Press releases

The carbon footprints of the richest 1 per cent of people on Earth is set to be 30 times greater than the level compatible with the 1.5°C goal of the Paris Agreement in 2030, according to new research out today. It comes as delegates grapple with how to keep this goal alive at the COP26 meeting in Glasgow.

Responding to reports that around 20 countries have committed to stop financing overseas fossil fuel projects by the end of 2022, Oxfam's climate policy lead Nafkote Dabi said: "This is an encouraging move that will divert much-needed resources to clean energy and help countries to develop in a low carbon way. Energy is vital to economic and social development, burning fossil fuels is not. This is the only way we can meet the collective goal of limiting global heating to 1.5°C."

In response to the announcement that the World Health Organisation (WHO) has granted emergency use license for the COVID-19 vaccine, Covaxin, developed by Bharat Biotech in India, People’s Vaccine Alliance spokesperson and Oxfam Health Policy Manager, Anna Marriott, said: "Another approved vaccine to fight COVID-19 is fantastic news. We strongly encourage Bharat Biotech to show pandemic leadership and do the right thing for humanity by agreeing to share the vaccine technology and rights with the WHO's COVID Technology Access Pool, so that more manufacturers around the world can produce them.

One year since conflict broke out in the Tigray region of Ethiopia, almost seven million people in Tigray and in neighboring Amhara and Afar are suffering from the toll of violence, human rights abuses, hunger, locusts, and the COVID-19 pandemic.

At the end of the G20 Summit in Rome, Italy, Oxfam panned the lack of bold and effective action from the world leaders at such an important moment in the global response to the COVID-19 pandemic. 

Ahead of the G20 Summit in Rome, Italy, Oxfam calls on G20 leaders to take urgent action to dramatically scale up manufacturing and access to COVID-19 vaccines around the world, promote a fair economic recovery, fight hunger, lower dangerous greenhouse gas emissions, and help the poorest countries adapt to the climate change already happening.

In response to Merck’s announcement that it has granted a license for its promising COVID-19 pill to the Medicines Patent Pool, Robbie Silverman, Oxfam America’s Senior Manager for Private Sector Engagement, made the following statement:

“Merck’s move to license molnupiravir is welcome as it could indeed mean increased access to its promising COVID-19 drug in the poorest countries in the world.

Responding to an International Labour Organisation’s report, ILO Monitor: COVID-19 and the world of work, campaigners have called global vaccine inequality “a collective act of social and economic self-harm”.

Vaccine equity campaigners have called news that Covid-19 vaccine manufacturer BioNTech will start building a vaccine production facility in Rwanda next year “far too little, far too late”. 

The People’s Vaccine Alliance has also said that Moderna’s new commitment to produce 110 million doses for the African Union as “barely worth the paper it is written on” after the company failed to deliver promised vaccines to COVAX, calling on the US government to step in and mandate the company to commit to technology transfer.

Rich nations today published a Climate Finance Delivery Plan claiming that it will take until 2023 to meet their commitment to mobilize $100 billion each year to support poorer nations to confront the climate crisis. In response, Jan Kowalzig, Senior Climate Policy Adviser at Oxfam said: “This plan claims that rich nations will meet their target three years late, but conveniently fails to mention the money that poorer countries are owed for every year they fell short."