Policy Papers

Given the immense financing needs to achieve development goals —nearly $4 trillion annually— Oxfam supports a robust and generous IDA replenishment. But reaching a record dollar amount only makes a bigger IDA, when what is most needed is a better IDA. A better, more impactful IDA must minimize the cost of finance, but more importantly catalyze investments that reduce inequality. After all, funds like IDA remain so crucial in part because we have collectively failed to address extreme inequality within and between countries.

Rising inequality undermines actions on poverty, climate and economic transformation. It makes those efforts, including IDA investments, more costly and less effective. This year, donors and borrower governments have a critical responsibility to ensure the World Bank, through IDA21, facilitates investments that reduce inequality.

This paper includes concrete recommendations pertinent to IDA21’s new Focus Areas and Lenses: Inequality Reduction, Progressive Domestic Resource Mobilization (DRM), Gender Equality, Education, Health, Social Protection, Climate and Private Sector Window (PSW). These recommendations build on successes and lessons from past IDAs, strengthen alignment with the World Bank’s new Corporate Scorecard and push for concrete and ambitious commitments to catalyze investments and cooperation that reduces inequality. They also reflect discussions with various IDA Deputies and advisors, World Bank staff, Executive Director offices, civil society and policy experts.
 

We, the undersigned, are calling for a stop to funding from Development Finance Institutions to private for-profit healthcare providers.

Mounting evidence shows that this funding is going to expensive out-of-reach private hospitals and clinics in low- and middle-income countries that are widening healthcare inequalities, exacerbating poverty and gender-based discrimination and violating human rights. Far from advancing progress towards Universal Health Coverage as governments have committed, this form of development finance is undermining it. 
 

As the newly elected European Parliament holds its inaugural plenary session in July and a new College of Commissioners takes office before the end of the year, there is a pivotal opportunity to shape an EU that prioritizes the well-being of future generations and the planet. Oxfam recommends focusing on three key priority areas in the new mandate: 

• Championing a strong and coherent international development agenda 

• Promoting international (humanitarian) law, humanitarian action and civic space 

• Leading the charge against the climate crisis, hunger and inequalities

To date, Oxfam along with 14 partner organisations, has reached 262,424 people with cash, food, and essential basic items. This also included restoring water and sanitation and providing protection services to vulnerable groups. Oxfam has also led a global movement for a permanent ceasefire and to allow unfettered humanitarian aid into Gaza. We are grateful to our supporters and institutional donors for their contributions to this response.

Oxfam welcomes the work of the Global Sovereign Debt Roundtable (GSDR) to build consensus on a set of rules to expedite debt restructuring exercises. This note lays out Oxfam’s views on the GSDR’s agenda, in response to the latest GSDR’s progress report of October 2023. 

Two years on from the escalation of the war in Ukraine, Oxfam spoke with a number of people leading the work of local and national women-led organizations (WLOs), women’s rights organizations (WROs), LGBTQIA+ led organizations, and other local non-governmental organizations (NGOs) addressing the needs of women, girls and gender minorities in Poland and Ukraine. 

When a massive earthquake hit southern Türkiye and northern Syria in early February 2023, it affected people in Syria already suffering through more than a decade of war. One of them was Khadjia , a married mother of five children whose home was partly destroyed. 

As the war in Ukraine continues on, communities affected by the crisis are having to constantly adapt to new realities. In response, humanitarian action needs to be flexible, agile and responsive to people’s needs.

Since 2020, the richest five men in the world have doubled their fortunes. During the same period, almost five billion people globally have become poorer. Hardship and hunger are a daily reality for many people worldwide.

On Thursday, 1 June, Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) will vote on the EU’s new rules to make companies accountable for the damage they cause to people and the planet: the Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive (CSDDD). If the European Parliament fails to vote in favour of ambitious amendments, the final text risks being a far cry from what is needed.

Read Oxfam EU's media briefing which breaks down the rules and what MEPs need to do to make them stronger. 

This regional assessment presents the key findings and recommendations from Ukraine, Poland and Romania on the situation and particular challenges facing Roma internally displaced persons (IDPs) and refugees from the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Even before the invasion, Roma communities in Ukraine lived in dire conditions marked by high levels of poverty, segregation, sub-standard and overcrowded housing, and lack of access to essential services such as health and education.

On July 26, 2023, the National Council for the Safeguarding of the Fatherland (CNSP) announced that it had overthrown the current President Mohamed Bazoum and his government. The reaction of part of the international community resulted in a number of individual and collective sanctions.

Oxfam reached 952,428 people across Syria and Türkiye with food, water and sanitation facilities, hygiene and health promotion, and protection interventions in the first six months of its emergency response phase. Oxfam thanks all our supporters and institutional donors who made this possible.

Latin American societies live on a permanent state of economic, social and political polarisation due to the impact of a major inequality crisis in which wealth is highly concentrated, and democracy and natural resources are captured for the benefit of the few. This July, the European Union (EU), under a Spanish presidency that has pushed for a high-level summit between the two regions, has the opportunity to renew the political dialogue, the economic relations and the cooperation agenda so that they can help building new social pacts focused on equality, environmental protection and human rights.