Latest Emergencies

International aid agency Oxfam is ready to respond to the tsunami in Samoa – the latest disaster to hit the Asia-Pacific region this week.

International aid agency Oxfam is sending in teams to the flooded areas in the Philippines and gearing up its aid response. It has suspended its on-going long-term development programme work in the Philippines in order to mobilise its resources for the humanitarian operation.

An Oxfam Emergency Response Team is in place in Indonesia to provide assistance following a 7.0 magnitude earthquake which struck off the coast of Java yesterday.

Three months after the clashes in Pakistan’s Northwest Frontier Province (NWFP) began, aid agency Oxfam is emphasizing the right of people who had been forced to flee the fighting to be able to return home voluntarily, and the need to ensure safety and security in their home villages.

Two of Australia’s largest aid agencies said today their efforts to help more than 600,000 people affected by fighting in the Swat Valley in Pakistan are in jeopardy because of a lack of funding from wealthy governments and others around the world.

Thousands of lives are at risk in Sri Lanka because aid to refugees is being restricted by a government ban on aid agency vehicles entering the camps, and because of difficulties in securing access for staff, aid agency Oxfam said today.

International agency Oxfam said today that it has had to double its aid effort in Pakistan as the number of displaced people reached more than 2 million, making the crisis the greatest internal displacement of people in the country’s history.

Traumatised, exhausted and half-starved civilians who have fled Sri Lanka’s conflict zone are being housed in camps without decent water and sanitation facilities and with inadequate food supplies, international aid agency Oxfam said today.

As thousands of families continue to flee their homes in northwest Pakistan amid clashes between government forces and organised armed groups, Oxfam International has begun providing emergency relief to around 175,000 women, men and children in urgent need of assistance.

Hundreds of thousands of people who survived Myanmar’s worst-ever cyclone are facing the prospect of being trapped in debt as the one year anniversary of Cyclone Nargis approaches, international aid agency Oxfam said today.