Humanitarian Response and DRR

Oxfam India works on disaster risk reduction issues across 9 states and with 27 partners; the states are Bihar, Assam, Orissa, Andhra Pradesh, Gujarat, Rajasthan, Maharashtra, Uttarakhand, and Uttar Pradesh. It also works with a range of partners among the humanitarian development community, including other United Nations agencies, to increase the effectiveness of national humanitarian development efforts. Our many partners in states and communities include non-governmental organizations, community- based organizations and poor rural people themselves. Oxfam is the fund manager for Sphere India with support from Unicef, ACTED, and Plan India.

Over the past year, Oxfam has worked under conditions of change- frequent disasters, rising population densities, deteriorating natural resources, and increasingly uncertain and unpredictable climatic conditions.

Oxfam India's risk reduction and disaster preparedness programming works at many levels. It saves lives, reduces vulnerability to major threats, enhances the capacity of partner organisations to respond to crises, strengthens the capacity of the rural poor to respond to disasters, and promotes a broad range of livelihood security in disaster prone areas. Further, it also works to improve the effectiveness of response among Oxfam counterparts, and influences local and national policy on the subject.