Themes and Issues

While Oxfam specializes in helping communities realize individualized solutions to their problems, our work takes on universal themes. From community to community and region to region, we see people facing like challenges—and pursuing like solutions to their needs.

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  Women's Equality

  Of the 1.3 billion people who live in extreme poverty worldwide, 70 percent are women and girls. Systematic gender discrimination—the denial of women's basic human rights—is a major cause of poverty.
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  HIV and AIDS

  HIV and AIDS have a huge impact on poverty because they affect millions of adult women and men whose work drives their countries’ economies and services, and who care for the young and the old. While HIV and AIDS push more and more families into poverty, poverty makes them more vulnerable to infections. For Oxfam’s mission to overcome poverty and suffering to succeed, it is vital that this cycle is broken.
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  Climate Change

  There is a deep injustice in the impact of climate change. Poor communities around the world are the least responsible for emissions. But they are suffering the greatest effects – increased droughts, floods, disease and hunger. Poverty and isolation makes them the most vulnerable and the least able to adapt. Within poor communities, women suffer the most.
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  Essential Public Services

  Oxfam helps people to access basic health care, clean water, sanitation and education for all.
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  International Trade

  Trade can be a powerful engine for poverty reduction. But rigged trade rules and double standards too often mean it now hurts poor people’s livelihoods.
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  The Right to Make a Living

  Oxfam supports people’s efforts to achieve food and income security, fairer working conditions and increased protection of the natural resources on which they depend.
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  Peace and Security

  Oxfam helps communities analyze the root causes of conflict and find creative ways to build peace.