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Ending the Discrimination faced by Informal and Marginalized Formal Women Workers in Bangladesh
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This impact evaluation examines Oxfam in Bangladesh’s interventions with two highly vulnerable informal and marginalized formal worker groups: domestic workers and tea-garden workers. Using a mixed-methods and contribution-analysis approach, the study assesses changes in livelihoods, workplace dignity, social protection, gender-based violence, and decision-making power. The findings show notable gains for domestic workers in skills, confidence, employer relations, and awareness of rights, although structural barriers such as lack of legal recognition continue to limit outcomes. For tea-garden workers, improvements in sanitation, childcare, and reporting mechanisms emerged, yet entrenched labour dynamics and weak policy enforcement constrained deeper change. Overall, the evaluation highlights meaningful but uneven progress and underscores the need for stronger advocacy, policy reform, and sustainable support systems to secure equitable rights for marginalized women workers in Bangladesh.
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Resisting the Rule of the Rich
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Extreme inequality is reaching new heights. In 2025, billionaire wealth increased three times faster than the average annual rate over the previous five years. Meanwhile, one in four people don’t regularly have enough to eat and nearly half the world’s population live in poverty. The super-rich are becoming a new oligarchy, using their extreme wealth to buy politics, the media and justice to defend their fortunes, dismantle and destroy progressive policies and strip away our basic civil and political rights. Siding with the super-rich, increasingly authoritarian governments are supressing dissent, curtailing rights and fuelling division to protect and preserve this extreme inequality. We must resist by building a worldwide people’s movement to defend our rights, and fight for a clear alternative to inequality and oligarchy.
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Grand Bargain 10 Years on: Protecting quality under scarcity
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The Grand Bargain reaches its 10-year mark in 2026 at a moment of acute funding cuts, hyper-prioritization and rising pressure to prioritize quantity over quality. The Facilitation Group are now leading consultations to inform negotiations on how the Grand Bargain evolves beyond 2026. This paper argues that progress since 2016 is real but fragile, and that the next phase must learn from what has enabled and hindered delivery. Oxfam calls for a focused forum that protects hard-won gains, proves progress credibly, accelerates practical change on the ground, and keeps quality and legitimacy non-negotiable under scarcity.
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Rights at the Core: Towards a rights-respecting digital ecosystem in ASEAN
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ASEAN is setting ambitious goals to advance and lead in the digital age. The forthcoming ASEAN Digital Masterplan 2030, expected in early 2026, will steer regional digital development for the next five years. As ASEAN enters this new phase, it is crucial that its strategies align with a rights‑based approach.
In 2025, Access Now, EngageMedia, FORUM‑ASIA, Oxfam, and the Wikimedia Foundation developed a briefing paper assessing digital rights across more than 16 ASEAN frameworks and documents. Through consultations with diverse civil society groups, the briefing developed recommendations on key issues such as the digital economy, cybersecurity, and artificial intelligence.
This paper offers the first comprehensive mapping of ASEAN’s digital rights landscape. It reveals a gap between ASEAN’s ambitions and its commitments to equity and inclusion, as well as limited civil society participation in major processes. It concludes with practical recommendations for building a rights‑respecting, inclusive digital ecosystem.
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Roadmap for Feminist Local Humanitarian Leadership
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Gender and power inequalities continue to shape humanitarian responses in Asia, both within crisis-affected communities and within the humanitarian system itself. These inequalities are deeply rooted, intersectional, and often reinforced by top-down international approaches. This roadmap sets out Oxfam in Asia’s commitment to a feminist, locally led humanitarian system that centres crisis-affected people and recognizes gender and inclusion-focused civil society organizations (CSOs), especially feminist women’s rights organizations (WROs), as leaders, not just implementers. Developed with feminist partners across Asia, the roadmap provides a shared vision and practical direction for transforming how power, resources and leadership are exercised in humanitarian action from 2025 to 2030.
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Mitigating the Risks of Private Sector Involvement in the Electricity Sector in Sub-Saharan Africa
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Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) faces an electricity access crisis, with over 600 million people lacking access to reliable power. Chronic underinvestment, institutional fragility and fragmentation, and operational inefficiencies have rendered many state-run utilities incapable of sustaining reliable service delivery, let alone meeting rising demand. In response, governments often running on budget deficits and influenced by international financial institutions have embraced private sector participation (PSP) as a means to mobilise capital, improve operational efficiency, and accelerate electrification. Yet the outcomes of PSP across SSA are mixed, raising questions about its effectiveness, equity, and long-term sustainability.
This study undertakes a comprehensive, mixed-methods analysis of PSP in SSA’s electricity sector. It maps the evolution and extent of private sector engagement across generation, transmission, and distribution; quantifies its prevalence; and assesses its impact on six core performance indicators: financial viability, access, affordability, quality of supply, operational efficiency, and decarbonisation.
The findings of this study affirm that PSP, when embedded within robust governance and regulatory frameworks as well as transparent procurement mechanisms and coherent sector planning, can contribute positively to power sector performance. However, these gains are not automatic. The strongest correlations between PSP and performance are observed in countries where governance is credible, regulatory agencies are functional, and policy environments are stable. Conversely, in contexts where institutions are weak, PSP has often produced limited or even adverse outcomes, such as overcapacity, fiscal strain, high tariffs, and social inequities. In summary, PSP can be a valuable tool for accelerating power sector transformation, but only when it is thoughtfully designed, responsibly governed, and firmly aligned with the public good. Further, sustainable electrification requires not just more investment, but smarter, fairer, and more accountable systems that prioritise resilience, equity, and long-term development.
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No Representation, No Peace: The African demand for a reformed Security Council
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No Representation, No Peace exposes how Africa’s exclusion from permanent membership on the UN Security Council continues to undermine global peace and security. Drawing on case studies from the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Western Sahara, the report shows how decisions taken without African representation have fuelled implementation failures, sidelined local voices, and entrenched injustice. It presents Africa’s unified Common Position—rooted in the Ezulwini Consensus and championed by the African Union’s Committee of Ten—which calls for at least two permanent seats for Africa with full veto rights, five non‑permanent seats, and sweeping reforms to make the Council more democratic, transparent, and accountable. Aligning with Oxfam’s Vetoing Humanity findings, the briefing outlines a six‑point agenda to secure Africa’s permanent voice, abolish the veto, strengthen AU–UN cooperation, and centre women and affected communities in peace processes. It is a call to correct historical injustice and build a fairer multilateral system.
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Local Solutions, Global Urgency: Addressing climate, conflict, and fragility in the Sahel and Horn of Africa
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Climate change, conflict, and fragility converge most acutely in the Sahel and Horn of Africa, creating vulnerability cycles that undermine livelihoods, fuel displacement, and strain already fragile governance systems. Extreme climate events interact with weak institutions and insecurity, disproportionately burdening women, youth, and displaced groups. Yet these same groups are also central to resilience - their leadership and local knowledge are among the region’s strongest assets for adaptation, peacebuilding, and mediation. Assessments piloted by Oxfam in five countries (Burkina Faso, Chad, Niger, Ethiopia, and Somalia) confirm that these crises are deeply interconnected and mutually reinforcing. This Discussion Paper provides contextual understanding as well as programmatic recommendations.
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Building Disaster Resilient Communities Through Women’s Leadership
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Women in Nepal and the Philippines, along with those in other Asian countries, suffer disproportionately from disasters caused by natural hazards yet are excluded from leadership in disaster preparedness and response (DPR). Even as women make a crucial contribution to community resilience, they are hindered from DPR participation by restrictive social norms, limited financial resources, and lack of institutional support.
Focusing on the local level, this research identifies the barriers preventing women’s participation and leadership in DPR, analyzes effective strategies for increasing women’s participation and leadership in DPR, and assesses how women’s participation and leadership strengthen overall community resilience to disasters caused by natural hazards.
 
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