Press releases

“In the Inspection Panel's findings, the Bank is still repeatedly failing to take the most basic steps needed to avoid harm. Steps like counting how many people are affected, or making information available in local languages are still neglected," said Kate Geary, Oxfam's land rights expert.

Following the abuses revealed in the Panama Papers, world leaders attending the Spring Meetings of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund this week must seize the moment to take decisive action and help end the era of tax havens, said Oxfam today.

The European Commission has missed yet another chance to effectively end tax havens. Today’s tax transparency proposal is not sufficiently ambitious and too limited in its scope for that task.

Fifty one of the 68 companies that were lent money by the World Bank’s private lending arm in 2015 to finance investments in sub-Saharan Africa use tax havens, Oxfam revealed today.

New proposals from the European Commission on migration are a first step toward creating safe and legal routes for people on the move, says Oxfam.

Christine Lagarde, the International Monetary Fund’s managing director, and Jim Yong Kim, president of the World Bank, spoke Tuesday about their institutions’ priorities ahead of next week’s spring meetings in Washington. 

The return of people from Greece to Turkey takes Europe yet another step closer to a policy of deterrence and indifference, Oxfam says in reaction to deportations starting today.

“The Panama Papers give us a disturbing look into the murky world of tax dodging, a problem that governments and international institutions refuse to tackle head-on. The true scandal is that many of the cases uncovered are not always illegal, but instead, fully legal practices that ruthless abuse a weak and inadequate tax system."

Oxfam, Save the Children and the Norwegian Refugee Council criticized the deeply disappointing outcome of today’s international pledging conference for resettlement of refugees fleeing the ongoing crisis in Syria. The meeting in Geneva offered to resettle only a tiny fraction of the most vulnerable people with a less ambitious timeline. Governments have shown a shocking lack of political and moral leadership, said the agencies.

Oxfam today expressed deep concern about recent events that could exacerbate Western Sahara tensions and put the region on the brink of armed conflict. These developments include the expulsion from Western Sahara of 73 civilian peacekeepers. Parties must work to resolve 40-year-old conflict.