Press releases

The US and some European countries are seeking to water down historic global tax reforms warned Oxfam today, ahead of a meeting of G20 Finance Ministers and central bank governments in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia this weekend. G20 Ministers are expected to give the green light to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development’s (OECD) outline proposals for tax reform at the meeting on 22 and 23 February.

Following the release of the Integrated Food Security Classification (IPC) report for South Sudan today, Elysia Buchanan, Oxfam South Sudan’s Campaign Manager said: “Despite some improvement, the scale of hunger in South Sudan is still immense with an estimated six million people facing severe hunger. The recent floods, which affected nearly a million people, are having a devastating impact on vulnerable communities already worn out by years of conflict and now the arrival of swarms of locusts could make things worse for many others.

Oxfam International Chair of the Board of Supervisors, Dr Henrietta Campbell, has announced that for personal reasons she is stepping down effective 31 March.

In response to the latest figures shared in OCHA's Burkina Faso Humanitarian Response Plan, Oxfam warns of the alarming deterioration of the humanitarian crisis and calls upon the international community to immediately mobilize funding to meet the urgently needed humanitarian support.  More than 1.9 million people in Burkina Faso are in dire need of water, sanitation and hygiene support. 

Two Oxfam aid workers were today killed in an attack at 2 pm local time in Dar’a governorate in southern Syria, between Nawa and Al-Yadudah.

Wissam Hazim, Southern Hub Staff Safety Officer, and Adel Al-Halabi, a driver, were both killed when their vehicle was attacked by a so-far unidentified armed group.  An Oxfam volunteer was also injured.

In reaction to the recent strikes on Jawf governorate, northern Yemen, which killed 31 and injured 12 civilians on 15 February, Oxfam and ten international aid organizations expressed their shock and deep condemnation of these military escalations.

Panama, the Cayman Islands and the Seychelles have rightly been added to the EU tax haven blacklist. However, the list still proves inadequate, said Oxfam today.

While we are encouraged by the Chair statements and the Summit deliberations, Oxfam believes that African leaders have let African women down, in their effort to end the conflict and find a peaceful resolution to years of brutality and violence that ripped the continent.

Locust infestations have just hit two new districts in northern Uganda as they continue to plague Kenya, Ethiopia and Somalia, and threaten Sudan and South Sudan. There are also reports of the swarms now in Tanzania. Oxfam is ramping up response.

Oxfam International’s Board of Supervisors formally approved Kadin Emegini Degerlendirme Vakfi (KEDV) as its 20th and newest affiliate member on Dec 4. KEDV has been an Oxfam observer member since November 2017.

In response to the proposals from the Greek government to install floating barriers in the sea to deter migrants and refugees, Evelien van Roemburg, Oxfam's Europe Migration Campaign manager, said:

"This is an extremely worrying development that would be a violation of the basic human right for people to seek protection and put even more lives at risk.

"People would be forced to make more dangerous crossings through deep and treacherous waters.


 

EU development aid is increasingly being spent to close borders, stifle migration and push for returns of migrants to Africa, reveals new research published by Oxfam.

Oxfam's new research - Our Search for Peace: Women in South Sudan’s National Peace Processes” - highlights the under-recognized but crucial role South Sudanese women played in the country's most recent national-level peace processes. With less than a month until the country forms a transitional government, South Sudanese women are demanding more leadership roles at all levels of decision making.

The Trump administration’s plan for resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict disregards international law and diminishes prospects for a just and lasting peace, said the Norwegian Refugee Council and Oxfam today. 

Oxfam is preparing for a potential response as swarms of locusts sweep across Ethiopia, Kenya, and Somalia and are likely to grow 500 times bigger by June to neighboring Uganda and South Sudan. The plagues are hitting the East African region where food insecurity has already reached record levels.

In response to the release of the Trump administration’s Israeli-Palestinian “Peace Plan,” Noah Gottschalk, Oxfam America’s Humanitarian Policy Lead said, “The Trump administration’s proposal isn’t a peace deal - it’s a roadmap to permanent occupation. By legitimizing ongoing rights violations and entrenching existing political divisions, it further dims the prospects for peace. It also undermines any remaining hopes for the United States to serve as a credible broker between Israelis and Palestinians in the future. Oxfam calls on Members of Congress and Presidential candidates to swiftly and adamantly reject this proposal.

Responding to President Trump’s speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos today, Amitabh Behar, Oxfam's representative at the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting in Davos, said: “Don't be fooled by President Trump's glowing self-review.  This was a speech for the billionaires that the President's agenda has propped up at the expense of millions of ordinary Americans."

The world’s 2,153 billionaires have more wealth than the 4.6 billion people who make up 60 percent of the planet’s population, reveals a new report from Oxfam today ahead of the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos, Switzerland.

As the G5 leaders meet at the Sahel Summit in France on 13 January 2020 to discuss their military response to the Sahel conflict, Oxfam and partners warn of insufficient humanitarian aid and protection of civilians.

Oxfam’s humanitarian work in Iraq is restricted due to heightened security concerns, road checkpoints and travel difficulties, following Iranian missile attacks on US military bases in Iraq overnight in retaliation for the US killing of the Iranian General Suleimani.