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Oxfam responds to mass forced displacement in Lebanon and ready to respond to wider regional crisis

Oxfam and partners are responding to the immediate needs of people who have been forcibly displaced by Israel’s bombardment and ground invasion of Lebanon, as the conflict across the region enters a dramatically new and dangerous phase.

Oxfam in Lebanon is scaling up its emergency response by supporting thousands of people across shelters in Mount Lebanon, the South, and the Bekaa, providing bedding kits, hygiene kits, menstrual hygiene management kits, and clean water. 

“This expansion of Israeli occupation and its bombing of Lebanon will devastate people across Lebanon who had not yet recovered from the last wave of violence, inflicting more trauma on an already traumatized population,” said Lebanon country director Bachir Ayoub. “Once again, families have been forced from their beds and their homes as Israel rained bombs down on their communities”.

There is grave concern about the scale and impact the conflict will have on tens of millions of people across the region, where almost 60 million already rely on humanitarian aid. The broader escalation in the region is triggering further mass forced displacement, placing additional strain on overstretched systems and pushing humanitarian conditions further towards catastrophe.

It will widen inequality gaps, intensify existing poverty and injustice, and limit the ability of humanitarian organisations to reach communities in need. 

“Global inaction has set the scene for this dangerous escalation,” said Ayoub. “The inability of the international community to hold Israel accountable for its ongoing violations of international law has led us to this point, where we again see hundreds of thousands of people in Lebanon forced to flee in the march towards a wider regional war.”

Oxfam staff and partners are poised to respond with pre-positioned life-saving aid throughout the countries where the aid agency operates if the escalation is allowed to further spill out across the Middle East

In light of unlawful attacks by the United States and Israel and Iran’s retaliation, Oxfam demands that the international community reaffirm its commitment to international law. Rules governing the use of force must be applied equally, most of all the prohibition against the aggressive use of force enshrined in the United Nations Charter. The U.S, Israel, Iran and all parties to the conflict must immediately cease their attacks, de-escalate the chaos across the region and refrain from future actions that lead to yet another cycle of violence.

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Notes to editors: 

Global Humanitarian Overview 2025 indicates nearly 59.2 million people across the region require humanitarian assistance

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For interviews please contact: [email protected]

REACTION: Oxfam urges New Zealand to oppose Middle East escalation and push for civilian protection.

Oxfam Aotearoa is deeply concerned by the escalation of military conflict across the Middle East and wider region. Oxfam calls on the New Zealand Government to take a firm stand in support of peace and International Humanitarian Law, pressing all parties to protect civilians and return to diplomatic negotiations.

As Oxfam America President Abby Maxman states:

“The United States and Israel’s attacks on Iran fall outside the narrow bounds of lawful self- defense, undermining the very rules-based order these governments claim to defend.

And the silence of many Western leaders in the face of these initial strikes is deeply alarming. Moments like this demand moral courage, not political calculation.”

Our humanitarian workers across the region are responding to urgent humanitarian needs wherever access is possible and until funds are available, in close coordination with our partners. However, humanitarian assistance alone cannot keep pace with the scale and speed of suffering generated by ongoing hostilities. Aid cannot substitute for political solutions. 

For this reason, Oxfam has joined a statement by 14 humanitarian organisations working in the region, calling for an immediate end to the military violence, protection of civilian populations, and a return to diplomatic talks with the goal of a lasting peace.

Oxfam Aotearoa Executive Director Jason Myers has expressed solidarity with all communities affected by the conflict and called on the New Zealand Government to take a clear stance against military escalation:

“New Zealand has long stood for diplomacy, international law, and the protection of civilians. Our government must take a clear and principled stance against further military escalation in the Middle East, advocating for de-escalation, humanitarian protection, and a genuine path to peace”.

Contact information:

Rachel Schaevitz | Head of Communication, Media & Advocacy, Oxfam Aotearoa

Email: [email protected], Mobile: +64 (0)27 959 5555

Statement by Regional Directors of INGOs in the Middle East Region

We, the Regional Directors of 14 INGOs, express our profound concern at the accelerating military escalation across the Middle East and the wider region. What we are witnessing is a dangerous expansion of violence with devastating consequences for civilians. 

There must be an immediate end to this spiral of military violence, to the use of explosive weapons in populated areas, and a return to the pursuit of diplomatic solutions. The continued exchange of attacks across borders is deepening instability, heightening tensions, and placing entire populations at unacceptable risks. Every new strike increases the broader regional crisis that will be borne primarily by civilians, especially children and women who have already been disproportionately impacted. 

We are gravely concerned by the ongoing and repeated possible violations of international humanitarian law, which demand independent and impartial review. In situations of international armed conflict, the full body of international humanitarian law applies. These rules exist to limit suffering and to protect those who are not, or are no longer, participating in hostilities. 

This violence is the foreseeable consequence of years in which violations of international law have gone insufficiently checked. At a time when international humanitarian law is already undermined, all parties should fully return to and uphold their obligations under it. 

Our humanitarian workers across the region are responding to urgent humanitarian needs wherever access is possible and until funds are available, in close coordination with our partners. However, humanitarian assistance alone cannot keep pace with the scale and speed of suffering generated by ongoing hostilities. Aid cannot substitute for political solutions. 

What is urgently required is decisive political will to de-escalate tensions, uphold international law, protect civilians, and commit to meaningful pathways toward peace. Without immediate action, the human cost will continue to rise, and the consequences of inaction will reverberate across generations. 

We call on all parties to prioritize the protection of civilians, humanitarian workers, and civilian infrastructures, in particular health facilities, schools and water infrastructure, adhere strictly to international humanitarian law, and take immediate steps to end the violence across the Middle East.

Signed: 

1. Caroline Bedos Esteban, MENA Unit Manager, Médecins du Monde / Doctors of the World 

2. Laure Baudin,MENA Regional Director, Terre des hommes Foundation 

3. Myriam Abord-Hugon, Mashreq Regional Director, Humanity&Inclusion-Handicap International 

4. Lilu Thapa, MEAE Executive Director, DRC 

5. Flutra Gorana, Middle East Regional Director, War Child Alliance Foundation 

6. Angelita Caredda, MENA Regional Director NRC 

7. Carlo Gherardi, EurAsia Regional Director NRC 

8. Ahmad Alhendawi, Regional Director for the Middle East, North Africa, and Eastern Europe, Save the Children 

9. Arnaud Quemin, Vice-President for MENA, Europe, and Asia, Mercy Corps 

10. Sally Abi Khalil, Regional Director MENA, Oxfam 

11. Fiona Gannon, Regional Director – Middle East, Concern Worldwide 

12. Stephanie Yousef, Senior Coordinator for the Middle East and North Africa, CIVIC 

13. Benjamin Thiberge, Emergencies and oPt Coordinator, Médicos del Mundo/Doctors of the World 

14. Eleanor Monbiot, Regional Leader at World Vision Middle East and Eastern Europe

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Contact information:

Rachel Schaevitz | Head of Communication, Media & Advocacy, Oxfam Aotearoa

Email: [email protected], Mobile: +64 (0)27 959 5555

Millions of people across Somalia, Kenya and Ethiopia facing drought crisis, as cost of water increases by 2000% in worst hit areas – Oxfam

  • Failed October–December rains have pushed nearly 26 million people into extreme hunger in East Africa.

  • 58 million people do not have access to clean drinking water.

  • Millions of livestock are at risk as drought devastates grazing lands and water sources, threatening pastoralist livelihoods.

Failure of the last rainy season across Somalia, Kenya and Ethiopia is triggering a food and water emergency for millions of people still trying to recover from the longest and most severe recorded drought spanning from 2020 to 2023 during which five rainy seasons in a row failed. Dry wells, soaring water prices, crop losses and livestock deaths are pushing communities to the brink, warns Oxfam.

Across the three countries, nearly 26 million people are facing extreme hunger as drought conditions worsen, decimating crops before harvest and leaving livestock to die from lack of water and pasture. Deepening water scarcity is also driving displacement with more than 58 million people lacking access to clean water. As rivers and shallow wells dry up, families – most often women and girls – are forced to walk up to 15 kilometers for a single 20‑liter jerrycan while soaring prices put water trucking beyond reach for many families.

In parts of Somalia, Oxfam staff and partners report that the cost of water has increased by more than 2000 percent. Families are now paying between $1 and $1.50 for a single jerrycan of water, compared to $0.06 a year ago. For families who have already lost their crops, livestock and sources of income, water is now unaffordable. In Hobyo town, north of the country’s capital, communities are relying on water trucked from Gawaan village, located 30 kilometers away. High transportation costs are driving up prices even further.

Fati N’Zi-Hassane, Oxfam in Africa Director, said: “Water trucking is becoming the last line of defence, but for many families who can’t afford even one meal a day for their children, paying for water is simply impossible. For women and girls, the crisis is particularly severe as they now have to walk longer distances, often in unsafe conditions, to secure what should be a basic human right.”

In Somalia, a new Integrated Food Security Classification (IPC) alert revealed that the number of people facing hunger has nearly doubled since early 2025, rising to 6.5 million people. One in three people in the country are expected to be in crisis level hunger between February and March 2026. Levels of acute malnutrition have more than doubled, with communities struggling to survive as the climate crisis deepens.

In Kenya’s arid and semi‑arid areas, communities are reporting reduced harvests while in Ethiopia, some areas are reporting crop losses due to the failure of the last two rainy seasons, leaving households empty‑handed. FEWSNET estimated that some regions had suffered production losses of 34 to 54 percent due to a severe rainfall deficit.

Livestock, the backbone of pastoralist communities, are dying in large numbers as water and grazing lands completely dry up. In Somalia alone, an estimated 1.4 million livestock died in 2025, with another 2.5 million at risk. In Kenya’s northern counties, animal deaths from starvation and disease are rising while milk production has dropped by more than half, stripping families of their main source of food and income while in Ethiopia, poor rains have weakened livestock.

The deepening crisis is unfolding amid severe humanitarian funding gaps. While needs have surged across East Africa, funding has declined sharply leaving millions of families to fend for themselves. In 2021, Somalia, Kenya and Ethiopia required $2.65 billion in humanitarian aid, with just under 61 percent funded. In 2025, less than one‑third of overall humanitarian requirements were met. In Somalia, the 2025 Humanitarian Response Plan received only 29 percent of the required funding while the 2026 has secured barely 13.4 percent so far.

“The upcoming dry season will not just be difficult – it could be the final blow pushing communities beyond the point of recovery. Urgent funding is needed now to save lives across the region. Communities here have contributed almost nothing to global climate crisis, yet they are paying the highest price. Families are fighting every day to survive its consequences. We can’t fail them,” said N’Zi‑Hassane.

Across Somalia, Kenya and Ethiopia, Oxfam is working with local partners to deliver life‑saving water, hygiene kits, cash assistance and protection support in hard‑to‑reach and most severely affected communities.

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Notes to editors

According to the WHO/UNICEF JMP 2025 report, access to drinking water varies significantly across the Horn of Africa.

  • Somalia: 22 percent (4.2 million people) rely on unsafe water.

  • Kenya: 8 percent (4.5 million) rely on unimproved water.

  • Ethiopia: 37 percent of the population rely on unimproved water.

The total figure of people requiring food assistance by mid‑2026 in Somalia, Kenya and Ethiopia is between 24.5 to 25.9 million people. Calculations from data below:

  • According to the IPC, a staggering 6.5 million people in Somalia are estimated to be facing high levels of acute food insecurity—nearly double the number recorded in August 2025.

  • FEWS NET estimates 3.0 to 3.49 million people in Kenya will require humanitarian food assistance between October 2025 and May 2026, driven by poor short rains.

  • FEWS NET: food insecurity in Ethiopia remains severe, with up to 15–15.9 million people expected to need urgent food assistance by July 2026 amid Crisis and Emergency conditions, driven in part by significant drought‑related production losses of 54% in East Hararghe and 34% in West Hararghe due to rainfall deficits.

  • The loss of 1.4 million livestock in Somalia was reported by WFP and the estimate of the 2.5 million being at risk is from OCHA.

In 2021, Kenya’s drought flash appeal received $29.5 million of the $69.7 million required (42 percent), Somalia’s Humanitarian Coordinated Plan received $862.3 million of the $1.092 billion required (79 percent) and Ethiopia’s Humanitarian Coordinated Plan received $719.1 million of the $1.488 billion required (48.3 percent).

Somalia Humanitarian Coordinated Plans Funding for 2025 saw $412 million of the required $1.42 billion (29 percent) and for 2026 to date $119.2 million has been raised of the $825 million required (13.4 percent).

Contact information:

Rachel Schaevitz | Head of Communication, Media & Advocacy, Oxfam Aotearoa

Email: [email protected], Mobile: +64 (0)27 959 5555

Africa subject of 80 per cent of UN Security Council resolutions over last decade, despite exclusion from permanent seat – Oxfam

Since 2016, conflicts in Africa have claimed millions of lives, forced nearly 46 million people from their homes – more than four times a decade ago – and pushed 120 million people across 26 African countries into hunger. Yet African representation in critical decisions concerning its security and future is minimal. Oxfam urges African leaders convening for the 39th African Union summit in Addis Ababa to demand for a meaningful reform within the UN Security Council.

Oxfam found that conflicts across Africa have dominated UN Security Council (UNSC) resolutions over the last decade, totalling a staggering 80 per cent, despite no African country having a permanent seat on the Council.

Last year alone, nearly 45% of the resolutions adopted by the UNSC -20 out of 44 resolutions- explicitly focused on an African country or situations in Africa. Of these 20 resolutions, 18 authorised sanctions, peacekeeping or military action.

Oxfam’s briefing note “Africa’s rightful seat: from vetoing humanity to a just multilateral order”, highlights Africa’s exclusion from permanent representation at the UN Security Council and calls for urgent multilateral reform.

Fati N’zi-Hassane, Oxfam in Africa Director, said: “Many of the world’s most deadly and protracted conflicts are taking place in Africa, yet the continent continues to be denied a permanent seat at the table, underscoring a long-standing imbalance in global decision-making on peace and security.

“Without the right voices being heard, resolutions are being passed that are not implementable and are out of touch with what people need or want.”

Five countries at the epicentre of prolonged conflict – Democratic Republic of Congo, Ethiopia, Nigeria, Sudan and South Sudan – account for nearly two-thirds of the continent’s acute food insecurity. In Sudan alone, the ongoing conflict that erupted in April 2023 has claimed more than 150,000 lives, while millions more struggle to survive.

The economic costs are equally stark with the conflict estimated to cost the continent around $18 billion each year, seriously derailing development, disrupting trade and diverting resources away from crucial development priorities across large part of Africa.

Oxfam’s Vetoing Humanity report in 2024 showed that resolutions too often fail to deliver peace or address root causes, leaving ordinary people to shoulder the human and economic toll of crises they had no hand in shaping.

“While conflicts across the continent continue to intensify, decisions driven largely by UNSC members are failing to ease the human cost for millions of people. For far too long, Africa has faced unjust, disproportionate challenges stemming from the current geopolitical landscape and key decisions affecting peace and security must be made with proper African representation. The UN Security Council must evolve to have the right people at the table.” Fati N’zi-Hassane concluded.

As African leaders gather for the 39th AU Summit, Oxfam calls on them to strongly reaffirm the common African position held since the Ezulwini Consensus with Africa remaining at the center of Security Council decisions without being represented, strengthening this political unity is essential to advancing fair multilateral reform.

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Note to editor:

See report: No Representation, No Peace: The African demand for a reformed Security Council

The Ezulwini Consensus is the African Union’s common position on the reform of the United Nations, particularly the Security Council. Adopted in 2005 in Ezulwini, Swaziland (Eswatini), it calls for at least two permanent seats with veto power and five non-permanent seats for Africa in order to correct its under-representation.

 

Contact information:

For more details, please contact: [email protected]

Escalation of conflict in South Sudan threatens to push a million into extreme food crisis

Families in South Sudan are once again having to flee for their lives due to escalating conflict at a time when hunger is already at catastrophic levels, Oxfam warned.

Renewed fighting, which has spread across Jonglei and into the neighbouring area of Walgak, 100 kilometres from the capital Juba, is deepening an already dire situation, cutting families off from food, clean water and urgent humanitarian support.

Multiple health facilities and aid agencies including Oxfam were looted and staff beaten and forced to flee leading to service suspension and humanitarian staff displacement. Prior to the suspension of life-saving assistance, Oxfam was supporting more than 400,000 people in Jonglei through food security and resilience programmes.

Since December, more than 280,000 people have been forced to flee their homes and are now sheltering in bushes, overcrowded schools and churches where services are minimal to nothing. 75% of those displaced are women and children.

Families who were already severely food insecure, malnourished and dependent upon aid are now reducing their meals even further in order to feed their displaced relatives. Many have had to leave all of their belongings, food and livestock behind.

Even before the latest fighting, more than 700,000 people in Jonglei counties were facing crisis or emergency hunger, including over 11,000 living in catastrophic conditions.

“Families are being forcibly displaced into areas where conditions are already dire,” said Shabnam Baloch, Oxfam’s South Sudan Country Director.

“Some are injured and barely able to move. Many are at risk of starvation and having to drink water from contaminated rivers and swamps. The situation is beyond desperate.”

Population displacement and contaminated water coupled with lack of hygiene supplies is adding another deadly layer to the crisis. Oxfam assessments found that, in some areas, 100% of the population are having to rely on unsafe water, with many forced into open defecation, creating a breeding ground for diseases. In January alone there were more than 400 cases of cholera and the situation is only set to get worse as more people are forced to move.

With the rainy approaching in March, humanitarian access would shrink even further as road access become impassable pushing an already affected communities to the edge.

Shabnam Baloch said: “A frightening number of people in South Sudan are already severely hungry as conflict intensifies; families have abandoned farms at harvest and their cattle are either looted or lost while the fishing grounds remain inaccessible preventing them from planting food crops and feeding their families.

“The people of South Sudan desperately need an immediate end to this conflict so that they can get food. We strongly appeal to all parties to the conflict to allow people to safely reach humanitarian assistance.”

In the 2026 humanitarian response plan for South Sudan, over 10 million people – two-thirds of the population – are projected to require some humanitarian assistance including 7.5 million people who are at risk of starvation. Oxfam is also warning that worsening insecurity is exposing women and girls to violence and driving some families to resort to early and forced marriage as an economic survival strategy.

Women escaping conflict are disproportionately vulnerable to profound traumas, many of which remain hidden beneath the surface of their survival. One group of women, who had to walk for 3 days with their children to Akobo, told Oxfam: “There is a silence that walks beside us on these long roads – a heavy, wordless grief for the things we saw, the things we endured, and the parts of ourselves we had to leave behind just to keep our children moving.

“We live in a state of constant fear, not for our own lives, but for the small ones who look to us for a safety we are still trying to find for ourselves.”

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Notes to editor

Before the suspension of its operations, Oxfam was responding in the worst-affected areas of Jonglei and Lakes states, where nearly 80% of displacement is concentrated, with Rapid Response Teams ready to scale up. The response focused on cholera prevention through clean water and sanitation, emergency cash assistance for food and essentials, safe learning spaces for children, and protection services addressing gender-based violence.

According to UNOCHA, more than 280,000 people have been displaced since 29 December 2025. Among the overall displaced individuals, it was estimated that 75% are women and children.

Contact information:

For more details, please contact: [email protected]