inequality

COVID-19 has pushed millions into poverty in East Africa, and worsened inequality. However, building back during and after the pandemic offers East African governments a once-in-a-generation opportunity to do what their citizens want: make their economic systems fairer by increasing taxes on wealthy and large corporations, boost public spending, and improving workers’ rights.

The world’s ten richest men more than doubled their fortunes from $700 billion to $1.5 trillion —at a rate of $15,000 per second or $1.3 billion a day— during the first two years of a pandemic that has seen the incomes of 99 percent of humanity fall and over 160 million more people forced into poverty. 

Why is it taken for granted that a person is “successful” because they are a self-made millionaire? Who decides what is a success, and what is a failure? These questions help us understand what dominant narratives are, how they are shaped, and how they affect our lives. It’s time for them to be contested. With the right tools, change movements can start to tell a new story.

Dominant narratives promoting economic growth at the expense of state institutions and basic social services have long underpinned a neoliberal model of spiralling debt and austerity in the MENA region. This exacerbates political capture and inequality and takes shape in an environment of media concentration and shrinking civic space.

The carbon footprints of the richest 1 per cent of people on Earth is set to be 30 times greater than the level compatible with the 1.5°C goal of the Paris Agreement in 2030, according to new research out today. It comes as delegates grapple with how to keep this goal alive at the COP26 meeting in Glasgow.

At the end of the G20 Summit in Rome, Italy, Oxfam panned the lack of bold and effective action from the world leaders at such an important moment in the global response to the COVID-19 pandemic. 

Ahead of the G20 Summit in Rome, Italy, Oxfam calls on G20 leaders to take urgent action to dramatically scale up manufacturing and access to COVID-19 vaccines around the world, promote a fair economic recovery, fight hunger, lower dangerous greenhouse gas emissions, and help the poorest countries adapt to the climate change already happening.

West African governments are planning to “slash and burn” their way out of COVID-19 induced economic loss, reveals new analysis from Oxfam and Development Finance International (DFI) today. The organizations are calling for an urgent change of course as West African governments are preparing their annual budgets and participating in the Annual Meetings of the World Bank and IMF, which are crucial discussions to focus the recovery on fighting inequality and poverty.

A one-off 99 percent levy on billionaires’ wealth gains during the pandemic could pay for everyone on Earth to be vaccinated against COVID-19 and provide a $20,000 cash grant to all unemployed workers, according to new analysis released today by Oxfam, the Fight Inequality Alliance, the Institute for Policy Studies and the Patriotic Millionaires.

In response to Jeff Bezos’ space flight scheduled for Tuesday, Deepak Xavier, Oxfam International's Global Head of Inequality Campaign, said: "We’ve now reached stratospheric inequality. Billionaires burning into space, away from a world of pandemic, climate change and starvation. 11 people are likely now dying of hunger each minute while Bezos prepares for an 11-minute personal space flight. This is human folly, not human achievement."