How we’re working to prevent abuse, protect and empower people

A message from Oxfam Ireland Chief Executive, Jim Clarken

In Ghana, mother-of-two Christina grows maize to earn a living. She is one of the many female farmers in her community being trained by Oxfam to overcome challenges such as climate change. Learning new farming techniques ensures that Christina can continue to provide for her children and enable them to live a life free from poverty.Photo: Nana Kofi Acquah/Oxfam 

In my ten years at Oxfam Ireland, I have seen first-hand the incredible impact of our supporter’s generosity. From our live-saving work in times of hunger, drought, disaster and conflict to our long-term development programmes that help people lift themselves out of poverty as well as advocacy that tackles the injustices that keep people poor.  

None of this important work would be possible without a movement of people across the island of Ireland who donate, shop, volunteer and speak out with us. We’re so grateful.

We know that in supporting us, you’re trusting us to deliver programmes that put people’s safety and dignity at its core. We take that seriously and are continually working to strengthen our safeguarding systems, improve our culture and protect and empower people.

To ensure we are the best we can be, we launched a comprehensive action plan in February 2018 to review and update our safeguarding systems across the global confederation.

As part of this, we established an Independent Commission on Sexual Misconduct led by international women’s rights experts and asked them to hold us to the highest standards in reviewing all aspects of our safeguarding policies and practices.  

We welcome the findings in their final report and are ready to implement their recommendations, many of which we’ve already acted on. We are galvanised by the Commission’s positive acknowledgement of our progress to date and are more determined than ever to play a leadership role in safeguarding.

We have worked hard to improve our policies and procedures and build a positive culture in a global and diverse organisation.   

In Oxfam Ireland, we have created a designated safeguarding team to support staff and volunteers; completed an all-staff survey on culture and delivered workshops on our values. As part of the international organisation, we have increased budget, resources and staff to drive culture change across the entire confederation; introduced new policies on child safeguarding, protection, sexual diversity, and ethical content gathering and reformed our HR systems to strengthen our referencing processes and better recruit and train staff and volunteers with a greater focus on behaviours, culture and safeguarding.

And we won’t stop there. 

It is our priority to ensure that our staff, volunteers, partners and those we serve are safe and valued and we will not tolerate abuse of any kind in our workplace or programmes. 

We will continue to implement and champion policies and procedures in line with national and international best practice and create a culture where everyone feels safe, respected and empowered.

As always, we remain dedicated to making a positive impact on the lives of millions of people every year. We will not let the deplorable behaviour of a few stand in the way of our work to beat poverty, save lives when disaster strikes and end the injustices that trap people in poverty.

Thank you for standing in solidarity with us. 

To read more about Oxfam’s progress against its comprehensive action plan on safeguarding, visit: oxfamireland.org/impact