protection des civils

UN peacekeeping missions worldwide – one of the key instruments to protect civilians trapped in armed conflicts - often fail to engage with the local communities they are meant to protect, according to Oxfam.

International military forces must take urgent steps to protect civilians caught up in the escalating conflict as they plan for the handover of responsibility for security to the Afghan government, warned leading aid agencies today.

Oxfam today called upon the Israeli government to compensate Palestinian villagers after the Israeli army demolished 79 structures in the village of Al Farisiya in the West Bank on Monday, forcing families into further impoverishment after years of harassment.

An Oxfam-commissioned survey reveals that sixty percent of rape victims were gang raped. More than half of the assaults took place in their own homes. There has also been a shocking increase in the number of civilian rapists.

According to UN figures, some 250,000 people in the provinces of North and South Kivu have been displaced since mid-January following a military operation targeting the FDLR rebel group.

As the UN is launching an appeal for funding to Gaza in Geneva today, aid agency Oxfam International insists that access of goods to the Gaza Strip is equally important as fundraising. Without further delay, Israel must allow for all existing crossings to function at maximum capacity.

International agency Oxfam today (21 January 2009) expressed its fears for the safety of civilians as fresh fighting loomed in Democratic Republic of Congo. The Congolese and Rwandan armies and CNDP rebel troops are set to disarm another rebel group, the FDLR.

An Oxfam worker and her family escaped a certain death after an Israeli rocket hit a house they were sheltering in during the early hours of this morning. Oxfam is calling for an immediate and durable ceasefire.

A paramedic working for an Oxfam funded organization was killed when an Israeli shell struck a civilian ambulance in Gaza today according to international agency Oxfam.

The international community took an important step in deploying the UN and EUFOR mission to volatile and insecure eastern Chad.