Despite being worth an estimated $1.2 trillion annually, the arms trade has less international controls than the trade in bananas or iPods. This means that all too often guns and other weapons are ending up in the hands of human rights abusers and repressive regimes.
International artists including Scarlett Johansson, Coldplay, Keira Knightley, Helena Christensen, Annie Lennox and Kevin Spacey have joined forces to demand governments take immediate action to help improve regulation of the international arms trade.
Later today, representatives from more than 190 governments will meet in New York for the first day of a month-long negotiation at the United Nations to agree an Arms Trade Treaty, which will control the supply of weapons, ammunition and armaments.
International aid agency Oxfam Australia is today launching its West Africa Food Crisis appeal as the situation in the region heads towards the peak of the hunger season.
Across the Sahel region of West and Central Africa, more than 18 million people are affected by the severe food crisis, with more than one million children at risk of severe malnutrition.
Political leaders have a historic opportunity to place human rights and humanitarian aims above self-interest and profit when final negotiations to regulate the global arms trade begin today at the United Nations, campaigners from across the world said
With just days to go until Foreign Minister Bob Carr travels to New York for United Nations negotiations on legally-binding regulations for the international weapons trade, Australians have called on the Government to bring home a “bullet proof” Arms Trade Treaty.
The coming week will be critical in raising money to assist the almost one billion people who go to bed hungry every night, according to a leading international aid agency.
Oxfam Australia’s 2010/11 giving trends reveal a spike in public donations in the last week of June, with last year’s June donations peaking on June 30.
As a global leader in water, sanitation and hygiene Oxfam Australia has welcomed the Prime Minister’s announcement today of additional funding in this area.
Oxfam Australia congratulates the Prime Minister on her appointment as co-chair of the United Nations Advocacy Group for the Millennium Development Goals.
The G20 leading economies have sidelined development and food security at their summit in Los Cabos, international agency Oxfam said today.
Pacific Brands, makers of King Gee and Hard Yakka, has put people’s lives before profits by banning the use of deadly sandblasting throughout the factories that make its denim products, Oxfam Australia said today.