Economic Justice

We work to ensure that poor and vulnerable women and girls, and their families, have enough food to eat, and have more sustainable and resilient jobs or ways of making money.

Our goals

• Poor and vulnerable women and girls, and their families will have access to natural resources required to maintain resilient livelihoods.
• Poor and vulnerable women producers and their families will have access to technology, knowledge, and finances needed to effectively and sustainably benefit from proactively marketing their products.
• Government and private sector will be influenced to provide a policy and market environment that enables poor and vulnerable producers to secure resilient and sustainable livelihoods.

What we do

Oxfam works to ensure that poor and vulnerable women, girls and their families can own and use land and water. These vital natural resources are necessary for resilient and sustainable income generation. When farmers own their land, they have a bigger incentive to invest in them.

We target the cultural and legal barriers that prevent women and disadvantaged groups from using or owning the land required for income generation; for instance, those who were displaced from their land during the war will be assisted to reclaim their ownership.

Our work is guided by Oxfam’s global goal of fairer sharing of natural resources and of advancing people’s rights to sustainable livelihoods.  We work with our partners to advocate for more equitable land rights policies, campaigning at both national and local levels. Following a similar approach, we intend to widen our focus to include access to water. 

We support Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) as a means to help poor and marginalised women, girls, and their families to overcome poverty. Oxfam, with its partners, works to build the capacity of producers to become entrepreneurs, help them to access more equitable and higher value markets, and influence the relevant policies, practices, and services,

Oxfam supports civil society and community networks to stand up for improving the quality of life of marginalised women and small-scale producers so that they can influence the governments and the private sector.

Oxfam advocates for climate resistant livelihood models for small producers. We promote the leadership of women in production and marketing of agricultural produce so that they benefit from and control more aspects of the value chain. 

As a result

• Communities and groups that represent them are claiming and defending their rights to land including land that has been misappropriated and unfairly seized.
• Based on water needs for farming and climate change scenarios, the poorest communities will have enough water.
• Poor women producers have better access to knowledge, technology, and finances.
• Prospects are improving for poor producers to benefit from the marketing value chain.
• Policies and laws will protect the livelihoods of the poorest producers.
• Civil society organisations are responding to and representing the needs of poor women producers.