Martin Butcher is the Policy Advisor on Arms and Conflict with Oxfam International. In this role he is Oxfam’s lead on the Arms Trade Treaty (ATT), related arms trade issues, and on arms aspects of crises.He also works on protection of civilians issues related to explosive weapons and other arms. Martin first joined Oxfam in 2010 as part of the team working on the Arms Trade Treaty. He played an important role in the development of Oxfam and Control Arms policy around the developing ATT negotiations. Since 2016, Martin has led Oxfam’s substantive input to CAAT’s court challenge to UK arms exports to Saudi Arabia.

Martin has extensive experience over forty years working as a policy advocate on arms and disarmament issues in London, Brussels and Washington DC. His experience included advocacy at NATO, the EU and UN, as well as on Capitol Hill. Martin’s policy research and analysis of arms negotiation which began with the INF Treaty in the 1980s, continued with the negotiation of treaties such as the Conventional Forces in Europe Treaty and the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. ​ Martin’s work as an analyst of conflict and crises began with the collapse of the former Yugoslavia in the early 1990s. An understanding of how weapons used, how they were obtained and how their supply could be stopped to improve the welfare of civilians has been an important part of his work ever since. For Oxfam this has meant policy support for teams working on crises in Syria, Ethiopia, Mali, Libya, South Sudan, the Central African Republic and elsewhere.