Press releases

The G7 must pursue windfall taxes on excess corporate profits including from those making huge returns from surging food and energy prices. The revenues can be used to fund an end to global hunger and to tackle climate change, says Oxfam.

“Oxfam is dismayed at this third consecutive year of rising hunger. We’re back to where we were a decade ago. As ever, hunger is caused by human actions that drive poverty and inequality, conflict and war, poor governance, wastage, and worsening climate change," said Oxfam International’s executive director Winnie Byanyima in response..

Rice, soy beans, corn, wheat and palm oil together lead to more greenhouse gas emissions than any country’s individual footprint, apart from China and the United States, according to new Oxfam research into the food industry and climate change.

Water-related disasters forced people to flee from their homes nearly eight million separate times in 10 of the world’s worst-hit countries last year, with many having to move multiple times – a 120% increase compared to a decade ago, said Oxfam today. 

Oxfam warns that over six million people from farming families in Zambia are facing acute food shortages and malnutrition until next growing season, which is twelve months away, due to a severe drought, exacerbated by climate change and El Nino, which has caused massive crop failures for half of the nation’s “planted area”. 

The richest 1 percent of the world’s population produced as much carbon pollution in 2019 than the five billion people who made up the poorest two-thirds of humanity, reveals a new Oxfam report today. It comes ahead of the UN climate summit in Dubai, amid growing fears that the 1.5°C target for curtailing rising temperatures appears increasingly unachievable.

Oxfam has joined 14 NGOs to push the European Commission to keep to its commitment to reform the role of company directors to make big companies more accountable for human rights and environmental abuses in their supply chains, and more sustainable – a key move in light of current challenges such as the climate crisis and a growing gap between the rich and the poor. 

The “Global Report on Food Crises”, released today by the Food Security Information Network, says that more than 113 million people across 53 countries experienced acute hunger and required urgent food, nutrition and livelihoods assistance in 2018. This is a human-made crisis caused by conflict, climate change, and a broken global food system, says Oxfam France’s Executive Director Cécile Duflot.

A group of economists, activists, politicians and millionaires from seven countries across Europe today registered a ‘European Citizens’ Initiative’ (ECI) calling on the European Union (EU) to adopt a permanent annual wealth tax on Europe’s biggest fortunes to raise revenue to reduce poverty and inequality both at home and in poorer countries, and to tackle the climate crisis.

One person is likely to die of hunger every 36 seconds between now and the end of the year in drought-stricken East Africa as the worst hit areas hurtle towards famine, Oxfam warned today.