Press releases

Oxfam is using its in-country aid stocks to provide essential household items and portable toilets to families hit by the Sri Lankan landslides and flood. A team of Oxfam aid workers is assessing the scale of the crisis and how best the agency can provide further help. Initial plans for Oxfam's response are estimated to be in the region of $350,000. 

El Niño is a crisis of global proportions, seriously affecting 60 million people around the world, yet it is not getting international attention and there remains a huge funding gap of nearly $1.8bn. The appointment of Mary Robinson and Macharia Kamau as Special Envoys for El Niño by the UN is an encouraging step.

With 2016 on track to be the hottest year ever and a super-charged El Niño putting over 60 million lives at the mercy of unpredictable climate shocks, it’s more urgent than ever to help communities adapt to climate change, said Oxfam at the start of the United Nation’s climate conference in Bonn, Germany.

The package of measures announced by governments attending the anti-corruption summit in London today will not stop tax cheats, said Oxfam. Politicians from over 40 countries, along with World Bank and IMF representatives, attended the conference.

EU foreign ministers assessing the six months since November’s Valletta Summit on migration from Africa must shift their focus to the urgent needs of people fleeing from violence and human rights abuses, said Oxfam and ICMC.

Oxfam International Executive Director, Winnie Byanyima, will use the WEF Africa meeting in Kigali, Rwanda this week to call for a radical overhaul in the way African countries manage the income from natural resources, an end to tax havens and the use of progressive taxation to fight inequality.

The Dutch Development Finance Company (FMO) and Finland’s Finnfund, two of the development banks backing the Agua Zarca hydroelectric project in Honduras, yesterday announced they would seek an exit to their involvement in the project. Today’s announcements are important in bringing us one step closer to finally shutting down the tainted Agua Zarca project.

The publication of the Panama Papers database is a significant blow against tax dodgers but the public should not have to rely on whistleblowers to expose tax cheats, said Oxfam today.  Oxfam is calling on politicians gathering in London for the Anti-Corruption Summit on 12 May to end the secrecy that enables companies and wealthy individuals to avoid paying their fair share of tax.

More than 300 leading economists from 30 countries have today written to world leaders warning that there is no economic justification for allowing tax havens to continue, and urging them to bring an end to offshore financial secrecy. The letter comes ahead of the UK Government’s summit on offshore corruption in London on Thursday, which politicians from 40 countries as well as World Bank and IMF representatives are expected to attend.

The riots in Moria closed facility in Lesbos on Tuesday expose how European Union policies are failing to deliver a fair and safe system for receiving people into Greece.