Where We Work

Tuvalu

Country profile:

One of the smallest and most remote countries on Earth, Tuvalu is comprised of nine coral atolls in the South Pacific Ocean, about halfway between Hawaii and Australia. The islands are extremely low-lying and sea level rise is a direct threat to lives, assets, livelihoods and ecosystems. Other climate-induced threats include rising atmospheric and surface ocean temperatures, prolonged droughts, coral bleaching, tropical cyclones, storm surges, and salt spray.

Tuvalu is primarily a patriarchal and patrilineal society, and men dominate both traditional and formal political power structures. Historically, major social institutions have been family-based under the leadership of the matai (head of clan), and deep-seated social norms discourage women from contributing to public decision-making processes.

FACT SHEET

Capital: Funafuti
Population: 11, 639 with over half of the population residing on the atoll of Funafuti (2023)
Covers 26 sq km of land area
Tuvalu gained independence from the UK in 1978
66% of the population live in urban areas
26.3% of the population live below the poverty line
91% of the population have access to improved sanitation and clean drinking water (2023)
20% of the youth population (between ages 15-24) are unemployed (2023)
Tuvaluans spend an average of 10.5 years in school (2020)
46% of women (over age 15) participate in the workforce (2021)

Solomon Islands

Country profile:

Solomon Islands is an archipelago of more than 900 islands in the South Pacific. The people in this country face significant challenges across the areas of climate resilience, gender equity and inclusive governance.

Recent research shows climate finance flows are increasing, but that does not necessarily mean that climate finance is adequate or that finance is translating into concrete benefits on the ground.

Women in Solomon Islands face a number of systemic and deep-rooted barriers to full participation, including heavily male-dominated decision-making systems and practices, reinforced by gender stereotypes that portray women as less able than men to lead or make decisions.

Women are often prevented from gaining leadership positions because of low levels of education, a high burden of family care responsibility, high levels of violence, and underlying discriminatory social norms. As a result, women’s voices and priorities are often absent or secondary in decision-making within the household, the community, provincial government plans and national policies.

Our Partner

WARA is an Indigenous, women-led organisation with deep experience of gender equity and women’s empowerment in rural communities in Solomon Islands. WARA works to promote women’s economic empowerment and leadership through savings associations which give women a space to come together, store their savings safely, and learn more about managing their finances and running small businesses. Through this work, women have become more self-reliant, so that they are not dependent on their husbands to earn the money or give them money, or dependent on their local MP to give them money for school fees.

WARA’s long-standing presence and deep relationships in Malaita have laid a strong foundation for the opening of community and tribal governance forums to women, and for more equally shared decision-making within households.

In February 2023, WARA organised a three-day Leadership Forum, gathering leaders from different sectors – chiefs, youth, women, church leaders, and experts from government and non-government organisations – to discuss important issues, including the climate crisis and the ‘Are’are leadership system itself.

The Forum successfully provided a space for the voices of women, and of young men and women, paving the way for sustainable leadership into the future.

THE LATEST NEWS

Oxfam on flood watch in Solomon Islands

Oxfam is monitoring Tropical Storm Raquel, which has the potential to see a repeat of the type of flash flooding in the Solomon Islands that caused extensive damage to Honiara last year …

Oxfam accepts cheque from Pacific Corporation Foundation for Solomon’s recovery work

Oxfam New Zealand has accepted a cheque for almost $1000 today from the Pacific Corporation Foundation toward recovery efforts in the Solomon Islands, following April’s flash flooding that left thousands homeless …

Solomons floods: floods update

When disastrous flooding hit the Solomon Islands, your donations helped provide emergency assistance and continue to help people rebuild their means of earning a living …

Bangladesh

COUNTRY PROFILE

In August 2017 a brutal military crackdown on Rohingya people in Myanmar caused more than 700,000 people to flee across the border in search of safety in Bangladesh. In the years since then, Rohingya families have continued to escape into Bangladesh, finding shelter in one of the many refugee camps in the Cox’s Bazar region.

There are close to a million Rohingya refugees in the 34 camps, which include the world’s largest refugee camp (Kutupalong Balukhali mega camp) which hosts more than 630,000 refugees packed into an area of just 13 square kilometers.

Heavy monsoon rains in Southeast Bangladesh can lead to severe flooding and landslides throughout the camps. Rainwater inundates homes and shops and damages critical infrastructure like toilets and waterpoints—heightening the risk of water-borne illness.

Your support can help us continue this important work and scale up our efforts to reach more families with clean water, nutritious food, and a safer, well-lit environment.

KEY STATISTICS

Over 980,000 refugees and asylum seekers have fled Myanmar since the mass exodus in August 2017.
As of February 2022, about 923,179 refugees, or over 94% of people who fled Myanmar, live in Cox’s Bazar. The Kutupalong and Nayapara refugee camps are the largest and most densely populated camps in the world.
Women, girls and boys make up more than 75% of the refugee population. There are about 194,091 families living in Cox’s Bazar.

Key projects

Oxfam is working with the government of Bangladesh and other humanitarian agencies to improve conidtions in the camps.

We have already reached more than 266,000 people in the Rohingya camps and host communities with multiple hygiene and gender protection programmes.

We have installed a sewage facility which initially served 50,000 people, and will eventually serve more than 100,000.
We are drilling wells, installing water points, toilets and showers, and distributing water purification tablets. To help local communities cope with water shortages, we are providing around 385,000 liters of chlorinated water daily in the Teknaf area.
We’re helping people stay healthy and hygienic by distributing soap and other essentials, and working with community-based volunteers to emphasize the importance of clean water and good hygiene.
We have installed solar-powered lights around the camps and provided torches and portable solar lanterns so that refugees – especially women – feel safer leaving their shelters after dark to reach water points and toilets.
We’re also providing 24,000 households with vouchers that can be exchanged at local markets for nutritious vegetables and ingredients to supplement their basic rations.
Oxfam is treating water for the megacamp using electricity generated from solar panels, cleaning 100,000L of water per day.

By supporting Oxfam you will

Help to provide water and sanitation and adapting to better deal with the crowded conditions.
Install sewage facilities that will eventually service over 100,000 people.
Drill wells and install water points, toilets and showers.
Help local communities cope with water shortages through deliveries of chlorinated water.
Help people stay healthy and hygienic with soap and other essentials.
Support and train community-based volunteers to emphasize the importance of clean water and good hygiene.

The latest news

Papua New Guinea

Oxfam is helping to improve the lives of people in rural Papua New Guinea.

Country profile

Amongst the country’s towering mountains, deep valleys and tropical forests lie a multitude of communities all with their own languages, cultures and histories. Rural Papua New Guinea is home to 80% of the population, yet these families have seen few benefits from the country’s thriving gas and oil industry due to corruption across political, legal and state institutions.

These barriers combined with challenging physical geography and poor infrastructure, such as roads, have stunted economic development in these rural areas. This makes it hard for locals to sustainably engage in anything more than subsistence farming as often transporting their crops to the larger, lucrative markets in the cities is unaffordable. Unsurprisingly, income inequality in PNG is the highest in the Asia Pacific region. Growth-fuelled inflation is causing further imbalances, meaning basic items are often too expensive for rural farmers.

Statistics from the UNDP Human Development Report and The World Factbook:

Capital: Port Moresby
Population: 7,027,332 (2018)
The largest island in the Pacific
80% of the population live in rural areas
39.9% of the population lives below the basic needs poverty line (2021)
69.2% of the population have no access to limited-standard drinking water (2021)
79.8% have no access to limited-standard sanitation (2021)
82.6% have no access to electricity (2021)
93.7% of employed women are engaged in informal employment like subsistence agriculture and local trading. (2019)
70% of women experience a form of physical and sexual assault in their lifetime, and are five times more likely to be victimised at home than on the street. (2017)

BY SUPPORTING OXFAM YOU WILL

Help farmers adapt to climate change so that they can grow, harvest, process and market their crops to earn a better income.
Increase the skills and knowledge of local beekeepers and vegetable farmers to maximise their yields.
Help ensure that women have an equal say in their families’ financial decisions and can safely access financial services.
Improve health through improved education and increased access to clean water, new toilets and showers, in rural schools and health facilities.
Build awareness among government stakeholders about the importance of funding and maintaining water and hygiene infrastructure in schools, health centres and other public spaces.

FLOW Programme

Oxfam’s FLOW programme works with local partners to improve access to basic sanitation and safe water, and promote hygiene practices in rural schools and health facilities in the Eastern Highlands of Papua New Guinea.

About half of Papua New Guinea’s population live in the Highlands (approximately 3 million people) but many of these people have limited or no access to clean water or sanitation services.

By building water tanks, latrines, showers and by promoting good hygiene, we’re helping over 32,000 people stay healthy. In addition, installing private toilets in schools means that teenage girls can continue their education, rather than staying home on days they have their periods.

PAST PROGRAMMES

Oxfam’s HARVEST project worked with local partners to improve the income and lives of over 2,000 families so they could send their kids to school, access decent healthcare and reliably put nutritious food on the table.

This programme helped farming families boost the quality and quantity of their vegetable yields by improving planting and pest-control techniques. This means they can shift from subsistence to market-oriented farming.

With more knowledge, these farmers can then access larger, more profitable markets. We also partnered with two local honey businesses to train and support beekeepers. This doubled the incomes of many families.

As their incomes grew, we helped women and men develop financial management skills to jointly plan, budget, and save for their financial goals. To improve the security of their savings, we also linked them with community-savings providers.

The latest news

Papua New Guinea

A mother carries her young child on her shoulder.

Oxfam: New Zealand must do more for PNG – urgently

Papua New Guinea faces a deadly pandemic of misinformationIn response to the New Zealand government sending a medical and logistics support team to Papua New Guinea (PNG) over the weekend, Oxfam Aotearoa says that while essential supplies and support is …

Oxfam concerned with the recent spike in PNG COVID-19 cases

Oxfam in PNG with its local partners is deeply concerned with the recent spike in the number of COVID-19 cases reported in Papua New Guinea (PNG). The recent increase within the communities exposes many people, particularly the most vulnerable, to …

Here’s how we’re helping rural farmers in Papua New Guinea

The onions from Steven Bare’s garden in the remote highlands of Papua New Guinea bring more smiles than tears. He’s thrilled to harvest another bumper crop. Steven and his wife Maria have turned their family’s fortunes around since taking part …

Vanuatu

Country profile

Vanuatu is a lush archipelago of more than 80 scattered volcanic islands. Agriculture, fishing, offshore financial services and tourism are the main drivers of Vanuatu’s economy, yet border closures brought on by Covid-19 have had a devastating impact on the tourism sector, dramatically reducing the number of jobs available to young people.

Vanuatu is highly at-risk for natural hazards. Because Vanuatu is so vulnerable to natural disasters, it has been critically important to improve how we can deliver aid in the wake of a destructive cyclone, flood or storm. For example, in March 2023, two Category 4 tropical cyclones (TC Judy and TC Kevin) hit Vanuatu with two days. These massive storms affected 66% of the total population causing significant damage to homes, businesses, and infrastructure with storm surges, flooding, and heavy winds.

In addition to vulnerability to weather disasters, young people in Vanuatu must navigate an economy of high unemployment, low wages and expensive housing. Ni-Vanuatu youth have limited access to secondary education, with only 11.9% of young people staying on through Grade 13 (the final year of secondary school). Many must leave school early because they cannot afford the tuition and fees, and must instead earn money to help support their families. This has left Ni-Vanuatu youth in the precarious position of being unable to afford advanced education but with only limited low-wage opportunities elsewhere.

Key statistics

Capital: Port Vila
Population: 319,000 (2021)
Population below the basic needs poverty line: 15.9% (2021)
Infant mortality rate: 21.07 deaths/1,000 live births (2021)
Life expectancy at birth: 65.31 (2020)
Population affected by natural disasters: 64% (2021)
Vanuatu ranks 140/189 countries on the UNDP’s Human Development Index (2020)
The average annual income per person in Vanuatu is US$5,593. By comparison, in New Zealand it is US$39,583 (Sources: World Inequality Database, 2021 and Statz NZ, 2021)
Children go to school for an average of just 6.8 years (2017)
There are currently zero seats held by women in Vanuatu’s Parliament

PAST PROJECTS

Oxfam’s Enhancing Youth Employment and Leadership programme (EYEL) partners with Youth Challenge Vanuatu (YCV) to help bridge the gap between young people eager to learn and work and the jobs that they could succeed in. Through training programmes in leadership, business and computer skills, as well as internship placements, YCV supports young people to build the skills that will make them competitive in the job market and even offer start-up grants for young entrepreneurs.

This project was officially started in April 2018 and is set to finish around June 2023. The overall objective is to increase the number of young men and women, including marginalised youth, that are leading economic and social development in Vanuatu.

Oxfam Aotearoa’s partnership with Youth Challenge Vanuatu has improved young people’s access to education and work experience. After completing YCV’s programmes, Ni-Vanuatu youth have more experience, confidence, and the skills necessary to secure jobs that pay a living wage.

Oxfam’s UnBlocked Cash Project
The massive number of people requiring humanitarian assistance has been growing in recent years due to climate-caused disasters. Vanautu is particularly prone to climate-caused disasters and has suffered extensive damage from Category 5 cyclones (TC Pam and TC Harold) in recent years.

Oxfam’s UnBlocked Cash project is set to tackle this challenge. It offers an opportunity to improve how aid is delivered without compromising the dignity of beneficiaries. Using blockchain technology, beneficiaries receive “tap-and-pay” cards which they can use to purchase the goods or services they need. Local vendors can process payments using smartphones with a pre-installed app. This system saves costs and reduces delivery time for distributing aid, brings more transparency and accountability to the process, and ensures that people in need are able to get the things they need, rather than make do with whatever supplies are being made available.

The project originated in 2019 in areas of Vanuatu where the severity of Tropical Cyclone Harold and COVID-19 restrictions had significantly reduced income and livelihoods, particularly amongst households with pre-existing vulnerabilities. Oxfam’s UnBlocked Cash project won the European Union 2020 Horizon Prize for Blockchain for Social Good in Aid category, supporting further scaling of the project beyond the Pacific region. It has also been selected as the winner of the 2020 World Summit Awards in the Inclusion & Empowerment category.

Drawing from what we learned in Vanuatu, this project has been scaled out to Papua New Guinea, where heavy rains in April 2020 caused floods and landslides in several provinces, and will be deployed to Solomon Islands next year.

The latest news

Vanuatu

Youth Challenge Vanuatu launches E-learning pilot to support youth during disasters and beyond

It is a familiar conundrum around the world during the coronavirus pandemic – students crammed into home offices or at … Read More

Oxfam coordinates response to tropical cyclone Harold

Oxfam teams in the Pacific are working with partner agencies and governments in Vanuatu and Solomon Islands, to plan a … Read More

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Oxfam monitoring Cyclone Donna: latest news

UPDATE: 12:00pm 09/05/2017 An update has been sent out from Oxfam’s regional office in Vanuatu. The worst affected people are … Read More

Shanine’s Poultry Farm

It’s not uncommon for children in Vanuatu to stop attending school at 10 years old – there are not enough … Read More

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High risk of cyclone hitting Vanuatu: Oxfam monitoring

Oxfam is closely monitoring after a cyclone warning was issued for Vanuatu, as numerous provinces brace for damaging gale-force winds … Read More

Timor-Leste

Timor-Leste is a nation comprising half of the island of Timor, in Southeast Asia. Timor-Leste is highly vulnerable to climate-related disasters, and is considered the seventh most disaster-prone country in the world. Women and girls are disproportionately affected by the negative consequences of drought, landslides, and floods. Gender-based violence is prevalent across Timor-Leste and research shows that climate emergencies can lead to further increases in domestic violence.

Timor-Leste is home to about 1.3 million people and is one of the poorest countries in the Asia-Pacific region. Almost half the population lives below the poverty line. According to the UNDP Human Development Report, Timor Leste is among the bottom six Asian countries with a low Human Development Index and the highest Multidimensional Poverty Index.

Although it is well-placed to serve the Asian market, there are many hurdles to establishing a thriving business in Timor-Leste, including poor roads and access to banking services. Agriculture dominates the economy, accounting for 15 percent of GDP and approximately 39 percent of employment. Insufficient food production and an under-developed local market have led to a dependency on imports of rice and other commodities. Malnutrition and poor health are widespread and most rural households suffer from food shortages for at least one month of the year.

One of the key issues facing the people of Timor-Leste is a lack of skills in key areas from government planning to community self-determination. Capacity to deliver essential services remains weak and the rebuilding of infrastructure and civil administration remains a huge challenge.

Quick facts from the World Bank, UN Human Development Report, and UNICEF:

Capital of Timor-Leste: Dili
Population: 1,343,875 (2022)
GDP per capita (USD): $1,442.73 (2021)
Human Development Index: 0.606, rank 141 (2021)
Language: Official languages are Portuguese and Tetum
Religion: Roman Catholic (97.6%)
Adult Literacy: 68.1 (2021)
Life expectancy: 69.5 years (2021)
Government: Republic
Access to safe water: 78% (2021)
Access to toilets: 60.4% (2021)
Access to electricity: 72.6% (2021)
Infant mortality rate (per 1000 live births): 37 (2021)
People living below the national poverty line: 41.8% (2021)

KEY PROJECTS

Timor-Leste Women and Land Project

In Timor-Leste, women’s mobility, security, advancement and voice are influenced by a range of highly restrictive patriarchal social norms. Women frequently have less control over the assets on which their livelihoods depend, especially land.

An important aspect of improving women’s land rights will be making sure that formal and informal leaders recognise the how important it is that women have these rights in the first place.

Timor-Leste Climate Finance Project

For climate finance to provide the best possible return and the most impact, it must get to where it is most needed. Women and other vulnerable groups in Timor-Leste have not yet been able to adequately, equitably and optimally access or benefit from climate finance.

To put it simply, for women to get more access to this funding, they need to be at the table when the decisions are being made.

Past projects

Oxfam’s IMPACT programme worked to support economic self-reliance and resilience in rural communities by helping farming businesses to thrive. Oxfam continues to support research into high-value crops, identifying market opportunities for candlenut, mung beans, red beans, shallots and onions. Oxfam’s training has increased production of these crops in Timor-Leste and has provided farmers with wrap-around support in production, processing and marketing, so they can get the best prices for their crops. This increased income helps to make essentials like education attainable for these families and helps break the cycle of poverty.

By supporting Oxfam you will:

Support local efforts to improve land rights in Timor-Leste to ensure more women own and control the land they farm
Contribute to local legal aid for women seeking to navigate land registration processes
Help educate farmers about their rights and how to protect them
Improve women’s access to climate finance
Ensure that there is greater transparency around how climate finance is used, especially in how it addresses the needs of women

The latest news:

East Timor

Timor-Leste’s most destructive floods in recent memory likely worsened by climate change, as COVID-19 threat looms: Oxfam

Almost half of the population of Timor-Leste’s capital has been impacted by severe flooding, according to government figures, after heavy rains fell on Dili and nearby provinces last week. Cyclone Seroja took the people of Timor-Leste by surprise, with the small nation previously not within the range of such extreme … Read More

Profile: Anna Mosley, International Portfolio Manager

As a twenty-something backpacker with a love of languages, Anna Mosley explored remote pockets of China, Cambodia and Laos, piquing an interest in development work. Now, fifteen years on, she has worked across Latin America and Asia supporting poor communities in remote regions. She tells us about her new role, … Read More