Press releases

Just over a week after tsunami waves scoured the southern coast of Samoa, killing one per cent of the population and seriously affecting one out of every six people, the relief effort is still urgent. But recovery is not just about immediate relief – it is about longer-term development.

Major greenhouse gas emitters must help poor countries cope with climate change while recognizing the human rights and gender aspects of climate change, a panel of judges ruled at the Asian People’s Climate Court in Bangkok on Tuesday.

Oxfam and a coalition of NGOs reveal death toll reaches 2.1 million in three years of talks about talks. Talks to establish an effective international treaty on the trade in conventional arms are going at a snail’s pace because of some major arms exporters.

Emeritus Archbishop Desmond Tutu and Mary Robinson, Honorary President of Oxfam International and former UN commissioner for human rights, will hear testimony from people living on the climate front line at a special tribunal in Cape Town.

International humanitarian agency Oxfam announced today that Cambodia is still in emergency relief mode though flood waters in some areas are beginning to stabilize.

After rushing in a relief team to help deliver the most basic emergency supplies – drinking water, shoes, clothes, Fala Lilii (mats), sleeping bags and boxes of tinned fish – we are ramping up our response in Samoa.

International aid agency Oxfam today began tankering clean water into Padang, as part of the relief effort for the many people affected by last Wednesday’s 7.6 magnitude earthquake. Providing clean water is an immediate priority.

Additional aid team arrive in Padang, Sumatra to assist Oxfam partners. Vital stocks of emergency aid have been dispatched to the quake zone in Sumatra, Indonesia today (3 October 2009).

Typhoon Parma struck the Philippines on Saturday. The storm is the country's second in eight days. The capital, Manila, escaped the worst of the storm, but the north has been harder hit. Manila has been experiencing heavy rainfall since Friday evening.

Oxfam predicts more widespread destruction caused by Typhoon Ketsana and a higher demand for immediate humanitarian assistance in Cambodia.