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Developing countries have been hit with an endless tide of inadequate gestures and broken promises from rich countries and pharmaceutical companies, who are failing to deliver billions of doses they promised while blocking the real solutions to vaccine inequality, according to a new report published today by the People’s Vaccine Alliance. 

Patients living in poverty in the Global South are being bankrupted by private healthcare corporations backed by multi-million-dollar investments from development finance institutions (DFIs) run by the UK, French, German and other rich country governments. DFIs like the World Bank’s International Finance Corporation (IFC) and the European Investment Bank (EIB) invest public funds via the private sector to help foster economic development in the Global South and tackle poverty. However, Oxfam published two investigations on DFI funding into private hospital chains and other for-profit healthcare corporations operating in low- and middle-income countries and found cases of them.   

More than 52 million people in 18 countries across southern, eastern and central Africa are facing up to crisis levels of hunger as a result of weather extremes, compounded by poverty and conflict.  

Oxfam’s Gregory Adams said: “Secretary Clinton has thrown down the gauntlet about the need for real changes to improve foreign assistance.

Oxfam reports every six months against its Safeguarding and Culture Improvement Plan. The latest report covering the period April to Sept 2020 is published today.

In response to the announcement today that World Bank President David Malpass will step down from his position by the end of June, Nadia Daar, Head of Oxfam International’s Washington DC Office, said: “If shareholders really want to ‘evolve’ the World Bank, then here is their golden opportunity. Malpass’ successor must be hired based on an open, merit-based and transparent selection process rather than the 80-year-old gentleman's agreement which sees the job automatically go to someone from the US. This is critical for the credibility and future strength of multilateralism."

Keeping global warming to below 1.5 degrees above pre-industrial levels - as stipulated in the Paris Agreement - is essential if we are to avoid the worst impacts of the climate and ecological crisis. With people in the lowest-income countries already suffering disproportionately from the climate crisis, Oxfam recognises that, beyond advocating for action by world leaders, we have an urgent ethical responsibility to mitigate our own impact on the environment and ultimately on the very communities that we work with and serve. 

“Oxfam is deeply alarmed by the @theIPCinfo classification of famine in five areas of #Sudan. This is one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises that remains tragically overlooked. The international community and conflict parties must act now to end the suffering and prevent further loss of life.”

Across the globe, unpaid care and domestic work forms the bedrock of our communities and economies. Without it, our economies would collapse.

A major diplomatic negotiation aiming to regulate the trade in weapons and ammunition is at risk of failing due to member states’ insistence to give every state the right to veto a future treaty, according to the Control Arms coalition.