Keeping civilians safe

When communities get caught in the cross-fire, they suffer. Innocent lives are lost. People are forced to flee from their homes. Living a normal life becomes impossible.

Some claim there’s little that can be done to prevent such suffering. But they are wrong. The massive, unnecessary impact that conflict has on people can be reduced. Oxfam is campaigning for action.

Credit: Tineke D'haese/Oxfam

Living with conflict is a grim reality for millions of people, like these women from Eastern Congo. Even after the war in 2002, estimates are that 1,500 people still die every day as a result of ongoing conflict there.
Credit: Adrian McIntyre/Oxfam

It is estimated that fighting in Darfur, Iraq, and the Democratic Republic of Congo has taken the lives of up to three-quarters of a million people a year – 30 times the annual death toll from global terrorism.
Credit: UN

Although many people feel enormous sympathy with those who suffer such atrocities, it's easy to feel that nothing can be done to prevent them. UN Security Council chamber during a meeting on the protection of civilians in armed conflict.
Credit: Aubrey Wade/Oxfam

The girls pictured here are reading a poster titled 'No help for sex', at their school in Monrovia, the Liberian capital. During the conflict there, which ended in 2003, a bewildering 74 per cent of women and girls were raped.
Credit: Howard Davies/Oxfam

Ten years ago the Ottowa treaty came into force, which banned the use of landmines. Some estimate that the treaty has reduced the toll of death and injury from landmines by as much as two-thirds.
Credit: Oxfam

The international ban on landmines helped start larger efforts to control the flow of weapons around the world. Thanks to global public pressure through the Control Arms campaign, the UN voted to begin work on a historic Arms Trade Treaty.
Credit: Crispin Hughes/Oxfam

But governments must go further to keep civilians safe, and they must act now. For many poor people, there is little scope to manage the risks they face. Like these Kenyan women escorting cattle into Uganda.
Credit: Marie Cacace/Oxfam

Governments must act to stop conflict before it begins and be more ready to impose sanctions on abusers. Here, renewed violence in the DRC has created Ndosho 2, an IDP camp on the outskirts of Goma town.