poverty

Over a quarter of a billion more people could crash into extreme levels of poverty in 2022 because of COVID-19, rising global inequality and the shock of food price rises supercharged by the war in Ukraine, reveals a new Oxfam brief today. 

The COVID-19 death toll has been four times higher in lower-income countries than in rich ones, according to a new report published today by Oxfam on behalf of the People’s Vaccine Alliance as the world marks two years since the World Health Organization declared the pandemic. 

The Covid-19 pandemic, compounded by locust infestations and climate crises, has brought East Africa’s worst economic crisis in decades. Yet, instead of taxing the wealthy, governments are planning to slash their public spending, which will worsen the crisis and deepen poverty and inequality in the region. But it is not too late to change direction.

Widening inequalities are tearing our world apart. This is not by chance, but choice: “economic violence” is perpetrated when structural policy choices are made for the richest and most powerful people. But we can radically redesign our economies to be centered on equality, in which nobody lives in poverty, nor with unimaginable billionaire wealth—in which inequality no longer kills.

Given the tremendous financing needs, Oxfam supports a strong IDA20 replenishment. We are calling for a robust policy package that is appropriately ambitious for the next three years, aimed at propelling IDA countries forward towards a just economy after COVID-19 that is more equal and inclusive.

The World Bank’s report shows clearly that billions of people were more vulnerable to the economic impacts of COVID-19 because of decades of economic policies which have kept them living one paycheck away from poverty, while the richest in society accumulate ever more wealth.

Thirty-two of the world’s largest companies stand to see their profits jump by $109 billion more in 2020 as the Covid-19 pandemic lays bare an economic model that delivers profits for the wealthiest on the back of the poorest, according to a new Oxfam report today.

Hospitals and Palestinians in Gaza, one of the most densely populated places on the planet, are bracing for the Coronavirus pandemic with only three to four hours of electricity per day, as fuel entry restriction by Israel, has forced Gaza’s single electricity plant to shut down and compounded the risk of infection for two million Palestinians, Oxfam warned today. 

The 21 billionaires in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), all of them men, saw their wealth increase by nearly $10 billion since the start of the COVID-19 crisis, almost double the estimated amount required to rebuild Lebanon's shattered capital, while 45 million more people in the region could be pushed to poverty as a result of the pandemic, a new Oxfam report revealed today.

The fortunes of Latin America’s 73 billionaires surged by $48.2 billion since the beginning of the pandemic even as the region buckles as one of the worst-hit regions in the world, said Oxfam today.