Oxfam Asia Blog

Cyclone Mahasen is moving on from Myanmar towards eastern Bangladesh

Jane Lonsdale, Acting Country Director of Oxfam in Myanmar said:

“Oxfam is very relieved that Cyclone Mahasen did not cause damage to vulnerable communities; if a serious cyclone were to hit Myanmar, the casualties and losses could be huge.”

““The communities of Rakhine remain very vulnerable, particularly the 140,000 displaced people living in camps, some still in tents. This is only the beginning of the monsoon season: people face heavy rain and potentially more storms. The international aid community has been highlighting for many months now the need to relocate those people living in low lying camps with poor shelter; nothing has changed in the respect- it still needs to be urgently addressed.

“Our assessment teams are now in Sittwe and Kyau Pyau checking on any new needs arising from the relocations. Oxfam also plans to strengthen our existing work on preparedness and disaster risk reduction. Our experience shows that supporting women to take a leading role in community preparedness can significantly help communities to protect themselves against monsoons and natural disasters. There is now a real opportunity for the Myanmar government to work more closely with all concerned actors on disaster preparedness, to minimize the impact of future disasters.” More »

Travelling Journal Goes To Cambodia

After successfully passing through the hands of a Chinese farmer, the travelling journal now makes its way to the Damnak Kantourt commune in the Kampot province of Cambodia. The next rural woman to be writing entries in the journal is 56 year-old Chey Siyat, a leader of a village-based farmer association and a mother of five.

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Defending Rights: Resistance and Restoration

As part of my programme visit, I headed to a coastal village in southern Thailand to attend the annual general assembly of Southern Traditional Fisherwomen Association (STFA).From the airport, I travelled past lush green fields, rubber plantations and developed neighbourhood. It reminded me of my own province back in Kerala, India. Suddenly the car took a turn and entered into a narrow lane and drove towards the sea. I could see blue colour tents dotted along the coastline and hundreds of women were gathered. They have been staying, meeting cooking and eating under the tent for the past three days. It was hot and humid under scorching sun. I became curious on what motivates more than hundred and fifty women to be here from 8 provinces of southern Thailand. More »

On ASEAN Theme And Our Common ASEAN Future under Climate Change

Commentary/Contribution by Zelda DT Soriano & Norly Grace P. Mercado 

Country-chair Brunei Darussalam of the Association of South East Nations (ASEAN) asserts that the future of Southeast Asia is dependent on how the people work together to ensure progress for the development of the whole region. Thus, this year’s ASEAN theme is “our people, our future together”.

In forecasting the common ASEAN future, Brunei declares the present need for a development shift. Hj Muhammad Lufti Abdullah, Permanent Secretary for Administration and Finance at the Ministry of Development of Brunei, has said that a low carbon-based economy would “make us more resilient to unpredictable commodity and energy prices in an uncertain future world”. In his speech at the opening ceremony of the latest meeting of the ASEAN Working Group on Climate Change (AWGCC), he reminded his fellow ASEAN senior officers and experts that the shift should be seen as an opportunity for the region and urged that the principles of mitigation and adaptation to climate change should be mainstreamed into development plans, programs and projects.

There could be no possible argument against the ASEAN theme or low-carbon development. More »

Changing lives: local to national

This is the first of the  ’Regional Director’s Journal’ series by Cherian Mathews, the new Regional Director of Oxfam GB, Asia Region. Through this series, Cherian shares his insightful observation and reflection from his recent visits to country programmes.

“If the work is of bad quality, then we take up the issue with local officials. They listen to us and help in addressing the issue. I am proud to be part of the group and serve my community”, said a woman member of the community supervision group of Phuoc Tan commune in Bac Ai district, Ninh Thuan Province in Vietnam.

I met her during my recent Vietnam country programme visit in March. Her confidence and determination impressed me greatly. She belongs to the Raglai community, an ethnic minority group in Vietnam. Along with her engagements with the community, she also attends evening classes to complete her 11th grade studies. In Bac Ai district 94% of population belongs to Raglai community, out of which 46% live in dire poverty. It is a matrilineal community and women inherit family property. However, men continue to play a dominant role in decision making process and in the public sphere. Main objective of the community supervision group is to monitor the community infrastructure projects like roads, houses etc., and report the quality of work to the local officials.

Before visiting the field, I had a chance to meet with officials from National Assembly, Provincial council and other donor agencies working in Vietnam. Though Vietnam has witnessed rapid economic growth and poverty reduction in the past two decades, the ethnic minority population constitutes 47% of poor in 2010 compared to 29% in 1998 (or 66% compared to about 13% for the majorities in 2010) . All the agencies that I met with shared the critical challenge of growing social inequalities that Vietnam is facing. Vietnam government has introduced series of targeted programmes and social safety nets. But the challenge persists as most of these programmes are designed with a top-down approach. Analysts say that a bottom-up approach, conceived locally with people centred solutions is required to empower the ethnic communities. More »

Water grab: an imminent threat to Asia’s food security

Walking into a fisherman’s house in Marunda village, North Jakarta, the first thing that I could not help noticing was a modern water dispenser and a well-known foreign branded water bottle. “It is the only valuable item in our house. We spend a lot of money on it”, the wife said to me. It appears that Marunda villagers have to spend nearly 40 percent of their hard earned income on drinking water every week. This is because access to usable water was cut off as the land, or more accurately, a garbage dump site that they live on is left unused amongst the mushrooming factories along Jakarta bay.

But water stories are never simple. Not having access to clean water is one challenge, not being able to earn income due to the polluted sea water is a different but interrelated problem. Since the government has decided to turn the bay area into a Special Economic Zone and conceded large pieces of coastal land to manufacturing industries, pollution levels in the bay are rising considerably. This is primarily caused by toxic waste released from these factories, which in turn is killing large numbers of mangroves and fish.

“We are fishermen with no fish”, Mr. Halim, 50, a fisherman from Marunda described the plight of the fisher folks in just six words. More »

Hope Amidst Multiple Struggles: Meeting the First Woman Journal Writer for “Our Stories, One Journey”

When I first saw her, she was passing out some plates to the women (mostly mothers who even have their children with them) gathered around a small ‘sari-sari’ or a small convenience store located at the foothills of the Sierra Madre Mountain range in Montalban, Rizal in thePhilippines. The food (a simple fare of dried fish, cooked rice, sautéed miswa noodles and coffee) was to be partaken as part of the launch of the travelling journal “Our Stories, One Journey: Empowering Asian Rural Women”. This initiative was undertaken by the East Asia GROW Campaign in partnership with the Asian Rural Women’s Coalition (ARWC) and Pesticide Action Network Asia and the Pacific (PAN AP).

The "One Stories, One Journey: Empowering Rural Women in Asia" initiative was launched in the Philippines last March 8 as part of a global campaign to achieve food security through a more equitable and sustainable system of growing food.

When the program started, I saw Nanay Margie alternately sitting and standing with some of the women in front of the store. We conducted the short program in Nanay Margie’s community which is situated just right beside the road. Her house is fronted by road and the back of her house are the mountains where stone quarrying has gone unabated despite the promise given to them by provincial environment officials that the quarrying just a temporary project. More »

ขอเชิญร่วมงาน “From Peace To Power พลังสันติภาพ ผู้หญิงสามจังหวัดชายแดนใต้”

ร่วมชมนิทรรศการภาพถ่าย “ในความรุนแรง ยังมีความงดงาม” ฟังเสวนาแรงบันดาลใจสันติภาพผ่านเลนส์จากช่างภาพชั้นนำของเมืองไทย พร้อมชมการแสดง และศิลปวัฒนธรรมภาคใต้ และพบกับรายการอื่นๆที่น่าสนใจอีกมากมาย ตั้งแต่วันที่ 13-16 มีนาคม 2556 ณ ศูนย์การค้าเซ็นทรัลเวิลด์ ชั้น 1 โซนเอเทรียม

กำหนดการ

วันที่ 13-16 มีนาคม 2556: นิทรรศการภาพถ่าย “พลังสันติภาพ ผู้หญิง 3 จังหวัดชายแดนใต้” และมุมผลิตภัณท์ผู้หญิงจากภาคใต้ สาธิตและกินฟรีชาชัก ณ โซน เอเทรียม 2 ศูนย์การค้า เซ็นทรัลเวิลด์

วันที่ 13 มีนาคม: เปิดตัวนิทรรศการภาพถ่าย “พลังสันติภาพ ผู้หญิง 3 จังหวัดชายแดนใต้
กล่าวรายงานโดย คุณสุนทรีย์ แรงกุศล ผู้อำนวยการองค์การอ๊อกแฟม
พิธีเปิดนิทรรศการภาพถ่ายโดยเอกอัครราชทูตประเทศอังกฤษ

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