COVID-19

Multilateral efforts are failing to adequately respond to critical global challenges, including the climate crisis and persistent poverty and inequality. While some have blamed the deadlock solely on rising geopolitical tensions between powerful countries, such a focus is incomplete. Rather, a key reason for failures of international cooperation is extreme economic inequality. Today, the world’s richest 1% own more wealth than 95% of humanity.

In response to World Health Organization (WHO) member states not reaching an agreement on a pandemic accord in time for the World Health Assembly this week, Oxfam International’s Health Policy Lead, Anna Marriott, said: “Negotiators have been working on drawing up a global treaty meant to prevent a repeat of the extreme vaccine apartheid between Global North and South during the COVID-19 pandemic. But time and time again in these negotiations, rich countries have danced to the tune of big pharmaceutical corporations instead of healing the deep geopolitical chasms caused by their short-sighed vaccine nationalism."

Malawi, Mozambique, Zambia and Zimbabwe are facing an unprecedented surge of cholera cases, Oxfam warned today. The aid agency says the situation could become uncontrollable and difficult to manage due to a steady increase of COVID-19 cases and the onset of the rainy season, especially as the majority of vulnerable communities have no access to clean water and sanitation facilities - both of which are essential to prevent the spread of cholera. 
 

The world’s five richest men have more than doubled their fortunes from $405 billion to $869 billion since 2020 —at a rate of $14 million per hour— while nearly five billion people have been made poorer, reveals a new Oxfam report on inequality and global corporate power. If current trends continue, the world will have its first trillionaire within a decade but poverty won’t be eradicated for another 229 years.

Responding to news that the EU has discarded at least 215 million doses of COVID-19 vaccine, Piotr Kolczyński, EU Health Policy Advisor at the People’s Vaccine Alliance and Oxfam, said: “This is further proof that the EU wasted millions of its COVID-19 vaccines, hoarded early in the pandemic, as it locked poorer countries out of access.

The COVID-19 pandemic and cost-of-living crisis were a windfall for the ultra-wealthy in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), who saw their wealth almost double between 2019 and 2022, reveals an Oxfam report published today ahead of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF) Annual Meetings in Marrakech. 

Over 60 activists, social movements, and women food producers that have gathered in Maputo,
Mozambique for Women Food Convening 2023 conference say that the current global food
system is exploitative, broken, unjust, marginalises women and exacerbates gender inequalities
and hunger particularly in low-income countries.

Rich and poor countries alike have exacerbated an explosion of economic inequality since the outbreak of the pandemic from 2020, reveals new research by Oxfam and Development Finance International (DFI). 

Despite millions of people being pushed into hunger and poverty, 143 countries — including 94 developing nations — are implementing policy measures that undermine governments’ capacity to provide healthcare, education and social protection. 
 

As UNGA77 kicks off, Oxfam experts are engaging with a delegation in New York along with remote participation. Oxfam experts will be focused on issues including Hunger and the Global Food System, Climate Justice, the crisis in Yemen, Ukraine, COVID-19 recovery, Inequality, Education, and more.