Funding (Updated July 2017)

  • According to its 2015-2016 annual report, Oxfam Australia had a total income of AUD 70 million. Total expenses of AUD 77 million.
  • In 2015-2016, AUD17.5 million came from “Australian government grants.”

Activities

See also NGO Monitor’s reports on Oxfam International and Oxfam Novib (Netherlands).

  • Background: Oxfam Australia was born out of a merger between two leading Australian international development agencies in 1992 — Community Aid Abroad and the Australian Freedom from Hunger Campaign. As a founding member of Oxfam International, it changed its name to Oxfam Community Aid Abroad in 2001 and then to Oxfam Australia in 2005.
  • Describes its work as creating a “partnership through which Australians enable poor and marginalized people to control their own development, achieve equitable treatment, exercise their basic rights, and ensure the environment is healthy and sustainable.”
  • Focus regions include: East Asia, South Asia, The Pacific and Africa.

Political Advocacy

  • Oxfam Australia appears to focus primarily on regional issues.  However Oxfam International, of which Oxfam Australia is a member, is involved in political advocacy, including: BDS against Israel, demonization, and distorted legal claims – see Oxfam International for more information.
  • Oxfam Australia released numerous statements on the 2014 Gaza War, including emotive “first-hand accounts” and “personal stories” of Palestinian suffering. Oxfam also condemns “Israeli military actions and Palestinian rocket fire,” drawing an immoral symmetry between Israeli self-defense and illegal attacks by terror organizations, and without any acknowledgement of Hamas’ exploitation of the civilian population of Gaza as human shields. Its statements refer to the blockade of Gaza as the key impediment to peace, failing to mention that the purpose of Israel’s blockade is to prevent the illegal flow of weapons to Hamas and other terror groups.