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Oxfam applauds the World Bank's new strategy to halve extreme poverty by 2020 and end it by 2030, but swift action is now needed to bring the strategy to life.

“The growing split among G7 leaders is bad news for millions of women and men around the world struggling for a better life," said Oxfam International executive director, Winnie Byanyima.

As the Annual Meetings of the World Bank kick off in Washington this week, Oxfam welcomed the focus on inequality, but urges top officials at the institution to align their words with their actions if they are serious about combating inequality and poverty. 

Rising inequality poses a dire threat to continued prosperity in Asia, where an estimated 500 million people remain trapped in extreme poverty, most of them women and girls.

“At the start of the week, we urged the Bank to show it’s serious about ‘“ending poverty and boosting shared prosperity”’ in discussions on additional funding. We’re pleased to see them recommit to this, but it’s now up to the Bank’s programming to put its money where its mouth is," said Nadia Daar, head of Oxfam International's Washington office. 

The human and economic cost of COVID-19 has been staggering, in terms of lives lost, human suffering, and economic damage. As we mark two years since the official pandemic was declared, we still have a chance to gain the upper hand on the virus, but only if everyone, everywhere has access to vaccines and treatments.

In “Powering the Transition,” Oxfam details how together, the World Bank, the Asian Development Bank, and the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank are investing almost $5 billion in fossil fuels in the 10 Asian countries that belong to the Climate Vulnerable Forum.

The International Monetary Fund’s advice to countries promotes policies that fail to reduce inequality and may even increase it, according to Oxfam research. This advice clashes with what their own research shows countries should do to reduce inequality.

Rich countries at the OECD ministerial meeting on development cooperation have failed to collectively commit to a massive scale-up in aid budgets to help developing countries face the devastating and widescale impact of COVID-19. 

Every country in the world is experiencing an economic shock as a result of the Coronavirus crisis, and all governments must act now to protect their people from destitution. Unless dramatic action is taken to shore up the economies of developing countries, the crisis could push as many as half a billion people into poverty.