Oxfam International is a confederation of 13 organizations working with over 3,000 partners in more than 100 countries to find lasting solutions to poverty and injustice.

The 6000 people that control Oxfam organizations are based in: Australia, Belgium, Canada (along with a distinct Oxfam organization for the province of Quebec), France, Germany, Hong Kong, Ireland, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Spain, the United Kingdom, and the United States. A small Oxfam International Secretariat is based in Oxford, UK, and the Secretariat runs advocacy offices in Washington, DC, New York, Brussels, and Geneva.

The Oxfam International Secretariat leads, facilitates and supports collaboration between the Oxfam affiliates to increase Oxfam International’s impact on poverty and injustice through advocacy campaigns, development programs and emergency response.

Oxfam Great Britain is based in Oxford, UK. It was founded in England in 1942 as the Oxford Committee for Famine Relief by a group of concerned citizens including Canon Theodore Richard Milford (1896–1987), Professor Gilbert Murray and his wife Lady Mary, Cecil Jackson-Cole and Sir Alan Pim. It was one of a number of local committees formed in support of the National Famine Relief Committee. Their mission was to persuade the UK government to allow food relief through the Allied blockade for the starving citizens of Nazi-occupied Greece. The first overseas Oxfam was founded in Canada in 1963. The committee changed its name to its telegraph address, OXFAM, in 1965.