Australia’s first ever simulated refugee camp opens to the public today in Melbourne. It will give visitors a chance to experience some of the harsh realities faced by millions of people around the world whose lives are affected by war and conflict.
Oxfam calls upon the UN and donors to open up alternative land and air routes so that fuel and supplies can reach refugee camps that have been isloated by rebel fighting.
JUANITA Cut-ing is just one woman but her story, reported in The Age on Saturday, says much about the way mining companies in search of enormous profits have exploited people in the developing world. Cut-ing and her family live in a stilt home in the remote village of Didipio in the north of the Philippines, but their land is destined to make way for a dam to store waste from an open-pit gold and copper mine operated by Melbourne-based OceanaGold. The company says it will provide jobs and improved infrastructure, but its plans will destroy Cut-ing’s dream of passing her house and land to her children.
Oxfam has urged Australia’s Minister for Climate Change to press the United States and 16 other nations attending a climate change conference in Honolulu to commit to mandatory emissions cuts as well as substantial new funding to help poor countries adapt to the impacts of climate change.
John Butler’s first solo album, ‘One Small Step’, has been dedicated to Close The Gap, an Australia-wide campaign to narrow the 17 year life gap between Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islanders and other Australians.
Oxfam Australia launches a mobile phone game in which a refugee character, Aissa, flees to safety with her family.
The Close the Gap campaign ended on a high in 2007. At their meeting in Melbourne on December 20, the Council of Australian Governments (COAG) committed to close the 17 year life gap between Aboriginal & Strait Islanders and other Australians.
ARIA award winning popular singer songwriter Missy Higgins today visited Australia’s first Aboriginal Community Controlled Health Service in Redfern, Sydney.
Australian mining company, Lafayette, operator of the Rapu Rapu mine on the small island of the same name in the Philippines, has just entered into voluntary administration. The news may raise eyebrows given the current mining boom, however, not everyone is surprised. The story of Lafayette’s mining operation and the company’s financial failure resonates with a lesson that Oxfam Australia has long observed; a company that fails to obtain and retain a social licence to operate, in other words one that operates without community approval, is not viable. Other Australian mining companies operating in the Philippines and elsewhere should pay heed to Lafayette’s rise and fall and take note of this cautionary tale.
Oxfam Australia today announced its alternative gift catalogue Unwrapped had raised over $4 million, breaking all previous Christmas sales records.