Press releases

One year after the battle for Yemen’s resource rich Marib governorate escalated, the humanitarian situation has worsened as shifting frontlines, airstrikes and landmines displace nearly 100,000 people, many of whom have already fled multiple times.

One in five people (282m) is now under-nourished and 93 million in 36 African countries are suffering extreme levels of hunger. Women and children are hit hardest. In Sub-Saharan Africa, one in three children under five is stunted by chronic undernutrition while two out of five women of childbearing age is anemic because of poor diets.

Oxfam together with nearly 50 NGOs from the Somalia NGO Consortium, warns of a deepening humanitarian crisis in Somalia and calls upon donors to urgently fund Somalia's drought crisis response.

Oxfam today called on the UN Security Council to condemn the recent attacks in Yemen and inject new urgency into peace talks to end the seven-year conflict. The call follows airstrikes that have killed and injured hundreds of civilians in the last week and led to the suspension of humanitarian aid in parts of the country. At the same time, people are struggling with spiraling prices for food, fuel, and basic essentials in what was already one of the world’s largest humanitarian crises.  

In reaction to the EU and US announcement of new sanctions against Mali, Oxfam and 12 other NGOs called for the international community to protect the people of Mali.

A group of over 100 millionaires and billionaires from nine countries published today an open letter to government and business leaders, calling for permanent annual wealth taxes on the very richest to help reduce extreme inequality and raise revenue for sustained, long-term increases in public services like healthcare. 

Following recent airstrikes in Yemen, Muhsin Sidiqquey Oxfam's country director in Yemen said: “The increase in fighting in Yemen is having a deadly impact and once again it is civilians that are paying the price. The people of Yemen have been caught in the crossfire of this violent conflict for nearly seven years.  They can’t wait any longer for peace - the international community must urgently negotiate an immediate cessation in hostilities and a lasting end to the conflict.”

The world’s ten richest men more than doubled their fortunes from $700 billion to $1.5 trillion —at a rate of $15,000 per second or $1.3 billion a day— during the first two years of a pandemic that has seen the incomes of 99 percent of humanity fall and over 160 million more people forced into poverty. 

Following the recent eruption of Hunga-Tonga-Hunga-Ha'apai and the ensuing tsunami, Carlos Calderόn Oxfam Aotearoa Humanitarian Lead said: “We share the concern of our Tongan whanau here in Aotearoa, New Zealand, and our heart goes out to all those impacted by this event. We are monitoring the situation as closely as possible.”

The Philippines is struggling to recover from last month’s massive Typhoon Rai that caused losses worth 11.1 billion Php ($215m) to agricultural crops and farmland and another 17.5 billion Php ($330m) damages to homes, roads, electricity and water lines.