Oxfam
Oxfam’s mission is to fight inequality and end poverty and injustice for good. The confederation delivers humanitarian assistance, development programmes and policy influencing initiatives in 85 countries worldwide.
The principle of ‘do no harm’ is a central tenet of humanitarian assistance. Oxfam recognises that all its interventions also have the potential to do harm, whether unintentional or otherwise. Unintended harm can include inflaming local tensions and conflict, exposing recipients of assistance to robbery or theft, undermining effective local structures, and creating expectations that cannot be met. Intentional harm can include sexual exploitation and abuse of vulnerable communities.
Oxfam developed its Safe Programming approach to tackle this challenge: a set of training, guidelines and tools to increase awareness among programme delivery teams of the types of harm that can occur, and the proactive steps that can be taken to minimise them.
Oxfam commissioned 3B Impact to conduct review of how well the Safe Programming approach has been adopted across the confederation, and its effectiveness in making programmes and humanitarian responses safer for participating communities.
3B interviewed key informants across the confederation, including programme delivery teams, country leads and international leadership. Our methodology, designed in partnership with the Oxfam commissioning team, focused on engaging with as wide a geographical spread as possible and on speaking to teams where the Safe Programming working group had few relationships or visibility to date. We focused on positive stories of change, gathering a roster of examples in varying contexts where risks of harm had been identified and effectively mitigated.
We made recommendations to further strengthen and fully embed the culture of safe programming, including mandatory training for new joiners and better engagement on safe programming from leaders to clarify the difference between safe programming, safeguarding and protection.
Our recommendations were presented and accepted by the Oxfam’s Safe Programming Oversight Committee, comprising leaders from across the confederation.
