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Asking for Solidarity: Embodied feminist practices in digital space
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The Woman, Life, Freedom movement, beginning in September 2022, is a key chapter in the ongoing process of women’s rights activism in Iran. Social media has constituted a significant arena for asking for global solidarity with women in Iran since the initial days of this movement. The overall aim of this paper is to understand how TikTok users, including Iranian young women, have used the digital platform and transformed it into a virtual public space for media solidarity and transnational feminist activism. More precisely, it aims to shed light on how content creators, via their agency, rhetorically utilise and politicise the TikTok platform. In particular, we examine how they engage with audiences via the embodied form and affective performances in their attempt to persuade their audiences to viewership and solidarity action. The data in this paper consist of 107 top-ranked videos appearing under the hashtag #mahsaamini viewed through netnography, while the analytical method is multimodal rhetorical analysis with a focus on the mediality of the body in interaction. In addition, we adopt an embodied feminist framework and a decolonial perspective. The resulting analysis demonstrates how emotions function as one of the key elements in online mobilisation and protest in social media, not only as a motivational force but also as a part of the persuasive argument visually presented.
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Communities In Charge: Lessons for the Global Fund for Responding to Loss and Damage from a locally-led project in Kenya
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People in northern Kenya have suffered numerous severe economic and non-economic losses and damages due to repeated climate-related droughts and flooding. This briefing note provides an overview and lessons learned from a locally-led project funded by the Scottish government and recently implemented by Oxfam, Strategies for Northern Development and Merti Integrated Development Programme in northern Kenya. It provides support to local communities to address the losses and damages they have suffered. With the Fund for Responding to Loss and Damage becoming operational and climate finance leading the agenda at COP29, this briefing shows the importance of ensuring access to funding and decision-making for communities and local organizations, that can design responses to loss and damage that are effective and suited to their needs.
 
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Turn on the Light: Why tackling energy-related challenges in the nexus of water and food in Syria cannot wait
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This discussion paper contributes to the broader discourse on the nexus between Water, Energy and Food (WEF) in parts of Syria where Oxfam works. It explores the main causes behind the deterioration of the WEF sectors and the impact they have on households across Syria. The paper also focuses on aspects that directly impact and limit Oxfam's work inside Syria, in the delivery and implementation of  Water, Sanitation and Hygiene; Livelihoods; Food Security and Protection interventions. Addressing the WEF Nexus in Syria is key in delivering more effective and sustainable interventions; and helping Syrians restore their lives.
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Shifting Narratives to Value Unpaid and Informal Work in Kenya
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Unpaid Care and Domestic Work (UCDW) and Paid Domestic Work (PDW) are essential to societal wellbeing. However, these activities often carry negative perceptions, attitudes and beliefs when performed by men and boys. As a result, women and girls typically shoulder the primary responsibility for performing UCDW. Similarly, society often undervalues PDW by perceiving it as low-skilled work, as demonstrated through low remuneration and unfair employment practices. The narratives many cultures embrace concerning UCDW and PDW partly explain why these essential activities frequently fall on women and girls, and why society often undervalues PDW. This report documents a collaborative research project between Busara Center for Behavioral Economics and Oxfam to investigate existing narratives on UCDW and PDW in Kenya, and test potentially transformative narratives that could shift societal attitudes.
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Accroitre l’appropriation des plans nationaux sur le climat par la société civile : Leçons tirées de l’expérience de la CDN du Sénégal
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The issue of civil society participation in the processes of developing, implementing, and monitoring national climate plans is crucial to ensuring that these ambitions are both acceptable to the populations and, beyond that, that they align with a trajectory of sustainable development beneficial to all actors in Senegalese society. This case study aims to analyze the degree of involvement through consultations with a variety of civil society actors, as well as members of the administration and international partners active in the fight against climate change. While some believe that civil society participation has progressed significantly in recent years, the vast majority feel that the level reached is still insufficient.
Barriers to civil society’s appropriation of climate issues include, among others, the lack of representativeness of grassroots organizations and vulnerable groups, as well as the unfamiliarity of civil society organizations (CSOs) and community-based organizations (CBOs) with the processes, objectives, and stakeholders of the National Climate Plan (NCP), meaning that many civil society actors are rarely aware of their contribution to its implementation even though they are involved.
The study also shows how limited human and financial resources reduce the possibility of broad participation by civil society organizations, especially outside the capital. This raises the question of a fair, adequate, and targeted allocation of climate financing to meet the ambitions of climate policies in Senegal. This report presents recommendations to overcome barriers that may explain low ownership of national climate plans by communities, in order to propose ways for populations to be key actors in an ambitious ecological transition in Senegal.
La question de la participation de la société civile aux processus d’élaboration, de mise en oeuvre et de suivi des plans nationaux sur le climat est clé afin de s’assurer que ces ambitions soient à la fois acceptables pour les populations et, au-delà, qu’elles s’inscrivent dans une trajectoire de développement durable bénéfique à l’ensemble des acteurs de la société sénégalaise.
Cette étude de cas vise à analyser ce degré d’implication, à travers des consultations menées auprès d’une variété d’acteurs de la société civile, ainsi que des membres de l’administration et des partenaires internationaux actifs dans la lutte contre les changements climatiques. Alors que certains estiment que la participation de la société civile a beaucoup progressé dans les dernières années, la large majorité juge que le niveau atteint est encore insuffisant.
Les barrières à l’appropriation des enjeux climatiques par la société civile incluent, entre autres, le manque de représentativité des organisations communautaires de base et des groupes vulnérables, mais également la méconnaissance des processus, objectifs et interlocuteurs de la CDN de la part des OSC et des OCB, impliquant que de nombreux acteurs de la société civile sont rarement conscients de contribuer à sa mise en oeuvre même si cela est le cas.
L’étude montre également comment des ressources humaines et financières limitées réduisent la possibilité d’une large participation des organisations de la société civile, en particulier en dehors de la capitale. Cela soulève la question d’une allocation juste, adéquate et ciblée des financements climatiques pour répondre aux ambitions des politiques climatiques au Sénégal. Ce rapport présente des recommandations afin de surmonter les barrières qui expliqueraient une faible appropriation des plans nationaux sur le climat par les communautés, afin de proposer des voies pour que les populations soient des acteurs au coeur d’une transition écologique ambitieuse au Sénégal. </p
Navigating the City: Gendered work experiences in urban spaces
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Women around the world experience much higher levels of fear of crime, profoundly impacting their perceptions of safety and influencing their interactions with public spaces. This fear prompts women to alter their behaviour, such as avoiding specific urban areas and public transport, especially after dark. While many amend their habits and limit their exposure to public spaces due to the fear of crime, what happens to those women for whom the urban space is also their workplace and whose work occurs solely in public spaces? This article focuses on women whose work demands engagement with public spaces, exploring the experiences of women drivers in male-dominated sectors such as taxi and platform-based (Uber and Cabify) services in the city of Malaga, Spain. Drawing on 35 semi-structured interviews, the article explores their experiences as mobile workers navigating urban spaces and their dual role in the dynamics of violence: as the receiver of violence and sexual harassment from clients and colleagues, and simultaneously acting as protectors for their women clients, ensuring their safety in public spaces. Rather than understanding women as passive victims, the article explores how women deploy a sense of agency in creating strategies that help them navigate these challenges. While some responses involve self-censorship to mitigate potential dangers, others defy gender by not conforming to the cultural norms of traditional femininity. Through these processes, women survive, challenge, and resist violence, and move from the sense that ‘this city is not for me’ to developing a higher sense of power.
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A Campus Far Removed: Affect, genders, and space at Argentina’s largest public university
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Extreme instances of COVID-19 policy-related violence against transgender (trans) communities in Latin America highlight the imperative to better understand how gender, power, and rights are entwined within public spaces. Peru is a useful vantage point to explore the intersections between gendered power asymmetries, violence, and access to safe public spaces, given the brief COVID-19 public health policy that restricted the mobility of its citizens based on binary understandings of sex and associated cisheteronormativity. These policies restricted access to public spaces and essential services to women on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays, and to men on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays and were enforced based on sex assigned at birth reported via identity documents. Drawing on 25 in-depth interviews with Peruvian trans women, this paper examines the impacts of these COVID-19 policies on trans communities and documents grassroots activism efforts to navigate public space that ultimately demand and assert human rights both during and post-COVID-19. Findings illustrate that while short-lived, the sex-based policies and associated policing in urban public space significantly impacted the well-being of Peruvian trans women. Participants illustrated numerous community-enacted strategies to navigate COVID-19 inequities, including information sharing, crowd-sourcing funds to secure food, pay rent and/or secure housing, and grocery shopping provided by trans people for trans people. Further, community mutual aid efforts have continued and evolved years into the pandemic. Jointly, findings advance understandings of the critical role of public spaces as arenas of political struggles that reveal and challenge a wider spectrum of intersecting oppressions and power structures that trans women continually navigate and resist.
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Vetoing Humanity: How a few powerful nations hijacked global peace and why reform is needed at the UN Security Council
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This report aims to highlight the humanitarian consequences of the dysfunction at the UN Security Council and humanitarian finance mechanisms. A few powerful states are obstructing peace processes and undermining international laws which should be equally binding for all people. There are 23 protracted crises examined in this report, with case studies on the Democratic Republic of Congo, the Occupied Palestinian Territory, Syria and Ukraine. The growth of humanitarian needs, gaps in humanitarian funding, and the impacts of veto and penholding power are explored.
Ahead of the Summit of the Future in 2024, Oxfam urges the UN member states to use this opportunity to take decisive and bold action to rebuild a more equal, inclusive, efficient, and responsive system. This will ensure that they fulfil their roles in reducing and resolving crises to avoid the spiralling humanitarian consequences of protracted conflict.
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Two Years at the Forefront: Exploring the needs and experiences of women-led, women's rights and LGBTQIA+ led organizations two years into the Ukraine humanitarian response
No full textTwo years on from the escalation of the war in Ukraine, Oxfam spoke with a number of people leading the work of local and national women-led organisations (WLOs), women’s rights organisations (WROs), LGBTQIA+ led organizations, and other local non-governmental organizations (NGOs) addressing the needs of women, girls and gender minorities in Poland and Ukraine. We wanted to understand how the humanitarian crisis has impacted them, personally and as organizations, and their needs and priorities for the future.
At the beginning of the humanitarian crisis following the escalation of the war in Ukraine, local WLOs, WROs and LGBTQIA+ led organizations were some of the first on the ground responding to their communities’ needs, both within Ukraine and in neighboring countries, and two years on, they are still at the forefront of providing assistance.
The conversations that we had with these organisations highlighted that they are facing key challenges in continuing to sustain their vital role in responding to humanitarian needs; the need for greater investment in their voice and agency as decision-makers in the humanitarian response; and the need for flexible support to these organisations that allows them to carry out their important work across all stages of the response to the humanitarian crisis.</p
Understanding electricity utilities in sub-Saharan Africa: The role of civil society in improving performance, governance, and accountability
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This report provides a primer on the performance of electricity utilities in sub-Saharan Africa, reflecting on the current landscape of power sector and utility challenges, the reforms undertaken to address performance failures, opportunities for a “utility of the future” amid the global energy transition, governance frameworks available to assess performance (like the infrastructure regulatory system and World Bank’s Utility Performance and Behavior Today [UPBEAT] platform), and the prospects for changing the political economy of state-owned utilities to significantly improve transparency, accountability, and performance. It provides foundational knowledge on how to use financial statements and economic tools so that nonexperts can assess the financial health of a utility for the purposes of demanding greater accountability. It also provides insights on why energy sector power purchase agreements (PPAs) should be made more transparent for greater public accountability.
Further, the primer lays out the need for an enhanced role of civil society in advocating for improved transparency and greater civil participation in the governance of state-owned utilities and how regulation can be of further help. The key takeaway is that state-owned enterprises should be subject to commercial governance arrangements, including mandatory and stringent contracts and exposure to some private capital as well as stakeholder annual general meetings, open to the public, similar to those that occur in the private sector.
This report complements three other reports published for Ghana, Kenya, and South Africa. Each of those reports focuses on understanding the specific governance conditions surrounding their respective national electricity utilities. All these reports together are intended to build the programmatic and campaigning capacity among civil society actors to enable them to engage in improving the governance of electricity utilities. As such, the intended audience for this report is, first, members of civil society, and then policymakers and energy sector practitioners who are concerned about the operations of their national electricity utilities and who are contemplating advocacy and programming to improve their performance.
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