Oxfam is an international confederation of 17 organisations working in 96 countries worldwide (33 in Africa) to find solutions to poverty and injustice around the world. In all Oxfam’s actions, the ultimate goal is to enable people to exercise their rights and manage their own lives. Oxfam works directly with communities and seeks to influence the powerful, to ensure that poor people can improve their lives and livelihoods and have a say in decisions that affect them.Oxfam’s membership in the SOAWR Coalition is through its Pan Africa Programme.
The Oxfam Pan Africa Programme (PAP) works with African citizens through their formations so as to achieve their aspirations for justice, equality, sustainable development and stability through improving the implementation of continental mechanisms and commitments. Some of the most significant impact of the PAP has been at the level of influencing governments and African Union (AU) policies, processes and institutions. The PAP has been instrumental in raising the profile and significance of the AU organs and institutions and increasing the voice of African civil society, both in terms of strengthening their capacities to engage and facilitating the space for them to get involved with AU decision making institutions, organs and processes. One of the thematic work of the PAP is Gender Justice and through this we seek to advance women’s rights by strengthening women’s capacity to collectively demand for their rights as enshrined in the Protocol to the African Charter on Human and People’s Rights on the Rights of Women in Africa (the Maputo Protocol)(2003) and ensuring effective gender mainstreaming in all of the Oxfam’s work.