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Factors Influencing Misconduct Reporting in Kachin, Myanmar

November 1, 2019

The purpose of this document is to provide a summary of the critical factors that influence decision-making behaviour related to misconduct reporting in Kachin, Myanmar, based on a human-centred approach.The intended primary audience includes the accountability, safeguarding and technology teams from Oxfam Great Britain (OGB) and members of the Oxfam in Myanmar country offices. This document is also intended for other humanitarian audiences interested in understanding the critical factors that influence misconduct reporting in Kachin.There are four sections to this document. The first section provides some background information on this initiative and the approach guiding this work. The second section provides specific details on the research process, ethical considerations and limitations. The third section presents a summary of the key findings and themes. The fourth and final section offers some high-level recommendations for moving forward.

Accelerating Localisation Through Partnerships

February 1, 2019

his research was commissioned by the Accelerating Localisation through Partnerships programme – a multiagency consortium programme funded by the European Commission's Civil Protection and Humanitarian Aid department (ECHO) over two years (2017-2019) – to establish what operational elements of partnerships between local, national and international NGOs are most likely to foster localisation of humanitarian action.The research was underpinned by a mixed methods approach using qualitative and quantitative data collection approaches. In-depth consultations were conducted in three locations in four countries: Myanmar, Nepal, Nigeria and South Sudan. Sampling was such that a wide diversity of local and national NGOs were invited to participate in the in-depth discussions to ensure different areas of thematic, geographic and other focuses were represented. In total, more than 350 NGOs were consulted for this research; 85% of which were local or national NGOs.

An Introduction to Community Engagement in WASH

January 17, 2019

People affected by emergencies can face increased risks to health from inadequate water, sanitation and hygiene and disease outbreaks. Involving communities affected by the crisis in the response, so that the delivery of facilities and services works for them, is a vital part of Oxfam's WASH response in emergencies.Listening to different groups and individuals is key to community engagement. Understanding how people view risk and how they cope in a crisis can help to ensure that as far as possible, the WASH response strengthens their existing capacities, enables meaningful participation and focuses on marginalized and less powerful members of a community.This guide shows how community engagement in WASH should be a planned and dynamic process, bringing together the capacities and perspectives of communities and responders.

Shining a Light: How Lighting in or Around Sanitation Facilities Affects the Risk of Gender-Based Violence in Camps

December 21, 2018

Camps are places of refuge for people fleeing conflict and disaster, but they can be dangerous, especially for women and girls. In their first months, many camps rely on communal sanitation facilities – a quick and cost-effective way of meeting immediate needs and minimizing public health risks until a better solution can be developed.In 2016, the Humanitarian Innovation Fund (HIF) set up a research challenge asking: Does lighting in or around sanitation facilities reduce the risk of gender-based violence (GBV)? During 2017 and 2018, Oxfam and researchers from the Water, Engineering and Development Centre (WEDC) at Loughborough University carried out research to try to answer this question. This report presents the main findings from this research.

Water, Sanitation and Hygiene in Post-Emergency Contexts: A study on establishing sustainable service delivery models

December 4, 2018

Large-scale and complex emergencies often occur in countries where government institutions have weak coping capacity. They may struggle to deliver essential services routinely, even in non-emergency situations. This has serious implications for the way in which emergency water, sanitation and hygiene services are managed long-term and in the transition from emergency to post-emergency situations.UNHCR and Oxfam commissioned a study to understand more about how emergency WASH services are delivered, and to identify how the provision of infrastructure can lead to sustainable service delivery and a more professional management mechanism. As many humanitarian crises are protracted in nature, emergency WASH services need to be sustained once humanitarian agencies depart. This report aims to review and identify alternative service delivery options, and to provide some pragmatic guidance that can be incorporated into emergency response programmes and tested, evaluated and built on in the future.

The Ebola Outbreak in DRC: Strengthening the response

October 5, 2018

On 1 August 2018, the Ministry of Health in Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) declared a new Ebola epidemic in Beni territory, North Kivu. It was the first time that Ebola had struck in an area of chronic insecurity and humanitarian crisis. A large-scale response to the outbreak, including health workers on the ground, volunteers in communities, and those working to coordinate the response, has had a clear impact on the spread of the virus. The challenge for DRC and its international partners is not only to rapidly control the deadly Ebola, but to do so in a way that contributes to protecting communities in this vulnerable environment.In the next phase of the response, there is a need to rebuild trust and engagement with communities, alongside the essential medical response. A stronger and more independent role for NGOs would also better support scale-up and reinforce quality. These briefings track some of the issues faced by the response to the outbreak: the complexity of the context, the role of communities, and new directions for the response.Briefing 1: DRC: The world's first Ebola outbreak inside a conflictBriefing 2: Strengthening the Ebola Response in Beni, DRC by Putting Communities at the CentreBriefing 3: Crucial Course Corrections for the Ebola Response in Beni, DRC

Tiger Work Toilet Manual: Globally Relevant Learnings from Myanmar

October 1, 2018

Tiger Worm Toilets (TWTs), sometimes known as Tiger Toilets or vermifilter toilets, contain composting worms inside the pit that process and digest the faeces in-situ, replacing the build-up of raw sludge with vermicompost. This removes the need for traditional desludging, as the vermicompost is simpler to remove and builds up at a slower rate. This can lead to a reduction of the long-term operating costs and removes the need for expensive desludging and sludge treatment infrastructure. A worm colony can live inside the toilet indefinitely so long as the correct environmental conditions are maintained.

Yemen's civilians face death and a crushing siege as fighting expands to the city of Hudaydah: Violence must end and inclusive peace talks resume

September 20, 2018

The Saudi and UAE-led Coalition has intensified its assault towards Hudaydah's city and port, with devastating consequences for civilians. If fighting continues and the main roads out of the city are blocked, hundreds of thousands of people could be trapped in Hudaydah without access to adequate food, water and medical care. All sides in the conflict are causing harm to civilians -- for example, airstrikes are damaging water infrastructure, which has undermined water supplies to about 58,000 families.This urgent briefing adds new evidence -- from Oxfam's interviews with civilians on the ground -- to the warnings that the UN and others have already made. There must be an immediate cessation of all fighting, and a turn towards an inclusive peace process, engaging Yemen's women, youth and civil society.

Building a More Equal Ghana: A 5-point action plan to close the gap between the rich and the rest

September 17, 2018

Oxfam estimates that just one of the richest men in Ghana earns from his wealth more in a month than one of the poorest women could earn in 1,000 years. Inequality is slowing down poverty reduction, hampering economic growth and threatening social cohesion. Nearly 300,000 more men, women and children in Ghana could have been lifted out of poverty between 2006 and 2013 had inequality not increased during this period. Inequality is not inevitable and can be addressed. In 2017, servicing public debt cost Ghana more than the annual amount the government would need to pay for free quality healthcare for all Ghanaians and to deliver on its globally agreed health goals by 2030.In this report, Oxfam calls on the government of Ghana to use public spending to reduce inequality, and put women's economic empowerment at the heart of policy making.  

Prescription for Poverty: Drug companies as tax dodgers, price gougers, and influence peddlers

September 13, 2018

New Oxfam research shows that four pharmaceutical corporations -- Abbott, Johnson & Johnson, Merck, and Pfizer -- systematically hide their profits in overseas tax havens. This activity could deprive developing countries of more than $100 million every year -- money that is urgently needed to meet the health needs of people in these countries -- while charging very high prices for their products. Tax dodging, high prices, and political influencing by drug companies exacerbate the yawning gap between rich and poor, between men and women, and between advanced economies and developing ones.This report shows how corporations can use sophisticated tax planning to take advantage of a broken system that allows multinational corporations from many different industries to avoid taxes.

Community Engagement in Sanitation: A landscape review

August 15, 2018

In 2017, Elrha's Humanitarian Innovation Fund (HIF) launched a Challenge 'to understand how to design, implement, and evaluate approaches to user-centred sanitation that incorporate rapid community engagement and are appropriate for the first stage of rapid-onset emergencies' (defined as the first twelve weeks post crisis). A component of this Challenge involved undertaking a landscape review of existing community engagement practice and approaches that could be used to provide a background resource for Challenge participants. The review was carried out by Oxfam, the HIF's Research and Evaluation Partner for the project. It draws on published and grey literature and interviews with 15 key informants.

Gender Roles and the Care Economy in Ugandan Households: The case of Kaabong, Kabale and Kampala districts

August 10, 2018

This report examines the distribution of unpaid care and domestic work in households in the Ugandan districts of Kaabong, Kabale and Kampala. It seeks to understand the connection between social norms and the gendered division of work, including how much time women, men, boys and girls spend on paid work and unpaid care work in a day, as well as how this time use varies between urban and rural areas and between the districts in the study. The authors look closely at childcare, who undertakes it and why. They also analyse what kinds of services are available in each district that might ease the care workload for women and girls.The report makes recommendations for the Ugandan government and relative authorities on how they can recognize, reduce and redistribute care work through policy changes, labour-saving devices and technology, better infrastructure and the provision of care services.This publication was written by Oxfam partners in Uganda (EPRC, UWONET and the School of Women and Gender Studies at Makerere University), in collaboration with Oxfam in Uganda and the WE-Care team.