Press releases

In response to the announcement today from the International Federation of Pharmaceutical Manufacturers & Associations (IFPMA), which forecasts that 12 billion doses of COVID vaccines could be produced this year, Max Lawson, Chair of the People’s Vaccine Alliance and head of Inequality Policy at Oxfam, said: “While the world is finally producing billons of doses of COVID-19 vaccines there is no guarantee that developing nations will get them. Of the vaccines produced to date, only 0.5 per cent have gone to the poorest countries."
 

European home affairs ministers will meet today to discuss the situation in Afghanistan. Ahead of this meeting, Erin McKay, European Migration Campaign Manager, said: “European governments are washing their hands of their international obligation to offer refuge to those seeking safety and pushing it on to other countries. 

In response to the meeting of EU Foreign Affairs Ministers on 17 August on the deteriorating situation in Afghanistan and the exchange on the topic in the meeting of EU Home Affairs on 18 August, Oxfam calls on European governments to swiftly adopt urgent measures to protect all Afghans in need of assistance. 

A one-off 99 percent levy on billionaires’ wealth gains during the pandemic could pay for everyone on Earth to be vaccinated against COVID-19 and provide a $20,000 cash grant to all unemployed workers, according to new analysis released today by Oxfam, the Fight Inequality Alliance, the Institute for Policy Studies and the Patriotic Millionaires.

Responding to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s Working Group I contribution to the Sixth Assessment Report, Oxfam Climate Policy Lead Nafkote Dabi said: “Amid a world in parts burning, in parts drowning and in parts starving, the IPCC today tables the most compelling wake-up call yet for global industry to switch from oil, gas and coal to renewables."

Using land alone to remove the world’s carbon emissions to achieve ‘net zero’ by 2050 would require at least 1.6 billion hectares of new forests, equivalent to five times the size of India or more than all the farmland on the planet, reveals a new Oxfam report today.

Responding to the IMF Board of Governors’ approval of a Special Drawing Rights (SDR) allocation of $650 billion, Nadia Daar, Head of Oxfam International’s Washington DC Office, said: “New SDRs will bring much-needed liquidity to struggling developing countries without adding to their unsustainable debt burdens. Now that this historic SDR issuance has been approved, governments must work transparently and together with civil society to ensure these resources are used to rescue collapsing health services and bolster social protection, and to deliver a fair and climate just recovery.
 

Days of heavy monsoon rain in south-eastern Bangladesh have caused severe flooding in and around the Cox’s Bazar refugee camps, leaving thousands in urgent need of food, water and sanitation, Oxfam warned today. 

The cost of vaccinating the world against COVID-19 could be at least five times cheaper if pharmaceutical companies weren’t profiteering from their monopolies on COVID-19 vaccines, campaigners from the People’s Vaccine Alliance said today.

Oxfam’s Emergency Food Security and Vulnerable Livelihoods Advisor, Emily Farr, in response to a new report on Tigray by the IPC Famine Review Committee: "The IPC report by independent food security experts today confirms our fears, that now 400,000 people are experiencing catastrophic hunger in Tigray, Ethiopia. The report’s projections for the future are even more grim, making predictions that there is a high risk of famine."