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This week, Indian and European Union (EU) trade negotiators in New Delhi will most likely announce that they have reached a preliminary agreement on a trade pact that will forge a new commercial relationship between the two economies. The EU wants the pact to include new intellectual property (IP) rules that go beyond current requirements under international law.  These new IP rules would serve the interests of multinational pharmaceutical companies in Europe, while drastically increasing medicines prices for millions of poor people in India and other developing countr

When it comes to humanitarian crises, Oxfam specializes in the appropriate acronym of “WASH”. In 2011, hundreds of Oxfam staff delivered water and sanitation and other relief to millions of people afflicted by drought, floods or earthquakes.

The Rio+20 Conference on Sustainable Development got a small boost as Ban Ki Moon’s High-Level Panel on Global Sustainability (GSP) launched its report last week. Made up of 22 global bigwigs, their goal was “to formulate a new vision for sustainable growth and prosperity along with mechanisms to achieve it.” The hope was that it would inject life into Rio+20 preparations.

For the GROW recipe competition, we asked you to create a unique and colourful recipe that celebrates the work of small-scale farmers in Peru, using ingredients popular in traditional Peruvian cuisine, and upload a picture of it to our Facebook wall. 

From hearty broths, to elegant lúcuma desserts, every entry combined ingredients eaten by millions in Peru every day, made possible by small producers across the country.

The spectre of hunger is again stalking the people of the western Sahel, at the southern edge of the Sahara Desert. Thanks to the early-warning systems funded by Canada and other donors, we now know that a major food crisis is brewing. We know in time to head it off.

Robert Fox, Oxfam Canada’s Executive Director, discusses The Global Journal ranking of Oxfam as number three on the world’s Top 100 Best NGOs list.

This week Oxfam, together with Save the Children, launched a new report called A Dangerous Delay, which found that the international community responded too late to the current Horn of Africa food crisis. Thousands of lives were lost as a result. The report calls for much earlier action to prevent such crises from happening, rather than waiting until people start dying to respond.

For a time in the nineties and early naughties, as financial services promised untold riches for all, discussing inequality was seen as the preserve of people at the fringe of debate. Since the onset of the credit crunch and austerity in Western countries, inequality is firmly back at the center of the public discourse.

Last year countries in the Horn of Africa were hit by a major drought. Approximately 13 million people have been affected by the impacts of the drought, conflict, high food prices and chronic poverty. Peoples’ lives in Somalia, Kenya, Ethiopia and Djibouti have been turned upside down and many thousands are struggling to recover, pushed into desperate poverty which it will take decades to recover from. No one knows exactly how many people died but an estimate by the UK’s Department for International Development estimated the figure could be as high as 100,000 people.

Over the last few months campaigners in the UK have been contacting their Members of Parliament (MPs) asking them to show support for the Charter to End Extreme Hunger. A petition signed by 15,000 people will be handed over to the UK Prime Minister David Cameron today (Wednesday, 18 January) calling on him to endorse the Charter. This week campaigners have been tweeting their MPs asking them to raise a question to Prime Minister David Cameron in Parliament this Wednesday.