to cover day-to-day expenses. If the local people stop helping us, we will die here out of hunger, thirst or heat.”

Pashmina says it’s not only a question of food for them but also a sense of losing respect while living in camps and schools with strangers. As a proud Pashtun, Pashmina values her privacy. “I don’t want my husband asking people to help him because his wife is having a baby.”

Robina Yasmin, a health worker, also displaced and living in the same school, expresses her concerns over the health of the pregnant women. “Without bed and medicine, pregnant women are suffering from mental stress, depression and back pain.”

Kalsum (20) is living in Yar Hussain/Lahore camp and will give birth to her second baby in July.  She tells me that it is very hard for her living in this condition among strange people. “My husband tells me to stay in the tent. It is not easy sitting in one place for the whole day. I am not a prisoner.  At the same time he is right to protect my privacy.”

Over 90 percent of displaced women from Swat and nearby districts and towns are illiterate. Language is yet another barrier for them to communicate their health problems to non-Pashtu speaking visiting doctors or medical practitioners. This camp has lady doctors but unfortunately they don’t speak Pashto. “I can’t understand them and they can’t understand me. I would feel uncomfortable discussing my health problems with someone who does not speak my language,” said Kulsum.

The UN estimates there are about 70,000 pregnant women among the people displaced from Swat, Dir and Bunir districts. It says more than 250 births take place every day in the camps and public buildings with as many as 40 pregnant women facing life-threatening complications without proper medical assistance.

Pakistan conflict: Oxfam’s response

Donate to the Pakistan Appeal

I am surprised and at the same time pleased when a guard stops me for my identification. I pass through a gate into a walled compound where long lines of white tents are set up on both sides of a pebbled path. In one corner children compete for their turn on the slides. To my left there are more rows of tents along a different path.

Hasan Jan (50), father of 4 and the leader of the ‘wash committee’ of the Umeed camp emerges from his tent to greet us. He proudly tells us, “I am lucky that I have my family in this camp. You will not find a camp like this any where.”

Water and sanitation facilities in Umeed Camp. Photo credit: Oxfam.

Mr Jan is eager to give us a tour of the camp. As he walks through the camp he shows us a  water cooler, latrines and health points. “When the fighting started, I left my home and stayed with a relative for three days. That house was full already and I decided to come to this camp.” We have running water here, we get cooked food, we have separate areas for women to bathe. Our children have a school. I am lucky and thankful.” Even so, he thinks of his home in Swat. “You can give me all the things in the world but I still want to go back to my home. Here I feel like a refugee. You cannot call a tent your home.”

While Hasan Jan is extremely hopeful about returning home, Iqbal Khan  (37) worries about the future. He has been leaving in the camp with eight members of his family for almost a month. ” I think my living conditions are better than most people in other camps. But you need more than food and water.  I wanted to buy ice for water, but I don’t have money.”  He would like to work and move his family to a rented house. ” I cannot let my family live in a tent.  It costs 20,000 rupees (£160) to rent a room in this area. I look for work every day but no success. There is not much work in this area.” He is thinking of working for lesser wages than the current local rate of about 200 rupees. Iqbal will work for half that.

Children fill up at one of the water points provided by Oxfam. Photo credit: Oxfam.

He walks us out of the camp, shakes my hands and returns to his work. On the way back to the office, I see hundreds of tents on the side of the road. These tents don’t have any water points or bathing areas. They do not have any playground equipment or schools for their children. These makeshift tents of cloth and sticks create a sense of privacy. Home is where you have privacy from the rest of the world.  Whatever their living conditions, all the displaced people are aware of how futile it is to attempt to create a home from home here. They are all waiting for one event - the day when they can go back to their home. They all take solace knowing that it is only a temporary situation.

Pakistan conflict: Oxfam’s response

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“Water is the main problem in this camp. The water we get is dirty and warm,” Zeenat Begum from Swat tells me.”It is very hot in the tents,” she continues. “We don’t get enough food for our families. For everything we have to stand in line for hours.”  When I ask her what she and her family most need, she answers without hesitation: “we need water coolers to store water and keep it cool.”

A woman returns from a relief distribution. Photo credit: Oxfam

Without proper water and sanitation facilities, the thousands of people who have sought shelter in camps like Yar Hussain are at risk from diseases such as diarrhoea and malaria.  That’s why Oxfam is installing more than 200 latrines and a water distribution system to provide water throughout the camp.

We are also trying to create an area of enclosed space where women can wash and do their daily household chores in privacy. Mother of two Halima told me that the separate latrines and washrooms have brought a sigh of relief for them because it was difficult to go to the other parts of the camp.

Female-headed households can send a male representative to receive their household kits. Photo credit: Oxfam

Getting relief is a difficult and lengthy process for everyone, especially women. Oxfam is working hard to make it easier for women to get what they need. Female-headed households can send a male representative to receive their household kits. “As a women I always face difficulties to receive anything,” says Husan Jan from Char Bagh. “But I was given a token the day before the distribution [of hygiene kits], and so I was able to send my son with the token and my ID card.”

Pakistan conflict: Oxfam’s response

Donate to the Pakistan Appeal

Ok I’m getting tired of picking holes in the arguments of aid sceptics, so here’s something positive - a specific example of what aid can achieve in a country like Nepal, which is recovering from a decade of conflict with devastating consequences for the delivery of basic services. One third of its population lives below the poverty line and one woman dies every two hours during pregnancy and childbirth.

Together with other donors, the UK gives money directly to the Nepalese government for the health sector, allowing it to scale up and strengthen its public health system. In January 2008, aid helped the government of Nepal to abolish user fees in health care. Nepal has made impressive progress. In just five years the under five mortality rate was reduced by around a third, and since 1996 the maternal mortality rate has fallen by 50 per cent. Nepal is on target to meet the Millennium Development Goal on child mortality before 2015 if present trends can be sustained.

The Safe Motherhood Programme is an example of co-ordinated support for the government health system, with a specific focus on saving women’s lives. The UK has provided £20 million over five years to finance the programme, which trains doctors and nurses, improves health care facilities, provides equipment, and encourages women to give birth in hospitals where qualified health workers can oversee their delivery and deal with any complications.

The Programme incorporates the innovative ‘Maternity Incentives Scheme’, which pays women to give birth in a hospital or health centre. Transport costs in Nepal are high, and there are very few good roads in the most mountainous provinces. In the past, these factors have prevented many women from travelling to a hospital or health centre to give birth. All across Nepal, women who give birth in a hospital or health centre now receive an average of 1,000 rupees (£7.50) after the birth of their first and second children. In most cases this is enough to cover transport costs and may even leave some money over to buy essential items for the new baby. Another aspect of the scheme is the payment to health workers of 300 rupees for each birth that they attend. This includes home deliveries, and is therefore an added incentive to make the sometimes arduous journey to rural areas to attend births.

What has been the impact?  As well as the impressive decrease in the maternal mortality rate, over the last decade the percentage of births attended by a doctor, midwife or nurse has increased by 10 per cent, and in the past year an extra 60,000 women were able to give birth in health facilities.

Don’t get me wrong, there’s still a long way to go, especially on maternal (rather than child) mortality. Nine out of ten mothers still deliver their babies at home without a doctor, midwife or nurse. It is estimated that health spending in Nepal (both public and private) is around a half ($14 per person) of that recommended for developing countries by the Commission on Macroeconomics and Health ($34 per person). The share of government health expenditure is less than $5 per person.

See more on this and other case studies of aid effectiveness

Find out more on the Nepal Safe Motherhood Programme [PowerPoint]

This article was originally published in Duncan’s blog From Poverty to Power

I am happy to now live in a country where the media is free and journalists like me do not have our lives threatened for reporting the truth. However, over the past five years living here I have seen some UK media reporting untrue stories that affect people seeking asylum like me and make our new lives miserable.

It is good that many journalists in the UK strive to report accurately and truthfully about the lives of refugees so that people in the UK will better understand these difficult issues, and I am glad to have been involved in the judging of the Refugee Week Media Awards that recognizes this in Scotland.

My story….

In 2004 I fled my country, Cameroon, where, as a journalist, I faced torture and persecution and the threat of being killed. As a result of the stories I had written, I was forced to seek asylum in the UK. For five years I have waited in limbo for the UK government to decide if I can stay in this country. I am still waiting!

I worked as a journalist for 18 years. I started with the first financial and economic information magazine in Cameroon and then the first all sport information newspaper. I also worked with the state broadcast media and a private radio station and a number of other newspapers.

I worked for a period as a consultant with the World Bank Mission in Cameroon, the International Monetary Fund and UNESCO.

I specialised in investigative journalism. When Transparency International listed my country Cameroon as one of the worst countries in the world for corruption, I started to investigate this area. I wrote many critical articles against the government where I encountered many wrongdoings. This got me into trouble and as my life was threatened I had to flee Cameroon and abandon everyone I love - I have made a huge sacrifice.

My life in Scotland

Here in the UK as an asylum seeker I am not allowed to work. For the past five years I have volunteered. I am a member of the National Union of Journalists (NUJ) - Glasgow Branch - and the Exiled Journalist Network. I am also volunteering as an adviser with the Citizens Advice Bureau in Glasgow for the past three years, and with Unity, a voluntary organization which provides help to asylum seekers in Glasgow.

In the UK journalists are free to write about issues that in my home country could get them shot. As a member of the NUJ, I admire the principles of many journalists here to report fairly and accurately on stories like mine.

I still write articles here from time to time critical of the corruption in Cameroon. I remind myself that in many countries (like my own) journalists are still at risk of being arrested or even shot while doing their job.

The Refugee Week Scottish Media Awards are organised by Oxfam Scotland’s Asylum Positive Images Network.

Find out more about Refugee Week in Scotland.

Week in pictures: Chad’s Sudanese refugees

Pakistan: massive lack of funding
Oxfam efforts to support the basic needs of up to 360,000 people caught up in the escalating humanitarian crisis are being severely hampered by a massive lack of funds, we announced late last week. If the money does not arrive by July, we will have to close our programme.

A group of nine major international aid agencies, including Oxfam, announced a shortfall in excess of £26m ($42m). Oxfam specifically is £4 million short and facing the worst funding crisis in over a decade for a major humanitarian emergency.

This week (16 June) we also announced that Europe’s feeble response to the humanitarian crisis is making matters worse, raising risks of prolonged suffering and instability.

And in a new report ‘Too little, too slow: why more must be done to assist Pakistan’s displaced millions’, Oxfam reported that most displaced people have not received adequate water, sanitation, food, healthcare, cash, information, and shelter assistance.

See also Kamila Shamsie’s blog: Pakistan: the toll of indifference

Donate to Pakistan Appeal
Pakistan: Oxfam’s response
 
Climate change: industrialised countries must step up
Rich countries’ inertia is sabotaging a climate deal and abandoning millions of the world’s poorest people to a desperate future, said Oxfam on the final day of international climate talks in Bonn last Friday (12 June). Oxfam called for world leaders, meeting at the G8 Summit in Italy next month, to come to the crucial UN climate summit in Copenhagen ready to strike a post-2012 climate deal that will prevent a human catastrophe.

Wealthier countries also have a ‘double duty’ to both cut emissions at home, while helping to fund emission reductions in poor countries, says an Oxfam report launched the same day. The report ‘Hang Together or Separately?’ argues for a fair and safe climate deal, stating that only rich countries can break the deadlock currently crippling international climate negotiations and prevent the world lurching into climate disaster.

Also see how ten volunteers have begun to track key negotiators, in the hunt for a global treaty to tackle climate change, with the blog Tracking down a climate change treaty in Bonn.

Oxfam and climate change

Woman carrying her child on her way to work in the fields of Mutarara district [Photo credit: Andy Hall].

When it’s time to plant their crops, the people who live in Mutarara and neighbouring districts along the Zambezi river in Mozambique face a difficult decision. If they cultivate small fields (‘machambas’) on the extremely fertile low lands near the river, they risk losing their whole crop to frequent floods. But if they cultivate the infertile land on higher ground they face losing their crops to drought.

And because the Zambezi originates far from Mozambique, intense rain upriver means that the river can flood even when local rains have failed - the farmers can lose their crops to floods and drought in the same season.

Climate change is making their lives even harder. The temperature in Mozambique has risen by 0.6ºC since the 1960s, so crops need more water. The rainy season starts later and later, and more rain falls in extreme downpours. This means that more water runs off into the rivers rather than moistening the soil, and that rather than steady predictable rains, there are now gaps in the rainy season.

Aerial view of the Zambeze valley, near Caia and Mutarara, after the waters of the lower Zambeze River flooded its banks in 2007 [Photo credit: EPA/Pedro Sa Da Bandeira].

So after waiting for rain, when it does finally come, the farmers sow their maize seed which then germinates only to die off if no more rain comes for two or three weeks.

With no other way of making a living available to them, the people of Mutarara are left with little choice other than to hope for the best. As one member of the Casambala village ‘Disaster Management Committee’ said to me when we met six weeks ago: “When we lose our crops it hurts. It hurts a lot”, as the other committee members murmured in agreement.

With all of these changes in the climate predicted to worsen, Oxfam has been busy building on the foundations of our existing disaster risk reduction work by working with farmers and partner organizations to help these and other poor communities adapt to climate change. Here we are working with solutions such as portable irrigation systems and supporting cultivation of drought resistant crops.

See what else Oxfam is doing about climate change here.

Mar ha ba (’hello’ in Arabic)!

To celebrate Refugee Week this week, Oxfam and our partners are highlighting the contribution of refugees to the UK through a series of events up and down the country. And here on our website, we’ll have a daily blog.

From the Celebrating Sanctuary Music Festival in Birmingham to Student Action for Refugees’ football tournament in Oxford; from refugees reading their poetry in the Oxfam Bookshop in Glasgow to a community celebration in Govanhill; and from the Cross Cultural Community Women’s Choir in Cardiff to Asylum Dialogues, a documentary play, in Swansea: Refugee Week is here! You can find a list of all your local events here and we encourage you to attend.

‘Refuge’ means ‘a place or state of safety from danger or trouble’ say our friends at the Oxford English Dictionary. The United Kingdom has a tradition of offering refuge to those fleeing persecution. On 6 June, we celebrated the defence of our ideals at the D-Day celebrations. Offering sanctuary to those faced with persecution is one of those fundamental ideals. It should be remembered that the UK offered refuge to many facing persecution from Nazi Germany during the Second World War. And through this proud tradition continues, refugees have, over past decade, been the subject of much resentment. Routine negative portrayal in the media and often-hostile political rhetoric, fuels an image of refugees - similar to that of British people in poverty - as scroungers, who live off the taxpayers’ money.

This week we challenge that portrayal. We will be posting daily blogs from Oxfam staff, refugees and from our partners to shed light on some of the issues facing refugees: from discussing public attitudes towards refugees to analysing how government polices cause destitution, from combating media myths to understanding the contribution of refugees.

As you’ll see later this week, British government policy actually drives the poverty and vulnerability of asylum-seekers - for example, by not allowing them to work irrespective of the length of their application process. Refugee Week is an opportunity to improve public attitudes towards refugees - and if we improve public attitudes, the Government will improve the policies that affect refugees.

Today we kick off the blogs with Almir from the British Refugee Council introducing us to this year’s central campaign, Simple Acts. It’s pretty simple: if everyone does at least one simple act, we can make a big change to the way refugees are perceived in the UK.

Week in pictures: Chad’s Sudanese refugees

Almost every day the news out of Pakistan offers evidence of growing support for military action against the Taliban in Swat, and growing antipathy ­towards the Taliban itself. The rightwing media, which had urged the government to make peace deals, is falling over itself in praise of military advances.

But straightforward approval for military action is not the whole story. An article in one of Pakistan’s papers a few days ago reported that tribesmen in Upper Dir had besieged 200 Taliban and killed a number in response to the Taliban’s bombing of a mosque. The newspaper cited this as further evidence of growing anti-Taliban sentiment. There is no reason to doubt the tribesmen’s genuine anger - yet near the end of the article there was a telling admission that cannot be left out of the picture: a tribal elder said that allowing the Taliban to stay was asking for trouble as it would invite a military offensive that they ­certainly didn’t want.

This is where the story of wholehearted support for the military ­offensive breaks down. The army’s ­success has come at a horrific cost: there are estimated to be 2.5 million internally displaced persons (IDPs) in Pakistan. Who can blame the tribesmen of Upper Dir for taking up arms to prevent the army from adding their families to the swelling numbers of IDPs? The ­editorials of relief and approval about the army’s decision to “finally” do what is ­necessary contain the implicit message that the suffering of the 2.5 million is the price that must be paid. Around the world, leaders and opinion-makers have reached the same conclusion.

But what of the 2.5 million? When their numbers were less than half that amount - just a few weeks ago - the IDP camps could house less than 15 per cent of them. The rest had to rely on the kindness of relatives and the even more extraordinary kindness of strangers. Families with roofs over their heads have been taking in large numbers and sharing what little they have. Their ­generosity is shaming, particularly when placed against the horrifying indifference of the rest of the world - a world that for months urged the Pakistan ­government to send its army into Swat and surrounding areas.

Yesterday nine major aid agencies - ActionAid, Cafod/Caritas, Care, Concern Worldwide, Islamic Relief, Merlin, Oxfam, Save the Children, World Vision - issued a press release to say their aid projects face ­closure due to a shortage of funds. Oxfam will have to shut down its programme to assist 360,000 people if more funding doesn’t arrive by next month. The United Nations is faring no better - its $543m appeal has only received $138m so far. The United ­Kingdom has given only 1.6 per cent of the amount the UN requires.

A change in attitude is needed urgently; if humanitarian grounds aren’t reason enough, consider the fact that refugee camps are prime targets for those trying to radicalise the disaffected. When the Pakistani film-maker Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy was in the IDP camps earlier this year she found the young boys who make up such a large population of the camps equally split between those who support the army and those who support the Taliban. A vital “hearts and minds” battle is being waged in the camps, where groups such as the extremist Jamaat-ud-Dawa (linked to the Mumbai attacks) have been very visible in giving aid.

Many in Pakistan who still oppose military action are likely to claim that “the west” is pressurising the army to kill and displace its own people, uncaring of the suffering it causes. Time now for “the west” to show a different face to those who are desperate for assistance, and will not forget where it comes from.

This article first appeared in the Guardian, ‘Comment is free’ and is reproduced with kind permission.

You can help: donate to the Pakistan Conflict Appeal

Find out more about Oxfam’s Pakistan emergency response

I’ve just been to Bangladesh to speak to communities already experiencing climate change. One of the most striking people I met was a young girl called Keya (you can watch Keya’s video here). A more charming and quietly confident 11-year-old girl you’d struggle to meet, wherever you were in the world.

We’d wanted to speak to a young person, to show how the floods which hit this particular community affect them differently to grown-ups. As this was for film, we had in our minds a brash, cheeky young lad ‘a la Slumdog Millionaire’. Someone who wouldn’t mind mucking about for the cameras, and telling us just what he thought of the world.

Dan Chung shows Keya and the other local children how his camera works. [Photo credit: Ben Beaumont]

And the island of Char Atra certainly wasn’t in short supply of mischievous boys, following our cameras wherever they went, getting into shot whenever possible, and generally strutting about like lads the world over. But as soon as we went to speak to them, they clammed up. Fairly understandably, they didn’t know what to do or say on camera. And this is where Keya really stood out.

She’d been picked out by the tireless field staff of our partner organisation. She looked every inch the perfect school girl - bright blue school uniform, polite, and incredibly photogenic. But we were worried she’d be a bit shy. It was when we started filming her that we realised she was a bit special. 

Keya on the raised platform her family have to live on during a flood [Photo credit: Dan Chung]

She wasn’t fazed by our cameras or questions at all - she was a natural. She spoke with real feeling about what it was like to live for a month on a tiny raised platform, with feet of flood water inside her family home. She described how she missed the friends she had, before her family was forced to move by the floods. And when we asked her to repeat certain things (the film-maker’s infuriating need for the perfect take), she didn’t blink - she was happy to say it all again.

Mainly, it was just inspiring to hear this girl articulate what it was like to live with worsening floods. With her child’s attention to detail, she brought to life the very human effects of climate change: the mirror that broke when the floods came in; her youngest brother falling down into the water because he was ‘being naughty’; the diarrhoea and headaches; the ‘confusion over cooking, eating and study’ on the raised platform.

Keya stands in the retreating flood waters near her home. [Photo credit: Dan Chung]

Watch her film - a fresh perspective on the human impact of climate change.

Catherine Mwayonga is a formidable woman: she is a teacher, a grassroots activist, and the mother of six. She is also blind and HIV positive.

Catherine Mwayonga and her son Peter [Photo credit: Nicole Johnston]

Catherine has been a teacher at the school for the blind in Thika, Kenya for 30 years. She prepared for last week’s Global Citizen’s Summit on HIV/AIDS in Nairobi by transcribing all the conference material on her Braille typewriter and arriving armed with a thick sheaf of papers. It had taken her three days to type.

As the conference progressed she sat following the agenda, her fingers gliding smoothly across the painstakingly prepared pages, ensuring that the voices of people living with HIV and disability were not forgotten.

In her blue suit Mwayonga (55) may look like a conservative grandmother - but she doesn’t shy away from frank talk. During a discussion on how to promote the use of condoms and femidoms, she challenged other participants as to whether they had even considered the needs of people with disabilities: “Don’t leave the disabled women behind! How can we use female condoms properly when we cannot see? Or when we have physical challenges? And why don’t manufacturers put expiry dates on condom packets in Braille? If you have to ask someone else to read the expiry date for you, then it means you have no privacy.”

Catherine has been campaigning all her life - first for the rights of blind people, and more recently for people living with HIV/AIDS.

“I was diagnosed HIV positive in 2001. For three years I stigmatised myself. I was in denial.” Then, through the Kenya Union of the Blind she attended a course in South Africa. “I learned to live positively, from drug adherence and nutrition to disclosure and learning to let go of anger and blame.” She was so inspired that when she got home to Thika she immediately formed her own community based organisation - People Living with Disability Infected and Affected by HIV/Aids (PLDIAH).

Running this organisation is not an easy task. “Most of the members of our group beg on the streets.” While there is a school for blind people in Thika, most find it almost impossible to get a higher education and end up destitute and vulnerable. The few who do get higher qualifications cannot find jobs.

“In our group there are 64 people - including orphans and vulnerable children - and of these 42 have disabilities. We have no facilities such as ramps in buildings or Braille in lifts, and it is hard for us to use public transport. And when it comes to voluntary counselling and testing for the deaf, there are no counsellors who know sign language, which means there is no confidentiality”.

And, she says, people with disabilities also face stigma from other HIV postive people: “I ask them: is my virus blind while yours can see?”

Peter Mwayonga and his mother Catherine [Photo credit: Nicole Johnston]

Breaking the mould is clearly a family tradition: her 27-year-old son Peter accompanied her to the conference and is very outspoken on the issues facing HIV-positive people with disabilities.

While much talk in these circles revolves around the burden of care, which is generally shouldered by women and girls, Peter is emblematic of a new kind of young African man. “I am directly affected by both HIV and disability. Both of my parents are blind and I grew up seeing my elder brothers taking care of my parents and I am also passing that knowledge on to my young brothers.”

At the lunch table Peter guides his mother to her seat, fetches her food from the buffet and in what is clearly a comfortable routine puts her plate in front of her and says, “Chicken at 3 o’clock, matoke at 6 o’clock, spinach at 9 o’clock. Oh yes, and there’s ice cream for pudding.”

Peter is clearly angry about the raw deal people with disabilities get in Kenya. “There are no disabled parliamentarians to push for better policies. When they are campaigning, politicians of every party promise at least one seat will go to a candidate with a disability, but after the election is over they do nothing. There is a quota that five per cent of jobs must be filled by disabled people, but it is not implemented.” He has realised that the only way to effect change is to be the change himself. “I have decided to dedicate my life to this cause and work with my mum.”

His next step? “I want to learn sign language”.

Take action: Make HIV treatment affordable for all

Oxfam in action: Health

Interactive maps: seen from the perspective of HIV, our world is a very different place…

Cara, one of the Negotiator Trackers, talking to Howard Bamsey, Australian Special Envoy for Climate Change, in Bonn last week. Credit: adoptanegotiator.org

Like a lot of what goes on in politics, the process of negotiating a global treaty to tackle climate is a long, large, and complicated affair.

What with several pre-meetings taking place even before the main event this December, hundreds of countries involved, and enough delegates to fill a reasonably-sized football stadium, the whole thing can appear somewhat overwhelming - and I’m certainly not going to pretend that I understand it all myself.

Couple this with the fact that much of the process of working out what the treaty will look like is decided by largely unknown negotiators (the majority of whom come from rich countries, as poor countries simply can’t afford to send the same sized teams) it’s a recipe for a situation where most of us are in the dark as to what goes on.

And considering that what these negotiators are negotiating (i.e. the future of the planet, and the lives of millions of the world’s poorest who are already suffering the effects of climate change), there’s a clear need for a greater level of accountability.

It’s with this in mind that Oxfam is supporting ’Adopt a Negotiator‘, which launched last week at climate change meetings taking place in Bonn, Germany.

Ten intrepid volunteers (or ‘Negotiator Trackers’, as it says on their t-shirts), from ten different countries, have signed up to quite literally follow round negotiators from ten key countries between now and December.

Basically, the trackers will be haranguing negotiators when their actions fall short of what’s expected. They’ll be hunting out negotiators in between their meetings, and giving them a grilling about emissions cuts. Turning up during coffee breaks for a chat about making sure any treaty to tackle climate change addresses the needs of poor communities. And of course congratulating them when they come up trumps.

As Anna (the tracker from the UK) described on her blog:

“We all have a right to know, understand, and have a say, about what’s being negotiated in our name[s]. The fate of our planet, and us all, shouldn’t be decided in secret behind closed doors.”

So a big “hello” to all of the trackers. That’s Reed from the USA, Zoë from Canada, Cara from Australia, Eri from Japan, Leela from India, Anna from the UK, Florent from France, Andrea from Italy, Ole from Germany, and Jonathan from Sweden. And kudos to all of them for dedicating so much of their time over the coming months.

To see what they’ve been up to at climate meetings in Germany this week, visit adoptanegotiator.org or follow them on their Twitter or Facebook.

You can also see what the Oxfam International team thinks about the climate talks taking place in Bonn by reading their blog from the summit.

Get involved: climate change

“We tried to stay but the fighting was going on day and night. We left our village and got on a truck. It was full of people.” Barkat Mada (25) was talking about his escape from his village in Swat valley. He and 12 others from his family have settled in an unofficial camp by the main road that leads to Mardan. Nearly 400 families are there, living by an irrigation canal and railroad tracks. Barkat explained, “We tried to go to our relatives house, but it was already full. Some of my family stayed there, some came here.”

Barkat and his family [Photo credit: Shumon Alam]

Barkat has been in this camp more than two weeks. Describing the situation in the camp he said, “We had nothing when we left our village. People from this area have given us food. They have given us tents to sleep in. I don’t know what I would have done without their help.”  When asked why had not gone to an official camp, he said, “Those camps are in open fields, far from any village. Here we have trees to give us shade from the sun. We can bathe in the water from the canal.”

Barkat goes out every morning to look for work, without much luck so far. He is fearful that help from the community will run out soon. “I don’t know how long we have to be here. These people are poor like us. They can not help us forever.”  He is also worried about the coming monsoon. He doesn’t know how they will live in just a small tent during the rains. “I wish I had money to rent a house. We are farmers. We never had too much cash. I don’t know what I will do in few weeks.”

He wants to take his family to his home as soon the fighting stops. “Our crops have been destroyed. I don’t know how I will feed my family for the rest of the year. I don’t even know if I will have a house.” He paused for second, “I don’t like not knowing what will happen tomorrow…I wait for good news to come everyday.”

Donate to Pakistan Appeal
Pakistan: Oxfam’s response
In pictures: Pakistan’s displaced people

A few short weeks ago, Oxfam GB, along with Cannes Young Lions, posted a competition up on YouTube. Here’s the gist of it:

You have 48 hours to plan, produce, edit and upload a video about the 2009 UN climate talks. The video must help your viewers understand the importance of the talks and inspire them to take action with Oxfam for a fair and safe deal when the world meets in Copenhagen. Then promote your video to as many people as possible for two weeks.

Given the prestige that goes along with Cannes we were hopeful that the prospect of winning a trip to the festival would make a splash: but what a splash!

840 films were submitted during the weekend and we watched with a mix of awe and delight as they spilled in. The imagination and creativity, not to mention sheer hard work, that people put into the challenge were amazing. And it wasn’t just the film making, the hours spent on viral marketing all over the web must amount to months of effort (and hundreds of thousands of hits).

And so to the winners. The judges over at YouTube whittled down all the entries to a final two. Drum roll please…

First up we have Adeline Chew from Malaysia. Adeline’s video, ‘Listen, Don’t Watch’, instructs us to ‘open another browser window’ to take action. A direct message combined with a subtle reference to the medium being used makes for a very powerful ad.

We liked it, and so did YouTube.

And a big hand to Guy Dayan from Israel. Guy played with the idea of the YouTube progress bar in his interactive video ‘The YouTube Climate Thermometer’. A neat video, well executed and with a very clear call to action.

Both Guy and Adeline will be on their way to the Cannes Lions Festival later this month - the lucky things (but a prize well deserved).

But there’s more, much more…

The judges had to think long and hard to reach their decision and there were many, many great entries. You can view them all on the Cannes Young Lions YouTube Channel, and we want to say a huge thank you to everyone who took part.

We’ve picked just a few of our favourites below. Take a look, and perhaps you have something to say about the competition? What was your favourite video? Have you signed the petition yet? Feel free to leave us your comments below…

Team Tiramisu
We liked the idea that everyone has a role to play and that everyone can be a hero. Gets across the idea that anyone can be involved.

Nur at her school [Photo credit: Francesca Munari]

The day I visited Al-Grein in Israel was Nur’s fourth birthday. When we arrived, her celebration was in full swing in the local nursery school. 20 toddlers singing, playing and having fun, with all the ingredients of a great kids’ party.

Al-Grein is one of the ‘un-recognised’ villages in the Negev desert area of Israel. Unrecognised because, even though it has been there since the early 1950s, the Israeli authorities have neither recognised its right to exist, nor provided basic facilities such as water, electricity or public transport. This is despite the families being moved from their own land to this area by the Israeli army back in 1951.

I visited Nur’s school about two months ago. It was well equipped with kids’ paintings adorning the walls, just like any nursery school in the UK. But not for long. When I was there, a demolition order had been served on it by the Israeli authorities.

Ali Abu Shcheta, a 47-year-old father of five, lives next door to the nursery. His house is also due for demolition. “It’s ridiculous,” he said. “Everywhere else in the world, states invest to raise and protect their children. Except here, where the government invests in the opposite approach and does not care.”

Demolition was to be a recurring theme during my two-week visit to Israel and the West Bank. I was shocked again and again by how the Israeli authorities are demolishing Palestinian homes, and, at the same time, failing to grant planning permission for new construction. This is a practice that appears to be very one-sided. Israeli applicants seem to have no problem getting planning permission even for building settlements in the occupied West Bank, a practice illegal under international law, as is the occupation itself under UN Security Council resolutions.

Oxfam, which runs poverty-reduction programmes in Israel, Gaza and the West Bank, has been helping Al-Grien village with support for community facilities and support in securing their rights, but it has been an uphill struggle.

During my visit, I stayed in a small hotel in East Jerusalem. Only two minutes walk away a Palestinian family were living in a tent beside their demolished house. A 10-minute walk in the other direction and you reached the community of Silwan. Here 88 houses have been served demolition orders - two have already been demolished - ostensibly because they were built without permits. But most of these homes were built before the state of Israel was established and were inherited from the current residents’ parents. In many cases, the evicted residents get a bill for the cost of demolition. If you don’t pay you can find yourself in jail.

Anti-demolition protest sign at Silwan, and Nivine Sandouka Sharaf.

The Israeli authorities wish to build a park and tourist attraction on the site of Silwan. This is only a few minutes’ walk from the Old City of Jerusalem, the ancient centre of the city where pilgrims, tourists and locals converge to visit and worship at the holy sites of Christianity, Judaism and Islam.

Abd Shlode, a young Silwan resident, told me: “The final goal for Israel’s action in this area is to impose the Jewish flavour on the whole area and move the Palestinian Jerusalemites.”

A look at the statistics backs up the view that Israeli law is applied differently in East Jerusalem compared to Jewish West Jerusalem. In 2004 and 2005, despite there being almost four times the number of breaches of planning law recorded in the west of the city, there were almost five times the number of demolitions in East Jerusalem.

This was my first time in Israel and Palestine. Before I went, I thought I was reasonably aware of what was happening, but was shocked again and again by the inequity of the situation. It is glaringly clear that each community is treated differently by the authorities, despite living cheek by jowl. As a Palestinian you have far fewer rights, and the rights you do have are not upheld.

Rights that are infringed daily include freedom of movement, access to water, security of tenure on your land, access to medical services, the right to travel without harassment and the right to access your farmland. Cars with Palestinian number plates are also banned from certain roads in the West Bank. This is segregation.

Security is cited as the over-riding reason for much of what goes on. It is totally understandable that security is important in a society that has buried its dead again and again after terrorist attacks, and security issues remain real today. However, it became clear to me that removing basic rights for virtually all of the Palestinian population for the acts of a few is not only morally wrong. Doing so could also threaten future stability and safety for everyone.

More information on Oxfam’s work in Palestine and Israel.

A new report pulls together the current evidence on the current and projected human impact of climate change. It’s not pleasant reading. Headline numbers: every year climate change leaves over 300,000 people dead. This will rise to roughly half a million in 20 years. 325 million people are seriously affected, and economic losses amount to US$125 billion, more than the total of all ‘Official Development Assistance’ in a given year. Four billion people are vulnerable, and 500 million people are at extreme risk. These figures represent averages based on projected trends over many years, and carry a significant margin of error. The real numbers could be lower or higher.

Over nine in ten deaths attributable to climate change are related to the gradual environmental degradation it causes (principally malnutrition, diarrhoea, malaria), with the remaining deaths being linked to weather-related disasters brought about by climate change.

Developing countries bear over nine-tenths of the climate change burden: 98 percent of the seriously affected people and 99 percent of all deaths from weather-related disasters (see map), along with over 90 percent of the total economic losses. The 50 Least Developed Countries contribute less than one percent of global carbon emissions.

See also a Guardian opinion piece by Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change chair Rajendra Pahacuri This silent suffering.

Find out what Oxfam is doing about climate change.

Read more from Duncan Green’s blog, From poverty to power.

Last night I dreamt of a roast lamb dinner, one I’d eaten a few weeks ago in England. When I woke I could taste it melting away on my tongue…it was so real…I wanted to close my eyes and savour the memory. After a week of rice and beans, and cornflakes with hot watery powdered milk, my unconscious moments are filled with images of food - OK many conscious ones are too!

I’m not proud of this - for many people, living within a few yards from where I’m sleeping, what is crucial is getting a meal at all - choice and taste are irrelevant…an unimaginable luxury.

I look for my toothbrush and attempt to brush my teeth. A sad casualty of the flight to Upper Nile…it’s suffered a broken neck. Though held together with Oxfam tape, it wobbles, and my teeth feel little different after delicate brushing. I know how good it’s going to feel when I finally get a new toothbrush - probably as soon as I get off the plane in London. You can definitely buy goats here - but nothing else.

Much needed pipes for southern Sudan public health programme [Photo credit: Jane Beesley]

Udier is so remote and isolated everything has to be flown in - food, furniture, ALL the equipment to provide a public health programme…cement, latrine slabs, pipes etc.  Small, chartered planes land on a tiny runway next to the Oxfam compound, office and home to the team based here in Upper Nile. You can hear the planes approaching from far away…and everyone comes out to see it land and lend a hand to bring material into the compound. There are no passenger flights apart from the weekly UN service - a tiny, one-engined caravan. But the planes only land if the airstrip is maintained, and even then it depends on the weather. The rainy season has now started. Soon not even these small planes will not be able to land here, and they won’t for several months.

The dedication and commitment of the staff here is extraordinary. The compound is probably one of the most basic compounds I’ve been to and the staff stay here for weeks on end, many living out in the bush in tents to be near communities while they carry on their work. Many places we work in are a long drive from the office, and, of course, fuel has to be flown in as well.

A baby sleeps in a basket-bed [Photo credit: Jane Beesley]

Sadly, flying everything in makes this programme very expensive. When someone mentions that they don’t want to support charities because they want their money to go directly to people in need and not to cover admin costs I feel deeply saddened. Here 1 in 7 children die before they are 5 years old, mainly due to malaria and diarrhoea, or other water related diseases - preventable diseases. But if we can’t fly material in - an admin cost - to construct bore holes, to provide safe, protected water, malaria nets and other public health initiatives, people here are unlikely to see more of their children survive.

The flooded village of Aftab Shana [Photo credit: Mahmud].

Cyclone survivors in Bangladesh are now facing a severe risk of disease as the supply of safe drinking water is reaching crisis levels. Cyclone Aila hit the coast of Bangladesh on 25 May, affecting 3.6m people and leaving over 750,000 people homeless.

Salt water has contaminated nearly all the fresh water sources in the southwest of Bangladesh and has damaged around one third in central and southeastern districts.

The sanitation systems have collapsed in all the cyclone-affected areas, and human, animal and fish corpses are polluting the countryside.

Heather Blackwell, head of Oxfam in Bangladesh, said: “The cyclone-affected areas of Bangladesh are now an ideal breeding ground for all kinds of diseases. In many areas all the sources of fresh water have been polluted by the seawater, forcing people to drink dirty water. This has already made thousands of people sick. Without urgent action many more will fall ill.”

Oxfam is currently expanding its emergency response to reach 110,000 people in the most severely affected districts of Khulna and Shatkhira in south-west Bangladesh.

Rebecca and Mariam walking through the floods [Photo credit: Mahmud].

“We never had to come and ask for help from others like this. We feel shy. If we don’t have anything to take back home, mother will scold, our fathers will be angry.”

In Chondipur, also in Shatkhira, water supplies are running short, with only one hand pump raised above the water. But, like many villages in this area, they are so close to the sea that this will be also under water in high tide.

Anowara in her temporary shack [Photo credit: Mahmud].

Anowara’s neighbours all found space on the embankment. “I could be the poorest in my village, but at the present, even the affluent ones are also living on this road.”

“The storm came in the afternoon eight days back. First I rushed to a higher ground with others and spent the night all wet and cold. Next morning, I moved to the embankment and made this shack…I am on my own…I work as a wage labourer to survive. But there has been no work for a week now. People from outside came and gave me five kilograms of rice a few days back. Everyday we hope to receive more.”

Farzana is her present neighbour’s daughter. “The only operating tube well nearest to us is serving 400 families. The water is salty…We have water all around us but it is not drinkable.”

Meanwhile in cyclone-affected West Bengal, relief measures will benefit 10,000 households, with plans of reaching a further 10,000 more in the coming days.

An Oxfam India assessment team, which toured the affected districts immediately after the cyclone, found that many people have taken shelter in schools and other buildings, as well as in the camps.

Zubin Zaman, Humanitarian Response Manager, Oxfam India said: “The families in the villages and in the camps are very much exposed to health problems. It was found in one of the camps that one toilet and one hand pump is serving the sanitation and drinking water needs of almost 500 people. 

“There is huge scarcity of safe drinking water for domestic use and cattle as all the ponds (the main water source) have been contaminated by salt water. Most of these villages do not have sufficient number of hand pumps. Where they do have them, many pumps got polluted with salt water and other impurities,” informs Zaman. 

Most of the homes in the area are mud houses with either thatched or tiled roofs. 95 per cent of these have been washed away. The houses still standing may soon fall down as the mud will start drying up.

Most of the people in these areas are dependent on vegetable farming, but they have lost their crops as saline flood water has inundated their fields. People in some of the villages where water receded quickly have been able to save the stored food grains. But other villages have not been so lucky and are still facing severe food shortages.

In pictures: The impact of Cyclone Aila

Donate to Cyclone Aila response
Cyclone Aila: Oxfam’s response

Summer will be busy for Britain’s 700+ Oxfam shops. For a start there’s a huge book donation drive going on all year. If we step up this will mean half a million more books and an extra £800,000 or so to fund vital emergency and development work around the world. It’s a mighty effort and part of a wider celebration of Oxfam’s relationship with books and reading throughout 2009. After warming up (in more ways than one) as official charity partner of the Hay Festival last week, Oxfam Bookfest starts on Saturday 4 July. There’ll be hundreds of literary events at Oxfam shops all over the country during the fortnight.

It all got me thinking about the great (and not so great) books I’ve picked up second-hand over the years. Some of the best reading of my life has come for a quid or two, on not-quite-snow-white paper in slightly bent covers. Some of the best surprises too. From Titus Groan as a twelve year old to William Styron’s Darkness Visible just last week, there’s something special about the chance encounters and unknown histories of these books - something you just don’t get from Amazon. Like the margin notes running through an old copy of As I Lay Dying, an Oxfam purchase from a couple of years ago, humbling to read that great book beside such a clever and thoughtful stranger. Or a scribble on the flyleaf of Danny Sugarman’s Wonderland Avenue: “it will change your life x” - much more interesting than anything else in that tiresome book. Did it I wonder? Heaven forbid.

So when I was sorting through my own donations the other night I made sure to include a couple of ’special’ books in the pile - not just holiday thrillers. Books I’ve marked up and re-read many times over. I hope their new owners get as much from them as I have. Being a sucker for all things online and as an experiment, I’ve penciled my Twitter ID and tweet-sized messages on the inside covers. How 2009 is that? Wonder if I’ll hear back?
 

Ox-Tales: Air. Short stories representing the battle against climate change.

What’s the best book you’ve discovered in an Oxfam shop? Would you donate a treasured read? Will you be taking part in a Bookfest event? What do you think about Twitterising donations? Let’s talk books. Leave a comment below.

“I am actually seeing myself as a human being again.”

When I heard these words at a food distribution point in Bulawayo’s Mzilikazi township yesterday, I was jolted as I understood for the first time the impact that Zimbabwe’s economic crisis has had on human dignity. While there is much talk about physical suffering like hunger and illness, we often overlook the psychological impact, particularly on the elderly and people with disabilities.

The source of this revelation was 80-year-old Evelyne Mandizvidza, as she queued for her monthly food basket at a Joint Initiative for Urban Zimbabwe project run by Oxfam’s partner organisation Lead Trust. “Before I joined this scheme last November, there were times when I had no food at all for days. Then I would just boil water and drink it while it was warm to fill my stomach. My skin was hanging off me.”

Workers offload bags of maize meal from trucks at a food distribution centre in Bulawayo [Photo credit: Nicole Johnston].

She now receives a monthly assistance package that includes maize meal, corn-soya blend, cooking oil, peanut butter, soap and cotton wool. “Before, we didn’t have soap for a long time so I was just removing sweat with water instead of washing properly.”

The cotton wool included in the relief packages is a boon for younger women who have had to face the indignity of coping with menstruation without sanitary towels.

And while there is a sense of cautious optimism among most people about the government of national unity, the most vulnerable Zimbabweans are not yet experiencing any benefits. For them the bickering about the appointment of ambassadors and control of ministries is academic: day-to-day survival continues to be the issue.

The ‘dollarization’ of the economy - which has seen foreign currencies replace the Zim dollar - has helped to curb inflation and shelves in shops are now full. But for people who have no access to currency, particularly orphans, the elderly and people with disabilities, this has actually made life harder.

“Things are now available in shops, but the problem is in getting cash to buy those things,” explained Mandizvidza. “At my age it is impossible to get a job and earn cash, and I don’t have anything to sell.” Even those in formal employment, such as civil servants, are only earning a $100-a-month allowance - not a lot in an economy where a newspaper costs $2 and a loaf of bread $1. The precarious situation of the elderly has been exacerbated by the fact that pensions have not been paid out since December. 

Many have joined the urban gardening project run by the Joint Initiative which provides seeds, watering cans and training, allowing people to grow vegetables and fruit in their backyards.

Evelyne Mandizvidza and Mpanywa Siwela compare notes on their backyard food gardens at a food distribution centre in Mzilikazi, Bulawayo [Photo credit: Nicole Johnston].

Mpanywa Siwela (83) is a member of the food committee in Mzilikazi, growing carrots, garlic and spinach in his yard. He exchanges gardening tips with Mandizvidza, his wizened face wrinkling even further in consternation as he tells her, “I need something to spray those red spiders that are attacking my tomatoes.” The success of his crop is not just a matter of pride - it is also about putting food on the table. But there are things he can’t grow and can’t afford to buy: “I can’t tell you when I last drank tea…” he says longingly. “But where can we old people get rands or dollars?”  

The lucky few have cash remittances sent home from relatives working abroad, but in a country in which HIV/AIDS has decimated the economically active population and where unemployment stands at 90 per cent, they are not in the majority.

66-year-old Christopher Ndabambe has signed up for the pilot cash transfer project, an offshoot of the food distribution programme.

Admire Chinjekure of the Lead Trust explains that the cash transfer project in which participants are given $25 a month aims to allow people to access hard currency: “Some people prefer to get the cash so they can pay their rent or for medical services. Some reinvest the money - for instance they buy firewood which they sell.”

“I have diabetes, high blood pressure and a heart problem,” says Ndabambe.  “Dollarization is good because it means there are drugs available now, but it is quite difficult for me if I can’t get currency. We need a better health system and to be able to get drugs from our hospitals. I opted out of the food programme and joined the cash transfer project so I can buy my medicines.”

Ndabambe is regularly forced to make a choice between buying food and buying medicine. “I have to go into town to buy my heart tablets and that costs a lot of money for transport. So then I can only buy a one-week supply. If there is anything left over I buy some food”.

It’s a choice no one should have to make.

Oxfam in action: Zimbabwe crisis

Some of Hamidulla's guests standing outside his house.

Helping hand

Hamidulla (67), a retired sugar mill worker has been providing shelter to five families who have fled from the war zone in Swat Valley. “They all came in the first week of May. They had to walk 20 kilometres to get here. Most of them did not have anything but the clothes they were wearing.”

Five families have been living in three rooms of his house. Describing the living arrangements, Hamidulla said, “Women and children live in the rooms and the men sleep in the yard. It is hard for everyone, but we try to manage.” He goes on to talk about the worsening situation in the house, “ The house is not big enough for so many people. We don’t have enough water for everyone. The sewage is blocked every day. The children are getting sick. Some of them have had fevers and throat infections.”

Hamidulla is one of the better-off people in the village, with a pension and three sons working. He is trying to provide three cooked meals for the families. But the money’s running out. He said, “I am better-off but I am not rich. It is fine now but we will face problems soon.” He shakes his head and continues, “It is in our culture to help each other, and these are my guests, my relatives. I have to help them.” With a smile Hamidulla added, “I know they would do the same for me.”

**************************************************************

Sadia and sibling

Family divide

“My brother and sister ask me where is our mother and father. I always say nothing,” said 12-year-old Saida. “There was lots of fighting in the area. Everyone from our village was leaving. On the way here we got separated from our parents. I don’t know where they are”.

Sadia left her village in Peochar Swat on the first week of May. Along with her two brothers Habibulla and Akter, and two sisters Subnam and Aasia, she has been living with her uncle’s family in Mardan District. Recounting her journey to safety she said, “We walked for many miles. There were cars coming this way but they were all full. Suddenly, everyone started to run. When we stopped, I could not find my parents,” she added, “My brother Akter was hurt on the way. We came here with our grandfather.”

“The children are very upset. Aaisa the little one is only two. Do you think a two-year old can live without her mother?” said Hajrat Gul, the uncle of the children. “We have no information about their parents. I don’t know what to do. I try not to think about, but the worst always come to mind.”

Describing the mental state of her siblings, 12-year-old Sadia said, “My sisters cry a lot. I try to play with them. At night, I sleep with them in same bed. ” Without the siblings around her, she added, “I’ve never lived without my parents. I want my parents back. When my parents are back, I want to go back to my home.”

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Pakistan: Oxfam’s response

When you live on the edge of the mighty Zambezi River, you have to keep a careful eye on the weather.

In the UK we like to chat about what the weather is and, more often than not, isn’t doing. But here, as the water rose to its highest level in 50 years it didn’t matter that the sky above was a deep and clear blue. The unusually heavy and prolonged wet season rain had fallen further north, in the Democtratic Republic of Congo and Angola.

This spelled danger for the 483,000 people living on the edge of the Zambezi flood plain. People like Ndyama Monongu, 22, and her young family. She was forced to seek out higher ground as her village became completely submerged. She explained that this is unusual: “the village doesn’t [usually] get flooded - the flooding just passes the edge of the raised ground but this season it has flooded the whole village.”

A season’s worth of crops have been destroyed and people’s livelihoods and homes are abandoned to the bloated river. The villagers have scattered to wherever they feel they can sit out the floods.

People escaping the Zambezi floods credit: James Oatway/Oxfam

Due to climate change, the pattern of floods here are changing. This flood took almost everyone that I spoke to by surprise - both in timing and severity.

Other people we met had simply set up shelters along the road, though this too was flooded in places. The water lapped up against the edges of their quickly assembled homes.

The water stubbornly refuses to go down. Thousands of people, like Ndyama, have to sit and wait and get ready to rebuild their homes, communities and lives in this increasingly precarious environment.

Fact box: What is Oxfam doing?

Oxfam is providing 3,500 families with:

• Mosquito nets (mosquitoes breed in floodwater)
• Blankets
• Soap
• Chlorine to treat drinking water

Read more about climate change

I received some harrowing images this morning, of the aftermath of a cyclone which hit parts of India and Bangladesh over the weekend. As cyclones go, it wasn’t big enough to make much of an impression on our UK media, but that hasn’t made Cyclone Aila any less devastating for the communities caught in its path ( see Oxfam researcher Sandhya Suri’s eyewitness account for an idea of its impact).
 

A Bangladeshi woman walks through the flood with her children after cyclone Aila hit [Photo credit: Abir Abdullah/EPA].

Maybe it says something about the sheer number of bad news events that we ‘consume’ every single day, but disasters like this only really hit home when people can make a personal connection - maybe it was a recent holiday destination, or a relative lived there for a while.  I’m no different on this score, it seems - one of the reasons these distressing photos had such an impact on me is that I visited Satkhira, one of the worst-affected areas, only a few months ago.

Satkhira is a poor coastal district in the south-western corner of Bangladesh.  This area is especially vulnerable to rising sea levels caused by climate change. The storm surges and high tides that follow cyclones are flooding these areas like never before, destroying homes and crops, and, tragically, taking lives.

Some of the images we were sent from our photographer are too upsetting to publish here. With any disaster event, it is always women and children who are worst affected. Tragically, Cyclone Aila was no different. Our translator told us of “13 corpses laid out, 8 children, the rest women” by a cyclone shelter. The grief in the images was palpable. Just a few months ago, I may have been playing with those children, or talking with their mothers about the rising sea level.

A Bangladeshi woman wades through the flood in search of drinking water [Abir Abdullah/EPA].

Ultimately, what these images mean to me is this: climate change costs lives. You can’t say it often enough, or put it more simply.

Read about Oxfam’s response to Cyclone Aila, donate to the Cyclone Aila emergency response or find out more about climate change in Bangladesh here.

You may have noticed that for a while now we’ve been saying ‘climate change costs lives’ to anyone who’ll listen. I’ve just been to Bangladesh, and the people I met there confirmed that, sadly, this is no exaggeration.

Take Sufia. Her five-year-old boy was washed away in the last big floods. The experience was clearly still very raw, and she clung tightly to her young daughter while we spoke with her. But she desperately wanted us to tell people about her story and what is happening here.

Sufia and her daughter Shilpi [Photo credit: Dan Chung]

I was there to interview Sufia and some of the other people of Char Atra, a peaceful river island community in the great river Ganges flood plain. And though it seemed tranquil - if stinking hot - I always had the feeling from talking to Sufia and others that this calm would soon disappear under water.

And that’s because people like Sufia are already living with climate change. In particular, the floods they’ve learned to live with - just about - are becoming deeper and longer lasting. And that means they lose everything - their homes, their crops, and their jobs. Or, if their homes survive, they have to live in filthy flood water for weeks on end, when there is no food, no work, no school…

So ‘climate change costs lives’ doesn’t just mean causing deaths - it means creating lives that no one would want to live, given the choice. And if these films go any way towards highlighting the problems this one community faces as a result of more unpredictable and extreme weather, we’ll have done our job.

Through that one community, we’re hoping to show what’s happening all over the world, right now, because of climate change. Because it’s by no means just a Bangladeshi problem, but Bangladesh is being affected more than most…

So please, take just a couple of minutes to watch Sufia’s story. If it moves you, you can sign up for updates from that community. And we’ll let you know how you can do something about climate change.

“I was visiting my brother’s house with my two daughters when the fighting started” says Taj Bibi (55) of Khawazakhela, Swat. “I took my two daughters and left with my brother’s family as quickly as possible.”

Life had been hard for Taj Bibi and her two daughters in Mardan since her sudden escape from the Swat Valley. She is living in a cramped room with her brother’s family. The family that took her in are themselves poor. What they do have they are sharing, but conditions are difficult. “If I knew something like this was going to happen, I wouldn’t have left my house,” says Taj Bibi.

Taj Bibi has no information about her husband and other children. “I left my four sons and three daughters with my husband. I don’t know what had happened to them…It is hard to get any information in this situation. Thousands of people are coming in every day. I don’t know where to look for them.”

“I have never lived by myself before. I am worried, what will I feed my daughters.” With tearful eyes, she added, “but I am more worried about my family. I don’t know if they are alive or dead. I just want to know what has happened to my family.”

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Pakistan: Oxfam’s response

840 videos. 48 hours. One massive issue and one huge meeting to mobilise people around. I’ve spent two days watching them and they’ve got two weeks to get them viewed as many times as possible.

It’s the YouTube Cannes Young Lions advertising contest and people have been making videos about the UN Climate Change Summit in Copenhagen this December. You know the one - it’ll decide our fate.

Ashok Prashad from Oxfam GB filming a local 'We Can' event in Sri Lanka. credit: Annie Bungeroth/Oxfam

But mostly we’ve been totally amazed at the thought, skill and effort that’s gone in to them. Go to YouTube Cannes Lions and have a look. It’s well worth it.

There’s another week to go until we find a winner. So have a look and forward the one’s you like on to your friends. You could make the difference as the aspiring film makers try and get their video viewed.

I really want to put in links to my favourites but I’ll have to wait at least a week so that we don’t get accused of favouritism.

Get involved: climate change

Pakistan: Oxfam doubles its aid effort
Oxfam is set to double its aid effort in Pakistan as the number of people displaced goes over two million.

Oxfam is now implementing a £5.3m programme set to reach 360,000 people with clean water and sanitation, food, and public hygiene information.

A girl sits outside her tent at a UNHCR camp in Mardan, Pakistan [Photo credit: Reuters/Faisal Mahmood, courtesy of alertnet.org].

Thousands of families are continuing to flee their homes, many walking great distances to find food, water, medicine, shelter and other essentials. But official camps are suffering from shortages of all these basics.

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Pakistan: Oxfam’s response

Sri Lanka: Grave concerns over displaced civilians
Traumatised, exhausted and half-starved civilians fleeing Sri Lanka’s conflict zone are being housed in camps without adequate water, sanitation and food supplies.

Conditions in displaced camps deteriorated further this week with the government ban on aid agency vehicles entering the camps, and difficulties with staff access.

There is already an epidemic of chickenpox and skin diseases and a growing number of hepatitis cases because of poor sanitation.

An elderly Tamil woman sits by a row of tents in a refugee camp in Vavuniya, Sri Lanka [Photo credit: Reuters/Stringer, courtesy of alertnet.org].

Oxfam called on the Sri Lankan government to allow better access to the camps and to drop its vehicle ban.
Sri Lanka: Oxfam’s response
Donate to Sri Lanka crisis

Climate change: Global business poised to push governments on fair deal
Global business leaders could make a significant contribution toward a fair and safe deal to tackle climate change when they meet at an international summit next week.

Oxfam’s executive director Jeremy Hobbs will speak at the World Business Summit on Climate Change, a gathering of more than 800 business leaders in Copenhagen.

“We could witness at this meeting the private sector wielding its power for the climate good,” says Hobbs. “The outcome could not matter more to millions of poor people around the world who are already suffering first and worst from the impacts of climate change.”

Oxfam and climate change

Swine flu: investment in public healthcare critical
Strengthen primary health care in developing countries, or millions of poor people across the globe are vulnerable to a potential swine flu pandemic, we warned the World Health Assembly in Geneva this week.

Investing in poor countries’ free public healthcare also offers them protection against the much bigger threats posed by malaria, HIV/AIDS and maternal mortality, as well as future health emergencies.

Maternal mortality rates a disgrace
The fact that as many mothers are dying in pregnancy and childbirth today as nearly 10 years ago is a disgrace, said Oxfam this week. We are calling for greater government investment in poor women’s health services.

According to the World Health Statistics 2009, published this week, the global maternal mortality ratio of 400 maternal deaths per 100 000 live births has barely changed since 1990. Every year an estimated 536 000 women die in pregnancy or childbirth.

Signpost to Koroba in southern Sudan

Despite travelling non-stop for several days, despite sitting in a crowded car, despite this being on the other side of the road to where I’m sitting, I still notice a signpost on the side of the road.  It looks more like something from rural England than southern Sudan - names of places and distances clearly marked.  “Now that’s unusual”, I thought…The car sped by arriving several hours later at the Oxfam office in East Mundri.

Two days later, we are back at the signpost and turning right down a virtually hidden path. Seven miles of bumpy track over red earth and through bush brings us suddenly into a clearing - Koroba, where Oxfam recently constructed a borehole.

Under the shade of a tree a group of people are waiting for us. Greetings are warm. We’re the first foreigners to visit.  Everyone gathers in a sheltered meeting area, which the community built so there was somewhere to teach the children. There are no schools anywhere nearby.

Our programme here is simple - water and sanitation. But after years of conflict and isolation I’m reminded, and humbled, once again about the incredible impact that having a borehole providing regular, safe water can have on people’s lives. People talk about the time it used to take to collect water, and the consequential cost of that time to their families and livelihoods, the risks and sicknesses…and the shame they felt for being dirty, for smelling.

But Oxfam didn’t just come and drill this borehole. The community first had to clear a track to the main road. The seven miles were cleared in less than two weeks. But it’s that combination of borehole and road that is offering the community new hope.

The community hope that many of the people who fled during conflict will return and resettle. They’re worried that their community of 100 households is too small - “we hope that more development opportunities will now come here”.  The land is very fertile but people need agricultural tools. Many people are returning from the refugee camps in northern Uganda and elsewhere, with little or nothing. They want training to improve their farming methods, and this is why one member of the community made the road sign - “People need to see where we are and how to get to us.”

The sky overhead darkens. A storm is brewing, and we have to leave. We have a long drive and heavy rains mean we could easily get stuck.  The drive back up the seven miles is a bit faster and we’re all thrown around and have to hang on. Everyone remarks on what we have seen and heard.

Read of transcript of the video

We have been reminded about why we are doing this. We are re-motivated, but we are also very aware of the great need…no schools, no clinics, poor livelihoods. And still, despite the road, this community is so isolated.  Conflict recently reappeared with the insurgence of the ‘Lord’s Resistance Army’ from Uganda. They didn’t reach this village, but that didn’t stop people from being afraid and running.

I can’t help but think that with the right support and help the people in this village in western Equatoria, and many of its neighbouring villages, could easily have a solid livelihood - after all, the basic resources, the fertile ground and determined people, are there.  I hope along with the people of Koroma that development opportunities will come.

In depth: Oxfam’s work in SouthSudan