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EU Development Ministers have just recommited to an old promise made by donors back in 1970s, failing to provide any guarantees to poor countries that Europe is serious about getting back on track to meet the Millennium Development Goals, warns Oxfam.

The richest 1 percent grabbed nearly two-thirds of all new wealth worth $42 trillion created since 2020, almost twice as much money as the bottom 99 percent of the world’s population, reveals a new Oxfam report today. During the past decade, the richest 1 percent had captured around half of all new wealth. 

What is the IMF doing in practice to tackle inequality? Its main initiative has been a series of pilots that integrate inequality analysis into its economic surveillance of countries. This paper outlines Oxfam’s evaluation of these pilots and finds that they are not promoting policies that reduce inequality.

Following Oxfam’s January report revealing that just 85 people owned the same wealth as the bottom half the world’s population, Forbes has updated its “billionaires' list”, showing that extreme inequality has worsened– just 67 people at the top now own half the wealth.

The coronavirus pandemic has swept across a world unprepared to fight it. Only one in six countries assessed for the CRI Index 2020 were spending enough on health, and in more than 100 countries at least one in three workers had no labour protection such as sick pay.

As the UN General Assembly kicks off again this year, Oxfam’s experts and partners are available to speak to their work focused on the People’s Vaccine for COVID-19, the climate crisis - including climate finance, and a number of pressing humanitarian crises. 

This week, world leaders came together on the sidelines of the 2023 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) Summit to urge for more global attention to addressing inequality. In a joint statement, they highlighted the urgency to save the inequality global goal (SDG10) and dramatically accelerate efforts to reduce inequality by adopting bolder targets and having more accurate tracking mechanisms.

In response to the decision by the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) in the Grand Chamber’s first-ever climate-related cases (Verein KlimaSeniorinnen Schweiz and Others v. Switzerland, Duarte Agostinho and Others v. Portugal and Others, and Carême v. France), Evelien van Roemburg, Head of Oxfam’s European Union office said: “European judges have ruled that a government’s failure to do enough to reduce national greenhouse gas emissions violates its population’s human rights. This is a positive step and allows people to require their governments to put in place effective climate regulations and carbon budgets. But the judges did not challenge Switzerland’s decision to give itself almost three more decades to reach net zero emissions, even though people around the world are being harmed now by the climate crisis.”    

New Oxfam research shows that four pharmaceutical corporations – Abbott, Johnson & Johnson, Merck & Co (MSD), and Pfizer – systematically hide their profits in overseas tax havens. This activity could deprive developing countries of more than $100 million every year – money that is urgently needed to meet the health needs of people in these countries.

In this report, Oxfam identifies three key issues that need to be tackled for Unilever to move to the next level of social impact and responsible sourcing and for the good intentions of their policies to translate into real impact for the lives of workers.