Press releases

Oxfam, along with partner organizations, will engage by hosting one official side event and 12 parallel events under the NGO CSW Forum. This year the CSW priority theme addresses challenges to women’s rights and equity related to education in the digital age and the review theme looks at the empowerment of rural women and girls. 

A fire that swept through Rohingya refugee camps of Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh, on Sunday has left 12000 people homeless and in urgent need of shelter, water, sanitation, and medical services. Oxfam is mounting a response to provide immediate food and shelter to impacted people.  

In reaction to the Virtual High-Level Pledging Event on the Humanitarian Crisis in Yemen, which took place today, where international donors pledged only around $1.2 billion out of the total $4.3 billion UN's appeal for the country, Ferran Puig, Oxfam’s Country Director in Yemen, said: “The money pledged today is nowhere near enough. The world must not look away while Yemen faces a humanitarian crisis - the consequence of doing so will be tragic."

In response to President Biden’s nomination of former MasterCard and Nestlé executive, Ajay Banga, to the position of World Bank president, Christian Donaldson, Oxfam International’s senior policy advisor on international financial institutions, made the following statement: “While Mr. Banga may have extensive experience on Wall Street, we had hoped that President Biden would use this opportunity to ditch the old gentlemen’s agreement of World Bank and IMF appointments in favor of a more transparent and merit-based global process."

Friends of the Earth (Les Amis de la Terre) France, Notre Affaire à Tous and Oxfam France, who had given BNP Paribas formal notice to comply with its due diligence obligations on 26 October, sued BNP Paribas over its massive support to fossil fuels and for its substantial contribution to climate change. BNP Paribas is Europe’s largest and fifth worldwide funder of fossil fuel expansion: the three organizations urge the bank to immediately stop financing this expansion and to adopt an oil and gas exit plan. This is the world's first climate lawsuit against a commercial bank.

Despite promises, nearly three-quarters of African governments reduced their agricultural budgets while paying almost double that on arms.

Hundreds of thousands of people, among those who lost their homes in the massive earthquakes that hit Türkiye and Syria ten days ago, are now crammed into temporary shelters with insufficient clean water or toilets. 

In response to the announcement today that World Bank President David Malpass will step down from his position by the end of June, Nadia Daar, Head of Oxfam International’s Washington DC Office, said: “If shareholders really want to ‘evolve’ the World Bank, then here is their golden opportunity. Malpass’ successor must be hired based on an open, merit-based and transparent selection process rather than the 80-year-old gentleman's agreement which sees the job automatically go to someone from the US. This is critical for the credibility and future strength of multilateralism."

Today, European finance ministers updated the EU tax haven list. They added four countries to the blacklist (British Virgin Islands, Costa Rica, the Marshall Islands and the Russian Federation), three to the greylist (Albania, Aruba and Curacao) and they removed four countries from the greylist (Barbados, Jamaica, North Macedonia and Uruguay).

Oxfam, together with our partners in Turkiye (Turkey) and Syria, is working to reach nearly 2 million people – 10 percent of the population affected by the quake – with aid and support so that they can rebuild their lives.