A community of 1,367 families were uprooted from central Phnom Penh in June 2006 and forcibly relocated to open swamp land in Andong, 13 miles from the city and their livelihoods.

Why? To make way for a shopping mall that is yet to be built.

Acclaimed photographer Emma Hardy traveled to Cambodia to capture the story of this community and others, fighting to reclaim their rights to own, inhabit, and work the land they once owned. She describes what she saw in Andong slum:

“Seven years on, these families are still waiting for public services. Their latrine is an open field. Water for washing and cooking is piped in rickety plastic hoses at uncertain times of day and stored in large open earthenware jars standing in shockingly-polluted water. In the rainy seasons most makeshift homes are practically submerged in sewage water. In drier months, the stench is overwhelming. Dysentery is rife. Dengue fever and cholera are chronic. These relocated communities have not, to date, received ‘even one grain of rice in compensation.’”

Below are five photos from Hardy, some of which will be featured in a pop-up gallery exhibit in Washington, DC, from April 10^th to the 21^st. (See invite here.) The exhibit was created in support of Oxfam’s efforts to bring attention to global land grabs and was first featured in The Economist’s Intelligent Life magazine.

The pictures speak for themselves.

(1) Street view, Andong slum

(2) Woman collecting water snails for food

(3) Slum dog

(4) Sor Sat, Executive Director of the Cambodian non-profit, Action for Environment and Communities, after a long meeting

(5) Daughter of land activists at a meeting

Around the world, a rush to grab land is underway. Land the size of the California, Texas, Arizona, Nevada and New Mexico combined was sold off globally in the last decade, enough to grow food for the one billion people who go hungry today.

The World Bank influences how land is bought and sold on a global scale. It has the power to step in and play a vital role in stopping land injustice.

Now, just before the World Bank/IMF Spring Meetings, encourage the World Bank to take action to halt the speed and scale of land grabbing around the world. Let them know the world is watching. Add your voice here.

Last week I met Razia Jan, one of the finalists for CNN’s Hero of the Year award. Razia is the founder of a small nonprofit organization called Razia’s Ray of Hope that is doing some of the bravest work I know of today.

I first heard about Razia during a conversation with my aunt about the book Three Cups of Tea by Greg Mortenson, which focuses on Mortenson’s mission to build schools in rural regions of Pakistan. (Though Mortenson’s book has generated some controversy, I still found the ideas behind the story inspiring.)

My aunt told me about her friend Patti Quigley, who lost her husband in the 9/11 attacks. Rather than shunning the region of the world from which the attackers came, Patti focused her energy on understanding it. That led Patti to meet Razia and become involved with, and eventually Executive Director of, Razia’s Ray of Hope.

On Friday, I heard Razia tell her story at an event here in Boston. A native Afghan, she lived in the US for over 38 years. After the 9/11 attacks she was compelled to return to Afghanistan to fight terrorism from the ground up. She knew, through a deep understanding of the culture, that educating girls was a key part of the solution.

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Women sign their names in support of Oxfam’s food justice campaign, GROW, at a World Food Day event yesterday in Sri Lanka. Photo: Sandun Thudugala/Oxfam

Sri Lanka is the latest country to join Oxfam’s global efforts around World Food Day. Oxfam’s Sandun Thudugala sent us this update about a World Food Day event yesterday in Colombo, which brought together leaders from government and local communities to talk about solutions to hunger:

“This week, we celebrate World Food Day (16^th October) at a time when world is facing one of its biggest food crises in history … [and] around 4 million Sri Lankans are undernourished. This is a great challenge in Sri Lanka where expectant mothers and children [are] the most affected by malnutrition. Almost one in five children has a low birth weight and around 500,000 children under the age of 5 are reported to be underweight. Global food price increases and extreme weather events are already having an impact on vulnerable communities in the country.

In a country like Sri Lanka, this is an unacceptable situation. Being a country blessed with all the natural resources necessary for food production, Sri Lanka has the potential to build a sustainable food system that can be a model for the rest of the world.

Oxfam in Sri Lanka is working with a large number of organizations, from grassroots level to national level, to support small scale food production … [and] the rights of and access of small scale food producers to resources and services.  Oxfam’s GROW campaign will support the efforts of women, men, community groups, and the government of Sri Lanka to build … a country without hunger.”

Meena Amirir says all human beings have the right to go to school. Photo by Louise Hancock/Oxfam

I can only begin to imagine what my life would be like if I didn’t know how to read, if books and a daily newspaper weren’t part of my diet, if I couldn’t decipher the train schedule or track the supermarket ads, if highway signs were incomprehensible and recipes were just a jumble of symbols. I’d feel trapped. And helpless.

What must the women in Afghanistan feel?

Just 12 percent of them over the age of 15 are literate. That means that countless women in one of the poorest nations in the world must depend on others to navigate much of their lives, a dependence that can’t help but weigh heavily on a country desperate for development. Read the rest of this entry »

With no money for modern machinery--or access to electricity--many Afghans plow their fields using oxen. Photo by Jason P. Howe/Oxfam

My colleague, Ashley Jackson, is leaving her post in Kabul, Afghanistan, where she has been based for the past two years—most recently as head of policy and advocacy for Oxfam. In the course of that time, she said one of the biggest changes she has seen in the country is the deterioration of security. Travel was quite easy in the beginning, but now there are areas in which Oxfam—and other aid groups—can no longer work.

That’s deeply troubling, especially considering the scale of need in Afghanistan, which UN figures show is the second poorest country in the world: Less than half the population has access to electricity and millions of people don’t have access to basics like health care, education, clean water, and sanitation. In the south, 53 percent of the health clinics are closed, said Ashley, and it’s getting worse as the insecurity spreads.

It’s easy to get discouraged by those statistics, and that’s why Ashley’s most enduring memory from her time in the country stands out—a beacon of possibility, a reason for hope. In her words, here’s that memory:

My first trip outside of Kabul was to a remote area in the north of the country, where I visited a women’s literacy class.  I remember talking to one woman, who must have been in her 50s, about what it was like to learn how to read so late in life.  She said it was like being blind and then learning how to see.  She was able to go to the market and buy things, as she could finally read the money and knew she wouldn’t be cheated.  She said that the greatest joy she had as a grandmother was helping her grandchildren learn how to read as that was something that no one will be able to take away from them, no matter what happens in the future.

Last week I wrote about the excellent Radiohead for Haiti DVD, but that’s not the only music project in support of Oxfam going on right now.  I also encourage you to check out Versions Of Joanna, an album of cover versions of songs by indie icon and singer-songwriter-harpist Joanna Newsom.

Versions Of Joanna is the brainchild of Peter Ferioli, curator of the video-aggregating site Joanna Newsom TV.  In the course of searching for videos to populate that website, Ferioli realized that other artists had performed an incredibly diverse selection of cover versions of Newsom’s music, and it might be a great idea to put together an album of these tracks for other Newsom fans to enjoy. 

Ferioli soon found that the artists involved were more than happy to give permission for their versions to be included in the project, but in order to make the album fully legitimate, he decided to seek the blessing of Joanna Newsom herself.

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Scuffing through the powdered-sugar dusting of snow on the streets the other day, zipping up my bulky down coat against the chill, I realized there’s no avoiding it: another New England winter is here. And with the Midwest reeling from a giant snowstorm last weekend, we Bostonians are not the only ones bundled up against the cold.

In northern Pakistan’s Swat Valley, winter is also settling in. December through February are the coldest months in this mountainous region, bringing heavy snowfall and below-freezing temperatures. This winter could be especially difficult for the thousands of people in who lost their homes, belongings, and livestock during Pakistan’s devastating floods earlier this year.

That’s why Oxfam is working to distribute thousands of winter survival kits in the Swat Valley before snowstorms cut off access to remote communities. According to Oxfam’s Jane Beesley and Caroline Gluck, who recently put together a photo slideshow about the kits (above), “Oxfam is distributing the survival kits—which consist of quilts, shawls, sweaters, and socks—with the help of its local partner, Lasoona. These warm items will go to the most vulnerable families who lost their homes and possessions, including female-headed households.” (Click on each photo in the slideshow to learn more.)

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To get the full story of President Obama’s recent visit to my home city, Mumbai, I knew at once to call a reliable source on the ground—my mom.  She exclaimed that taxi drivers and families eager to celebrate Diwali, the Indian festival of lights, were bemoaning the restrictions on the roads due to strict security measures in this city of over 21 million.

Despite those grumblings, Obama received a warm welcome on his three day visit, and several news reports lauded the special friendship between Obama and India’s Prime Minister, Manmohan Singh. This friendship is certainly to be lauded because of the mutual benefit it could have for two of the world’s largest democracies in terms of security and growth.

However, it’s important not to lose sight of the fact that India continues to face severe challenges posed by widespread poverty and unequal access to limited resources: A third of the world’s poorest people live in India, for example, and half of its children are malnourished.

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Families in the Dadu district of Pakistan's Sindh province are still battling flood waters that keep their villages submerged. Photo by Caroline Gluck/Oxfam

Oxfam’s Caroline Gluck reports from Sindh.

The road heading towards Qaimjatoi, in Dadu district in Pakistan’s southern Sindh looked like it was disappearing into the river.  A week ago, it was impassable; now, it was still surrounded by flooded rice fields, but most of the road had, at last, re-emerged from the waters. 

All around us, rice fields and trees were submerged.

We were going to meet 18-year-old Sakina Ghaincha, living with hundreds of other displaced families on a narrow ridge of an elevated embankment.  The families are living here in makeshift wooden shelters, with straw mats hung over the top as a roof. Colourful hand-stitched patchwork quilts, called rili and made locally, were strung along the sides of some shacks, affording families a little privacy and also some warmth when night temperatures drop.

Many people could see their flooded villages from the elevated bank, but couldn’t get back to them yet because the flood waters were still several feet high.  For most, boat travel remained the only way in and out.

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Photo: Jane Beesley / Oxfam

Oxfam’s Jane Beesley is in Pakistan, where the devastating floods have now affected 21 million people. Here’s an excerpt from her latest report from the field.

We have heard from Islamabad that there are rumors the flood is receding in Shikarpur and other areas in Sindh Province. … [But] once in the rural areas we soon see that the water has only gone down by a few inches. There’s a very long way to go.

We stop and have a brief chat with some people, living under plastic sheeting, close to the roadside. A local man tells us it will be at least a month before the waters go down to normal levels.  We go as far as we can before the road disappears under water. 

The floodwater here doesn’t look dramatic; no gushing, roaring torrents, strong currents sweeping all before it. This is a plain area and the water lies flat and still. A row of telegraph poles stretch out into to the distance, strangely marooned, casting shadows in the still water surrounding them. There are remains of mud houses crumbling and dissolving in the water.

In places we can see small green shoots poking out of the water; these are the rice fields. The crop, just weeks from being harvested, has been totally lost. Rice is the main crop in this area, and with only one crop a year the flood is a devastating blow after months and months of hard work. There will not be another rice harvest until this time next year, and only then if people can return home, are able to clear the land, buy seed and plant in time. …

Right now, our team has two different jobs to do: To help people who are displaced and won’t be able to return home quickly; and to help those returning to destroyed homes and livelihoods, like these rice fields.

In the distance we see a few people living on a small patch of land.  They are probably staying there to protect what remains of their property, and livestock. Otherwise, what was once a thriving village has a slightly eerie air. Walking back up the road to the car, all we can hear are the birds.

Donate now to support Oxfam’s flood relief work in Pakistan.