Press releases

400,000 people in Gaza do not have access to regular water supply after 11 days of bombardment devastated electricity and water services and severely impacted the three main desalination plants in Gaza city , Oxfam warned today.

Oxfam is deeply concerned that during the long-term vacancy in the post, all political negotiations – which President Kohler had relaunched and revitalized after six years of stagnation – have completely stalled, and the 29-year ceasefire between the Polisario Front and Morocco has collapsed.

Anna Marriott, Oxfam Health Policy Manager and Policy co-lead for the People’s Vaccine Alliance said: "The 2021 Global Health Summit ended today in danger of being judged an historical failure of global solidarity to tackle a Covid-19 pandemic that is still, around the world, in its first expanding phase and yet to peak."

Shane Stevenson, Oxfam Country Director for the Occupied Palestinian Territory and Israel said:   

“Finally, for the first of 12 consecutive nights, two million Palestinians in Gaza, including hundreds of thousands of traumatized children, can rest rather than lie awake in fear as bombs fly over their homes.  And civilians across Israel will be spared the threat of rocket attacks.  

In response to the completion of the 2021 Comprehensive Surveillance Review today by the Executive Board of the International Monetary Fund, Nabil Abdo, Oxfam’s Senior Policy Advisor on International Financial Institutions, said: “This Review misses a crucial opportunity to require staff to advise countries on policies to tackle inequality or systematically assess the impacts on inequality of its own recommendations."

Oxfam is concerned about the treatment of the 8,000 migrants who crossed from Morocco into the Spanish enclave, Ceuta last Tuesday, 2,000 of which were thought to be children.  

At least nine people have become new billionaires since the beginning of the COVID pandemic, thanks to the excessive profits pharmaceutical corporations with monopolies on COVID vaccines are making, The People’s Vaccine Alliance revealed today ahead of a G20 leaders Global Health Summit.

Oxfam said today that it cannot reach around 450,000 or more people in Gaza because of fighting and aerial bombardment. Oxfam staff are trying to resume their humanitarian and livelihood programmes with its network of partners but the destruction and indiscriminate threat to life make any emergency aid, at the moment, impossible to mount. The international agency should be providing food, clean water, sanitation and child protection support but the bombing is making it too dangerous for anyone to leave their homes. 

Today, the European Commission published their “Communication on business taxation for the 21st century”. The plan takes steps to ensure fair and effective taxation, to simplify tax rules for companies and to establish a longer-term business taxation framework.

Civilians are once again paying the price for the failures of political leaders to negotiate a just and lasting peace for Palestinians and Israelis. Oxfam calls for an immediate end to all violence.