Oxfam International is an association of ten national or regional humanitarian relief and development organizations. The member organizations of Oxfam help poor communities in more than 120 countries to overcome hunger, disease, and poverty. They raise more than $350 million per year to address both emergency needs and the long-term causes of poverty. Within legal limits, they also worked to influence national and international policies affecting developing countries.
Oxfam was founded in England during World War II in response to famine in Nazi-occupied Greece, which could not import food because of an Allied naval blockade. Volunteers in Oxford formed the Oxford Committee for Famine Relief in 1942. The next year the committee registered as a charity and raised money for the Greek Red Cross. After the war the volunteers opened a charity shop in Broad Street in Oxford, and they continued to raise money and gifts for displaced people.
As the postwar refugee problem subsided in Europe, the committee hired staff and broadened its mission to relieve suffering in all parts of the world. It sent warm clothes to refugees in the Middle East after the creation of the State of Israel in 1948. It raised funds in 1953 to help Koreans who were left hungry, homeless, or orphaned by the Korean War. In the 1960s Oxfam helped the victims of famine and civil war in Nigeria as well as the Congo and India. By that time it used its shortened telegraph address, Oxfam, as the organizational name.
Oxfam shifted focus in the 1960s and 1970s toward longer-term development in cooperation with local communities. It also worked in industrialized countries to change popular stereotypes and government policies toward less-developed countries. Oxfam mounted enormous relief efforts for Cambodia in 1979, Ethiopia in the 1980s, and Rwanda in 1994.
Operating from a home base in the United Kingdom and Ireland, Oxfam became the model for nine organizations in other parts of the world: Community Aid Abroad in Australia, Intermon in Spain, NOVIB in The Netherlands, and organizations using forms of the Oxfam name in Belgium, Canada, Hong Kong, New Zealand, Quebec, and the United States. In 1995 the ten organizations created Oxfam International to coordinate their efforts on development programs, emergency relief, and advocacy. In addition to its headquarters in Oxford, Oxfam International operated an advocacy office in Washington, D.C., to lobby the United Nations and related agencies. Oxfam lobbying helped persuade the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund in October 1996 to restructure debt reduction programs to help relieve the debt burden for the poorest countries.