Overview of Oxfam’s approach to conflict transformation
OXFAM HUMANITARIAN POLICY NOTE
Date: February 2014
Source: Oxfam
All people have a fundamental right to life and security. Oxfam works to ensure this right is respected, not only by responding to humanitarian emergencies, but by addressing the violent conflict which, as its Humanitarian Strategy 2020 recognises, is one of the key drivers of poverty. That is why conflict transformation has become one of the ‘crosscutting issues’ running through Oxfam’s programmes and tackling some of the key driving factors that fuel direct, cultural and structural violence.
Through that conflict transformation framework Oxfam seeks to work strategically, based on a thorough conflict analysis, to address these factors according to Oxfam and its civil society partners’ mandates.
That analysis in each country determines where and how Oxfam can go beyond conflict-sensitive aid to specific work designed to transform conflict. Depending on the factors in each country, that work might be linked to land rights, governance or other issues that Oxfam works on in its wider work. All the goals that Oxfam seeks to achieve – including gender justice, a fair share of natural resources, and a right to be heard by all people – are vital elements of peaceful societies, and, in the long-term, vital ways to reduce the number of conflict-related humanitarian crises.
