Marina Nyandwi, 70, weaver and resident of Mugunga Camp, Goma, DRC, pictured with her grandsons. Photo: Rankin / Oxfam

Here’s Oxfam’s Louis Belanger blogging for the Huffington Post, on what the UN must do to help civilians in the conflict-torn Democratic Republic of Congo:

So earlier this week, the UN Security Council adopted unanimously a resolution that revised the mandate of UN peacekeepers to focus on the crisis in the eastern provinces of North Kivu and South Kivu. The force, known as MONUC, is authorized to have 22,000 soldiers and police.

Oxfam and the people of Congo`s call for prioritization of this “protection mandate” has been answered.

However, strong words on a piece of paper are not enough …

People caught up in this tragedy tell us that they cannot understand why the world’s biggest UN peacekeeping force is doing so little to help them. They are at the mercy of armed groups on all sides and offered little protection from rape, murder and abduction.

It’s time for UN peacekeepers to be led and given all the means to stop this madness.

Jamil Hamzah walks through rice fields in Gampang Ladang, Indonesia, where Oxfam helped farmers purchase rice paddy seed. According to a new UN report, Indonesia is one of just seven countries where 65 percent of the world’s hungry people live. Photo: Jim Holmes/Oxfam

Each day, the epidemic is spreading further across the globe, extending its tendrils into every nation on earth. It strikes women and children first, as well as the poorest among us. Nearly 1 billion people are already affected, and this year alone, an additional 40 million more suffered its symptoms: fatigue, dizziness, extreme weakness, even death.

The thing is, you don’t read much about this epidemic in the headlines these days. No one’s handing out ribbons or marching for a cure. Though it’s treatable, people aren’t doing much to prevent it. In fact, hardly anyone seems to be paying attention.

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An Oxfam activist shows a “Stop Harming – Start Helping” Christmas card delivered to UN Climate negotiators meeting right now in Poznan, Poland.

Oxfam is campaigning in Poznan for funding to help poor communities around the world become stronger in the face of climate change. They have the knowledge and the skills. They just need the funding to: plant protective barriers of mangroves around their coastlines, build cereal banks to store food, establish early warning systems for storms and floods, and fortify existing infrastructure like bridges and roads.

Credit: Pablo Tosco / Oxfam International

To see more photos from Oxfam’s stunts in Poznan, visit our Flickr page. To join our campaign, click here.

New arrivals are streaming into Bulengo Camp in Democratic Republic of Congo every day. The UN is seeking $7 billion in 2009 to help some of the millions of people around the world caught in conflict--like those in Congo. Photo by Oxfam

Here’s some food for thought as Thanksgiving approaches. On Wednesday, in its 2009 humanitarian appeal, the United Nations made its largest request ever for support in the coming year for 30 million people snared by disaster and conflict: $7 billion. That’s just one-hundredth of what we have agreed to spend here in the US to bail ourselves out of our own financial troubles. Read the rest of this entry »

Family members share a meal in a house where village residents are hosting refugees from the Casamance, in the village of Janack in the Gambia. Photo: Rebecca Blackwell / Oxfam America

There are a lot of problems facing our next president, none of them simple. Watching all the rhetoric flying around, I keep thinking that words only mean so much; whoever wins this election better be able to come up with some nuts-and-bolts solutions.

But here’s one issue we haven’t heard much about, yet would be relatively straightforward to tackle: the global food crisis.

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