At least 70 per cent of the more than 480,000 Rohingya refugees who have fled to Bangladesh do not have adequate shelter and half have no safe drinking water, Oxfam warned today. Heavy rains and floods in the camps have left people facing extreme hardship, slowed down the building of emergency shelters and clean water […]
MEXICO CITY: Oxfam is assessing damage from the magnitude 7.1 earthquake that hit Mexico on Tuesday, killing more than 200 people, most of them in and near Mexico City. Large areas are now without electricity. Federal government agencies in Mexico are responding with rescue teams and medical aid in the affected areas, and are continuing […]
Oxfam is providing clean water, sanitation and tarpaulins for emergency shelter to Rohingya people who have fled to Bangladesh. Nearly 370,000 people crossed into Bangladesh in the past four weeks, doubling the number of people seeking refuge in the south east of the country. The existing camps in Bangladesh are ill-equipped to handle the huge […]
People in the Dominican Republic and Haiti are facing ‘the day after’ Hurricane Irma, which has caused widespread damage before heading past Cuba and on to the US. Oxfam teams are assessing the needs of the most vulnerable people in the heaviest-hit areas, mainly in the north of both countries. Oxfam’s Tania Escamilla – who […]
As the scale of devastation wrought by Hurricane Irma in the Caribbean becomes apparent today, Oxfam staff in Haiti, Cuba and the Dominican Republic are preparing to do assessments and respond to people’s needs. Oxfam’s Tania Escamilla, in Cap Haitien – Haiti’s second biggest city, population 280,000 – with Oxfam’s team, said the organisation worked […]
Oxfam country teams and partner organisations in the Caribbean are preparing to respond to potentially severe damage from Hurricane Irma, the most powerful Atlantic Ocean hurricane in recorded history. The category 5 hurricane has just made landfall in the Caribbean with winds up to 300 kilometres per hour, passing over Barbuda and moving north west […]
The UN is reporting that at least 900 people have been killed by ongoing monsoonal flooding and landslides in India, Bangladesh and Nepal and its estimated 41 million people have been affected across a huge area. While some level of flooding occurs annually in the monsoon season, Oxfam staff in Bangladesh reported that two-thirds of […]
Traumatised women and children fleeing fighting between the Iraqi Army and ISIS in Tal Afar district have told Oxfam of how people died after walking for days through the desert in 50C heat to reach safety. One mother said that the road they took to escape smelled of dead bodies, while another said that she […]
Responding to the overnight announcement by the Government of Iraq that it has launched a major push to retake the city of Tal Afar from ISIS, Oxfam’s Deputy Country Director in Iraq Haissam Minkara said: “Traumatised families who have risked their lives to escape the fighting in Tal Afar face soaring summer temperatures and harsh […]
As the announcement of 1 million South Sudanese refugees in Uganda was made today by the United Nations (UN), Ranjan Pudyal, Oxfam South Sudan’s Country Director, said: “As long as the senseless, costly and brutal war in South Sudan continues, its people will continue to flee to find protection, food, water and shelter. More than […]