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Gender-based violence prevention and response

The majority of Oxfam’s large (Category 1 and 2) humanitarian responses carry out an ongoing protection analysis which informs the initial response strategy and is used to identify adaptations to the response in terms of a range of protection threats facing civilians, with a focus on gender based violence (GBV). A 2018 review of Oxfam’s protection work found that most of large humanitarian responses include a component of facilitating referrals to specialist and emergency services and that this component has become a norm in Oxfam humanitarian responses.

IHL and IHRL compliance and accountability

Oxfam carries out its influencing agenda, including ensuring protection/safe programming in responses, with support from offices across the globe. Current policy staff include 11 at country level, while 28 staff members are supporting different crisis teams at the regional or global level. Oxfam carries out its influencing work through a coordinated plan for each national Government or influencing target, focusing on agencies and actors with significant interests and engagement in a particular crisis. Oxfam policy staff are housed under our various affiliates, and support is provided in a decentralized manner from a distance.

Refugees

Oxfam is working advocating and campaigning on forced displacement and migration across many different contexts, whether it is:

• Working to improve the situation of refugees in Italy, Greece, Macedonia and Serbia.
• Oxfam’s EU Migration Campaign campaigning in domestic markets in Ireland, Germany, the Netherlands, Spain and the United Kingdom to shift the narrative on refugees, challenge racism and xenophobia.
• In Jordan, the team worked hard to advocate for refugees to gain access to employment market
• Oxfam Australia has also been campaigning for many years on the treatment of refugees in the off-shore reception centres as well as running a large refugees welcome campaign.
• The migrant crisis in central America has also been a focus, as has how refugees have been received by the US and the threats to the asylum system. 
• Oxfam was also engaged in the UNHCR-led process to produce a Global Compact on Refugees. This included leading an influencing network, and hosting a grounding-breaking Refugee Congress in Turkey bringing together host governments, refugees and refugee led organizations. The policy asks that were developed were successfully integrated into the final text of the compacts and refugee participation has become more accepted.

IDPs (due to conflict, violence, and disaster)

Oxfam’s humanitarian mandate means that we deliver humanitarian response to internally displaced persons (IDPs) and refugees in many fragile and conflict-affected states. Oxfam's One Programme Approach ensures that advocacy is at the heart of any response:

• In Myanmar, Oxfam advocated for access so internally displaced Rohingya can access their rights; a more gender responsive response in Bangladesh and that refugees will not be forcibly returned.
• In protracted crises, we have campaigned in partnership with women’s rights organizations, such as the paper that was developed with Somali partners on durable solutions in Somaliland,
• In Iraq, Oxfam produced and delivered a ‘perceptions’ paper called 'We are determined to realize our dreams’ which highlighted the views of IDPs who had fled Mosul and their perception of the humanitarian response.
• In Uganda, Oxfam worked with the Government of Uganda to improve the refugee response and with refugee organizations to campaign to ensure that South Sudanese refugees were able to influence the peace process, have their views are amplified, and Oxfam have also been working closely with UNHCR to ensure refugees voices are heard in the Comprehensive Refugee Response Framework (CRRF).

Strengthening national/local leadership and systems

In promoting local actors’ work to the media and public, Oxfam developed internal guidelines in 2018 which led to press releases which now, more frequently, include partner mentions. Stories on Oxfam-supported humanitarian programming, when implemented in partnership with local actors, consistently mention partners by name and often quote partner representatives. For Oxfam, localization represents a fundamental transformation of the humanitarian system in which decisions made around aid responses are taken by actors who are closest to the people affected by crises, and Oxfam is supporting local actors to define their strategies for response and measuring progress. Oxfam is publishing analysis on funding flows, building evidence base for greater commitment to ensuring progress of funding. We are campaigning for stronger government-led crisis coordination, greater national resource mobilization for crises management and implementation of disaster risk reduction (DRR) policies. At the outset of a crisis, Oxfam highlighted the worsening of situation in the Sahel region, Ebola recurrence in Democratic Republic of the Congo and difficulties of Syrian refugees in camps in Greece and Jordan. Increase in investment in resilience, and an improvement in existing systems of crisis management were asked at the beginning of crisis to enable sustainable improvement in these crisis.

Cash-based programming

In 2018, 80% of countries implementing humanitarian programs using cash transfer programming (CTP, 34 countries) reported considering CTPs as a preferred modality. The estimated total proportion of humanitarian programs delivered through CTPs accounted for 20% of Oxfam’s humanitarian work. Oxfam maintained strategic investment in the Cash Learning Partnerhisp (CaLP), the Cash Delivery Network (CCD), Global Cluster Working Groups on markets and cash and leadership in cash working groups at the country level. Oxfam is an active member of the Grand Bargain cash sub-workstreams on gender and social protection. Oxfam’s cash strategy is centred on ensuring CTPs build local response capacity. Actions taken in 2018 include: advocating for alignment between localisation workstream and the cash workstream and advocacy on cash coordination; technical support to innovative programs using cash to reinforce local response capacity (e.g. Philippines, Bangladesh, Uganda, Somalia and West Africa); and internal review on cash and localization (to be used to draft a Tip Sheet on using cash to build local response capacity in 2019).  Development of a social protection strategy and draft tool to map existing social protection systems at the onset of a crisis (assessment and response analysis phases).

Adherence to quality and accountability standards (e.g. CHS, SPHERE)

As a member of the Core Humanitarian Standard (CHS) Alliance, Oxfam is committed to promoting quality humanitarian responses. Oxfam received CHS certification in 2018 via an audit carried out by the Humanitarian Quality Assurance Initiative (HQAI) (external auditing body).

2018 saw continued support to Oxfam country offices and affiliates towards meeting the Charter for Change (C4C) commitments. The C4C commitments were again one of the three overarching priorities guiding planning and investment for Oxfam programs, and progress formed a structural part of the internal governance structures and meetings, resulting in further prioritisation and support where progress is lacking. In 2018, Oxfam also facilitated participation of national women leaders to participate in international conferences during UN Women, Peace and Security week, the Yemen Pledging Conference and the UN Human Rights Council. Thirteen Oxfam country programmes have set the localisation agenda as a priority, e.g. needs assessments, responses, coordination, and influencing. In these countries, Oxfam saw a shift in the role of partners in designing and making decisions on humanitarian programming and joint activities. For example, the management platform established by Oxfam and its Humanitarian Partnership Network (JMK) to respond to the Sulawesi earthquake and tsunami, which included three local actors and Oxfam as equal members who decide on critical matters.

Direct funding to national/local actors

In 2018, Oxfam continued its internal push for meeting Charter for Change (C4C) commitments as a means to structurally partner with, and invest in, local capacities. Oxfam saw a slight positive trend in the percentage of total humanitarian spend that was transferred to local and national NGO partners. The current (Financial Year 2017-18) global average is 15% of Oxfam’s humanitarian spend transferred to local and national NGOs. Oxfam remains significantly below the C4C and Commitment to Change targets (being 20% and 30%, respectively).

Capacity building of national/local actors

In 2018, Oxfam is not yet meeting its global targets on funding transferred to local and national NGOs and continues its efforts to address the gap. Oxfam is implementing a number of sector-leading flagship programs designed to strengthen national and sub-national disaster management systems’ capacities. In 2018, Oxfam was implementing such targeted multi-annual capacity strengthening projects in Bangladesh, Burundi, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Iraq, Lebanon, Philippines, Tanzania and Uganda. These system strengthening projects enhance national and local actors’ capacity to deliver high quality responses and shape the humanitarian policies and system in their contexts. The total approximate value of such targeted projects in 2018 amounted to approximately EUR 4.7 million, which generated proven modalities that have since been adopted and replicated elsewhere. These initiatives have resulted in standardized but flexible approaches that enable local actors to be better prepared to take the lead in humanitarian action, through fostering (i) increased organizational and collective capacity; (ii) enhanced collaboration and complementarity and (iii) mproved representation and space for local actors and a more inclusive humanitarian system building on local realities. These approaches have gained widespread recognition and have been taken up by leading actors external to Oxfam including BioForce and UNOCHA (e.g. in Lebanon).

Other

Publishing the amount of funding going to capacity-building and admin costs:
With disparate information systems across the members of the Oxfam confederation, Oxfam’s systems are not yet able to generate sufficiently disaggregated data to report on the percentage of Oxfam’s humanitarian funding going to local actors for capacity building and administrative cost as part of regular humanitarian response projects and associated grants. In 2019, Oxfam will begin the acquisition of a common information system across the confederation for which this capability has been forwarded as a core design requirement.
Interim internal data on Oxfam grants to local and national partners indicates that the amounts included in budgets for core administrative costs vary greatly from country to country, as well as project to project. C4C and localization staff in Oxfam continued to raise awareness and advocate for a harmonized policy on structural contributions to partners’ core costs. The issue will now be included in a larger Oxfam-wide funding review in 2019.