Oxfam is a British-founded confederation of 21 independent
non-governmental organization
A non-governmental organization (NGO) is an independent, typically nonprofit organization that operates outside government control, though it may get a significant percentage of its funding from government or corporate sources. NGOs often focus ...
s (NGOs), focusing on the alleviation of global
poverty
Poverty is a state or condition in which an individual lacks the financial resources and essentials for a basic standard of living. Poverty can have diverse Biophysical environmen ...
, founded in 1942 and led by Oxfam International. It began as the Oxford Committee for Famine Relief in Oxford, UK, in 1942, to alleviate
World War Two
World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies and the Axis powers. Nearly all of the world's countries participated, with many nations mobilisi ...
related hunger and continued in the aftermath of the war. Oxfam has an international presence with operations in 79 countries and 21 members in the Oxfam Confederation in Australia, Asia, Europe, the Middle East, North and Latin America and the Caribbean.
Since 2005, Oxfam International has been involved in a
series of controversies as it expanded, especially concerning its operations in Haiti and Chad. There have been criticisms of its management of operations in the UK as well.
History

Founded at 17
Broad Street, Oxford
Broad Street is a wide street in central Oxford, England, just north of the former city wall.
The street is known for its bookshops, including the original Blackwell's bookshop at number 50, located here due to the University of Oxford. Among re ...
, as the Oxford Committee for Famine Relief by a group of
Quaker
Quakers are people who belong to the Religious Society of Friends, a historically Protestant Christian set of denominations. Members refer to each other as Friends after in the Bible, and originally, others referred to them as Quakers ...
s, social activists, and Oxford academics in 1942 and registered in accordance with UK law in 1943, the original committee was a group of concerned citizens, including Henry Gillett (a prominent local Quaker),
Theodore Richard Milford,
Gilbert Murray
George Gilbert Aimé Murray (2 January 1866 – 20 May 1957) was an Australian-born British classical scholar and public intellectual, with connections in many spheres. He was an outstanding scholar of the language and culture of Ancient Greec ...
and his wife Mary,
Cecil Jackson-Cole
Cecil Jackson-Cole (1901-1979) was an English entrepreneur and humanitarian. He was associated with a number of charities including Oxfam, Help the Aged and ActionAid.
A devout Christian, Jackson-Cole set up charitable trusts including the Volu ...
, and Alan Pim. The committee met in the Old Library of
University Church of St Mary the Virgin
The University Church of St Mary the Virgin (St Mary's or SMV for short) is an Anglican church in Oxford situated on the north side of the High Street. It is the centre from which the University of Oxford grew and its parish consists almost excl ...
, Oxford, for the first time in 1942, and its aim was to help
starving citizens of occupied Greece, a famine caused by the
Axis occupation of Greece
The occupation of Greece by the Axis Powers () began in April 1941 after Nazi Germany Battle of Greece, invaded the Kingdom of Greece in order to assist its ally, Fascist Italy (1922–1943), Italy, in their Greco-Italian War, ongoing war that w ...
and
Allied naval blockades and to persuade the British government to allow food relief through the blockade. The Oxford committee was one of several local committees formed in support of the National
Famine Relief Committee.
The first permanent Oxfam gift shop was on Broad Street, Oxford; it opened in 1947. Oxfam's first paid employee was
Joe Mitty
Joseph Sidney Mitty MBE (7 May 1919 – 30 September 2007) was a British salesman and the man who turned the first Oxfam gift shop into a national retail network of shops selling second hand clothing and other goods. This network put Oxfam on ...
, who began working at the Oxfam shop on Broad Street, Oxford, on 9 November 1949. Engaged to manage the accounts and distribute donated clothing, he originated the policy of selling anything people were willing to donate, and developed the shop into a national chain.
Fundraising innovations led by advertising adviser
Harold Sumption
Harold Sumption (26 November 1916 - 18 March 1998) was an English advertising executive and fundraiser. He was associated with charities including Oxfam, Help the Aged and ActionAid, as well as co-founding the International Fundraising Worksho ...
, including rigorous testing of advertising campaigns, direct mail, the trading catalogue, and the first multimedia fundraising campaign the "Hunger £ Million", helped Oxfam become, for a time, the largest charity in the UK. By 1960, it was an international
nongovernmental aid organization.
The first overseas committee was founded in Canada in 1963, and in 1965, the organization changed its name to its
telegraphic address
A telegraphic address or cable address was a unique identifier code for a recipient of telegraph messages. Operators of telegraph services regulated the use of telegraphic addresses to prevent duplication. Rather like a uniform resource locator ...
, OXFAM. The Oxford committee became known as
Oxfam GB
Oxfam is a British-founded confederation of 21 independent non-governmental organizations (NGOs), focusing on the alleviation of global poverty, founded in 1942 and led by Oxfam International. It began as the Oxford Committee for Famine Relief ...
.
In 1995 Oxfam International was formed by a group of independent non-governmental organizations. Stichting Oxfam International was registered as a non-profit foundation at
The Hague
The Hague ( ) is the capital city of the South Holland province of the Netherlands. With a population of over half a million, it is the third-largest city in the Netherlands. Situated on the west coast facing the North Sea, The Hague is the c ...
,
Netherlands
, Terminology of the Low Countries, informally Holland, is a country in Northwestern Europe, with Caribbean Netherlands, overseas territories in the Caribbean. It is the largest of the four constituent countries of the Kingdom of the Nether ...
, in 1996.
Winnie Byanyima
Winifred Byanyima (born 13 January 1959), is a Uganda, Ugandan aeronautical engineering, aeronautical engineer, politician, human rights activist, feminist and diplomat. She is the executive director of UNAIDS, effective November 2019.
From M ...
was the executive director of Oxfam International from 2013 to 2019.
Oxfam's work
Focus

Oxfam has provided relief services during various global crises, including the
Israeli–Palestinian conflict
The Israeli–Palestinian conflict is an ongoing military and political conflict about Territory, land and self-determination within the territory of the former Mandatory Palestine. Key aspects of the conflict include the Israeli occupation ...
,
North Korean famine
The North Korean famine (), dubbed by the government as the Arduous March (), was a period of mass starvation together with a general economic crisis from 1995 to 2000 in North Korea. During this time there was an increase in defection from N ...
,
2011 East Africa drought
Eleven or 11 may refer to:
*11 (number)
* One of the years 11 BC, AD 11, 1911, 2011
Literature
* ''Eleven'' (novel), a 2006 novel by British author David Llewellyn
*''Eleven'', a 1970 collection of short stories by Patricia Highsmith
*''Eleven'' ...
,
2012 Sahel drought,
Nepal earthquake, and
Yemeni crisis
The Yemeni crisis began with the 2011–2012 revolution against President Abdullah Saleh, who had led Yemen for 33 years. After Saleh left office in early 2012 as part of a mediated agreement between the Yemeni government and opposition group ...
. The
Bosfam NGO
A non-governmental organization (NGO) is an independent, typically nonprofit organization that operates outside government control, though it may get a significant percentage of its funding from government or corporate sources. NGOs often focus ...
was also founded in May 1995 by women participating in an Oxfam GB psychosocial 'radionice' project to support internally displaced women during the
Bosnian war
The Bosnian War ( / Рат у Босни и Херцеговини) was an international armed conflict that took place in Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bosnia and Herzegovina between 1992 and 1995. Following several earlier violent incid ...
. Oxfam has become a globally recognized leader in providing water sanitation to impoverished and war-torn areas the world over. In 2012, Oxfam became one of the humanitarian groups that comprise the UK's Rapid Response Facility to ensure clean water in the wake of humanitarian disasters.
A January 2014 Oxfam report stated that the 85 wealthiest individuals in the world have a combined wealth equal to that of the bottom 50% of the world's population, or about 3.5 billion people.
In January 2015, Oxfam reported that the wealthiest 1 percent will own more than half of the global wealth by 2016.
An Oxfam report released in 2017 stated that eight
billionaire
A billionaire is a person with a net worth of at least 1,000,000,000, one billion units of a given currency, usually of a major currency such as the United States dollar, euro, or pound sterling. It is a sub-category of the concept of the ultr ...
s possess the same amount of wealth as the poorest half of humanity.
The current focus of Oxfam's campaigns includes economic inequality (including tax justice), gender justice and climate change.
Past Campaigns
The
Make Trade Fair
Make Trade Fair was a campaign organized by Oxfam International to promote trade justice and fair trade among governments, institutions, and multinational corporations. As of 2022, the website is defunct. It first appears to have gone offline ...
campaign organized by Oxfam International focuses on the elimination of trade practices, such as
dumping, which occurs when highly subsidized, surplus commodities from developed countries such as rice, cotton, corn, and sugar are sold at low prices and farmers from poor countries have difficulty competing. Another practice Oxfam opposes is the setting of
tariffs
A tariff or import tax is a duty imposed by a national government, customs territory, or supranational union on imports of goods and is paid by the importer. Exceptionally, an export tax may be levied on exports of goods or raw materials and is ...
, where nations enforce high taxes on imported goods, restricting the sales of products from other nations, unbalanced
labour rights
Labor rights or workers' rights are both legal rights and human rights relating to labor relations between workers and employers. These rights are codified in national and international labor and employment law. In general, the ...
for women, who often earn lower wages than their male counterparts, and stringent
patent
A patent is a type of intellectual property that gives its owner the legal right to exclude others from making, using, or selling an invention for a limited period of time in exchange for publishing an sufficiency of disclosure, enabling discl ...
issues that prevent the prices of medication, software, and textbooks (e.g.
gene patents,
chemical patent
A chemical patent, pharmaceutical patent or drug patent is a patent for an invention in the chemical or pharmaceuticals industry. Strictly speaking, in most jurisdictions, there are essentially no differences between the legal requirements to o ...
s, and
software patent
A software patent is a patent on a piece of software, such as a computer program, library, user interface, or algorithm. The validity of these patents can be difficult to evaluate, as software is often at once a product of engineering, something ...
s) from being lowered. Thus, such essential goods are often inaccessible to developing nations.
As part of its work Oxfam has also campaigned on issues regarding coffee farming. In October 2006, Oxfam accused
Starbucks
Starbucks Corporation is an American multinational List of coffeehouse chains, chain of coffeehouses and Starbucks Reserve, roastery reserves headquartered in Seattle, Washington. It was founded in 1971 by Jerry Baldwin, Zev Siegl, and Gor ...
of asking the
National Coffee Association
National Coffee Association of U.S.A., Inc. (National Coffee Association or NCA) is the main market research, consumer information, and lobbying association for the coffee industry in the United States.
The association has functions and services ...
(NCA) to block a
US trademark application from
Ethiopia
Ethiopia, officially the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia, is a landlocked country located in the Horn of Africa region of East Africa. It shares borders with Eritrea to the north, Djibouti to the northeast, Somalia to the east, Ken ...
for three of the country's coffee beans,
Sidamo,
Harar
Harar (; Harari language, Harari: ሀረር / ; ; ; ), known historically by the indigenous as Harar-Gey or simply Gey (Harari: ጌይ, ݘٛىيْ, ''Gēy'', ), is a List of cities with defensive walls, walled city in eastern Ethiopia. It is al ...
and
Yirgacheffe. They claimed this could result in denying
Ethiopian coffee farmers potential annual earnings of up to
£47m.
Following this
Starbucks
Starbucks Corporation is an American multinational List of coffeehouse chains, chain of coffeehouses and Starbucks Reserve, roastery reserves headquartered in Seattle, Washington. It was founded in 1971 by Jerry Baldwin, Zev Siegl, and Gor ...
had placed pamphlets in its stores accusing Oxfam of "misleading behavior" and insisting that its "campaign need
to stop", while ''
The Economist
''The Economist'' is a British newspaper published weekly in printed magazine format and daily on Electronic publishing, digital platforms. It publishes stories on topics that include economics, business, geopolitics, technology and culture. M ...
'' derided Oxfam's "simplistic" stance and Ethiopia's "economically illiterate" government, arguing that Starbucks' (and
Illy
Illycaffè S.p.A. (branded and stylised as illy) is an Italian coffee company specializing in espresso, headquartered in Trieste. Illy markets its coffee globally in silver and red pressurized, oxygen-free cans; operates a network of cafes on sh ...
's) standards-based approach would ultimately benefit farmers more. In June 2007, Ethiopian Government representatives and senior leaders from Starbucks Coffee Company worked out an agreement regarding distribution, marketing and licensing that recognized the importance and integrity of Ethiopia's specialty coffee designations. An Oxfam spokesman said the deal sounds like a "useful step" as long as farmers are benefiting, and a big step from a year prior when Starbucks "wasn't engaging directly (with) Ethiopians on adding value to their coffee".
Shops
Oxfam has shops all over the world, which sell many fair-trade and donated items since their first charity shop opened in 1948, although trading began in 1947. The proceeds from these are used to further Oxfam's mission and relief efforts around the globe. Much of their stock comes from public donations but as of 2012 they still sold fair trade products from developing countries in Africa, Asia and South America, including handcrafts, books, music CDs and instruments, clothing, toys, food, and ethnic creations. These objects are brought to the public through fair trade to help boost the quality of life of their producers and surrounding communities.
As of 2010, Oxfam had over 1,200 shops worldwide. More than half of them were in the UK, with around 750 Oxfam GB shops, including specialist shops such as books, music, furniture, and bridal wear. Oxfam Germany has 45 shops, including specialist book shops; Oxfam France shops sell books and fair-trade products, and Oxfam Hong Kong has two shops selling donated goods and fair-trade products. Oxfam Novib, Oxfam Australia (with over 20 fair trade shops), Oxfam Ireland and Oxfam in
Belgium
Belgium, officially the Kingdom of Belgium, is a country in Northwestern Europe. Situated in a coastal lowland region known as the Low Countries, it is bordered by the Netherlands to the north, Germany to the east, Luxembourg to the southeas ...
also raise funds from shops.
Of the Oxfam charity shops around the UK, around 100 are specialist bookshops or book and music shops. Oxfam is the largest retailer of
second-hand books in Europe, selling around 12 million per year. In 2008, Oxfam GB worked with over 20,000
volunteers
Volunteering is an elective and freely chosen act of an individual or group giving their time and labor, often for community service. Many volunteers are specifically trained in the areas they work, such as medicine, education, or emergenc ...
in shops across the UK, raising £17.1 million for Oxfam's programme work.
In the wake of the 2018
sexual abuse
Sexual abuse or sex abuse is abusive sexual behavior by one person upon another. It is often perpetrated using physical force, or by taking advantage of another. It often consists of a persistent pattern of sexual assaults. The offender is re ...
scandal, CEO
Mark Goldring admitted closures of some Oxfam shops were likely.
Allegations also appeared at this time regarding
sexual harassment
Sexual harassment is a type of harassment based on the sex or gender of a victim. It can involve offensive sexist or sexual behavior, verbal or physical actions, up to bribery, coercion, and assault. Harassment may be explicit or implicit, wit ...
in Oxfam shops in Britain.
Sector press later reported that Oxfam closed 26 of its shops in 2020 and that shops made an operational loss of £12.9 million in 2020, with further closures reported in local media thereafter.
Fundraising
Oxfam has several successful fundraising channels in addition to its shops. Over half a million people in the UK make a regular financial contribution to its work. In April 2017, the Information Commissioner's Office fined Oxfam charities for breaching the Data Protection Act by misusing donors' personal data. Oxfam was fined £6,000.
Offices and affiliates
Oxfam International consists of 21 affiliates and the international secretariat in
Nairobi
Nairobi is the Capital city, capital and largest city of Kenya. The city lies in the south-central part of Kenya, at an elevation of . The name is derived from the Maasai language, Maasai phrase , which translates to 'place of cool waters', a ...
. Additional offices were in Addis Ababa, Washington, DC, New York City,
Brussels
Brussels, officially the Brussels-Capital Region, (All text and all but one graphic show the English name as Brussels-Capital Region.) is a Communities, regions and language areas of Belgium#Regions, region of Belgium comprising #Municipalit ...
, and
Geneva
Geneva ( , ; ) ; ; . is the List of cities in Switzerland, second-most populous city in Switzerland and the most populous in French-speaking Romandy. Situated in the southwest of the country, where the Rhône exits Lake Geneva, it is the ca ...
.
Oxfam Japan was a member from 2003 until its closure in 2018.
Oxfam is in process of exploring additional southern affiliates in the global south, including Oxfam in the Pacific, The Philippines, Sengal, Kenya and Indonesia.
Oxfam International

The Oxfam International Secretariat (OIS) leads, facilitates, and supports collaboration between the Oxfam affiliates. The OIS Board comprises the executive director, chair of each affiliate, and the OI chair. The affiliates' chairs are voting members and are not remunerated. The executive directors and the OI Chair are all non-voting members. The board also elects the deputy chair and treasurer from among its voting members. The board is responsible for ensuring that Oxfam International is accountable, transparent, and fit for purpose.
In 2009–10, it had about 77 staff (including secondment placements and temporary staff). It is funded by contributions from affiliate organizations and has an operating budget of US$8.7M.
The legal name of the entity is Stichting Oxfam International.
Oxfam America
In 1970, Oxfam America became an independent
nonprofit organization
A nonprofit organization (NPO), also known as a nonbusiness entity, nonprofit institution, not-for-profit organization, or simply a nonprofit, is a non-governmental (private) legal entity organized and operated for a collective, public, or so ...
and an Oxfam affiliate in response to the humanitarian crisis created by the fight for
independence in Bangladesh. Oxfam America's headquarters are located in
Boston
Boston is the capital and most populous city in the Commonwealth (U.S. state), Commonwealth of Massachusetts in the United States. The city serves as the cultural and Financial centre, financial center of New England, a region of the Northeas ...
,
Massachusetts
Massachusetts ( ; ), officially the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, is a U.S. state, state in the New England region of the Northeastern United States. It borders the Atlantic Ocean and the Gulf of Maine to its east, Connecticut and Rhode ...
, with a policy and campaigns office in
Washington, D.C.
Washington, D.C., formally the District of Columbia and commonly known as Washington or D.C., is the capital city and federal district of the United States. The city is on the Potomac River, across from Virginia, and shares land borders with ...
, and seven regional offices around the world. A registered
501(c)
A 501(c) organization is a nonprofit organization in the federal law of the United States according to Internal Revenue Code (26 U.S.C. § 501(c)). Such organizations are exempt from some federal income taxes. Sections 503 through 505 set o ...
3 organization, Oxfam America campaigns for
climate change adaptation
Climate change adaptation is the process of adjusting to the effects of climate change, both current and anticipated.IPCC, 2022Annex II: Glossary ,
öller, V., R. van Diemen, J.B.R. Matthews, C. Méndez, S. Semenov, J.S. Fuglestvedt, A. Reisinger ...
, food security, aid">food security">öller, V., R. van Diemen, J.B.R. Matthews, C. Méndez, S. Semenov, J.S. Fuglestvedt, A. Reisinger ...