By Natalia Alonso, Head of Oxfam’s EU Office

Oxfam’s Penny Lawrence asked us to picture Isutu, a mother of five in Mali with elderly relatives at home and a husband in search of work. She has survived famine and fears she may soon be forced from her land by conflict, yet also struggles to feed herself and her family from day to day. Isutu is not just another victim of another crisis, this daily struggle is her life. The differences between ‘humanitarian’ and ‘developmental’ support mean little to her, and both are essential if she is not only to survive, but to thrive in spite of what may come.

Lawrence was speaking at a recent event held in Brussels, ‘Resilience & Power’, for which Oxfam had gathered figures from the very highest levels of the European Commission and the World Bank in order to debate the potential of the ‘resilience’ concept to change the way we go about improving the lives of the world’s poorest and most vulnerable people.

It was last year’s famine in the Sahel, and the fate of people like Isutu, which informed much of the morning’s discussion. From European Commissioner for Development Andris Piebalgs’ early reminder that this crisis was its sixth in only ten years, to Commissioner for Humanitarian Aid Kristalina Georgieva’s concluding word of warning that the next may not be far off.

Indeed, a new Oxfam paper, No Accident: Resilience and the inequality of risk, describes this series of crises as a ‘wake-up call’ to the fact that such situations cannot be solved by more ‘development-as-usual’. Shock after shock has undermined the ability of individuals in the region to cope. Short-term humanitarian assistance must be complemented by targeted and locally-owned development strategies to help get communities back on their feet. However, there are often major delays between the interventions of both sets of actors.

The problem was summed up by Deputy Director of Irish Aid David Brück, representing the Irish Presidency of the EU, who conjured the image of an ill and suffering patient who is operated on at the very last minute, only to then be denied any further treatment.

As a basis for renewed engagement between the development and humanitarian communities, the participants agreed that ‘resilience’ is not just another buzzword, but a concept which is inspiring a welcome and long-overdue shift in attitudes within both communities. Brück noted the lessons learned from an unusual joint visit of humanitarian and developmental EU member state officials to Ethiopia to understand what resilience looks like in practice. Deputy Director-General for Development Cooperation at the European Commission Marcus Cornaro described a similar visit by his staff with their humanitarian counterparts to that country, and a growing willingness to collaborate in the programming of their assistance.

However, as was underlined by Penny Lawrence and moderator Jim Clarken of Oxfam Ireland, resilience is not simply a technical fix, it’s about tackling underlying and unequal power structures which make the poorest the most vulnerable and the most at risk from external shocks and crises. Commissioner Georgieva made this point very clearly in her forceful closing statement: the poorest have only become poorer, as shocks of ever greater intensity and frequency leave no time for communities to recover.

Underlining the urgency of the challenge, she stressed that this trend will only worsen with the growing impact of climate change, which is confronted by communities already disproportionately touched by devastating conflicts. Visibly emotional, she stressed that it is women and children – the most vulnerable of the vulnerable – who bear the greatest burden in such circumstances. Like Dr. Mulyani Indrawati, the Managing Director of the World Bank, she called for women and children to be at the heart of a ‘resilience’ inspired approach.

However, if this challenge is to be met, rich countries must take action to reduce risk, working to monitor and prevent potential crisis situations, as emphasised by World Bank Senior Adviser Katarina Mathernova, rather than acting at the eleventh hour. For countries everywhere, this means addressing inequality and giving poor people a voice in decisions that affect their lives. For the aid sector, if the development and humanitarian communities are to come together in order to “not only save lives, but to turn lives around”, in the words of Commissioner Georgieva, it means changing the way we work so that we can better support poor people facing crises.

Catherine Olier, Policy Advisor at Oxfam’s EU Office, reflects on a hard-fought victory that will force oil, gas, mining and logging companies to come clean on their finances in the developing world. The European Parliament and EU member states are expected to give their final green light to the agreement in the coming months, bringing EU legislation in line with the US Dodd-Frank Act.

John F. Kennedy could not have been more right when he said, “Victory has a thousand fathers, but defeat is an orphan.”

Last week’s victory – the political deal agreed between EU Member States, the European Parliament and the European Commission to guarantee greater transparency on the activities of extractive and forestry companies – has countless mothers and fathers.

Just over a year ago, when I personally started working on so-called “country-by-country reporting” (the transparency obligation for extractive and forestry companies to disclose in their financial accounts their payments to governments on a country-by-country basis), I had no idea how much impact it could have on poor countries.

Then I listened to voices from Mali, Niger, Ghana, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Zambia, Tanzania, and many other countries, all of whom told us that bigger  transparency in the extractive sector is crucial because:

• We will finally know if companies pay the right amount for the resources they extract, thus contributing to the development of Southern countries and helping to lift people from poverty;
• Citizens and civil society organisations will be able to play their watchdog role and hold their governments to account to ensure funds are properly used;
• Communities affected by extraction projects will be able to claim part of the benefits to increase funding for essential rights like universal access to health and education, and the right to food.

I am proud that Oxfam has engaged in this battle from the early days along with other members of the Publish What You Pay coalition, participating in a more than ten-year old movement for greater transparency. Dedicated decision-makers also carried the project through and helped make it a life-changing reality for many. It is in that sense that this is “a victory of a thousand mothers and fathers”.

By ensuring that the proposal allows no exemption for any company and obliges them to disclose information regarding payments above €100,000 – a sufficiently low threshold for communities affected by extractive projects – this proposal is sending a strong signal that it is time to end the “resource curse” from which developing countries suffer. Of course, the proposal could have gone further by requiring companies to also disclose information about the profits they make in the country and the number of people they employ – to detect possible shifts of profit to tax havens in order to pay less tax. But new debates on tax avoidance against the background of growing public anger against tax dodgers show that this is the obvious next step – one we hope will be made soon.

“Defeat  is  an  orphan” because some extractive  companies, such as Shell,  which  have been fighting   hard  against  this  EU  legislation,  are  now  publicly welcoming  more transparency  and  are  making  a commitment to play the game by disclosing requested  information.  It’s difficult to believe them when you read that several of these oil companies belong to the American Petroleum Institute (API), which is currently suing the US government to block a similar transparency obligation under the Dodd-Frank Act. But I have high hopes that companies will eventually change their mind and drop the suit because as JFK – him again – also said, “change is the law of life. And those who look only to the past or present are certain to miss the future.”

by Leïla Bodeux, Policy Advisor in Essential Services at Oxfam-in-Belgium

As the mid-April deadline to conclude negotiations for the EU-India free trade agreement approaches, members of the European Parliament and civil society groups from across Europe mobilised in Brussels today to demand that the European Commission withdraw provisions that will harm people’s access to medicines in India and across the developing world.

Dressed as zombies, dozens of activists from organisations including Oxfam, Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), the Stop AIDS Campaign, Health Action International (HAI) Europe and Act-Up Paris protested outside the European Parliament alongside concerned MEPs, dancing to the Michael Jackson classic, ‘Thriller’, to remind us that the harmful intellectual property provisions that the European Union is pushing never die.

India, being the source for more than 80 percent of the HIV medicines used in developing countries, for example, is known as ‘the pharmacy of the developing world’, and there is growing concern that the intellectual property provisions and investment chapter which the European Commission is pressuring India to accept will block the export of generic medicines and choke off a vital lifeline for millions of people.

The provisions could also draw in third parties, including suppliers of active pharmaceutical ingredients used to produce generic medicines and treatment providers, potentially subjecting them to heavy fines. Other measures could see the Indian government secretly sued by multinational companies for billions of dollars if national laws, court decisions or other actions interfere with their investments – for example, if the patent office rejects or overrides a patent on a medicine to increase access, as in the Novartis case.

Among those participating in today’s protest was Carl Schlyter, a Swedish MEP for the Green Party, who urged his fellow parliamentarians not to accept provisions that could put millions of lives at risk. “This attack on the health of the world’s poorest is seriously concerning, particularly as a deadline to sign the agreement draws ever nearer and could be days away”, said Schlyter. “The EC cannot claim it supports access to medicines and is concerned about the lives of people in developing countries, and in the same breath be pushing harsh provisions around intellectual property enforcement on India.”