Union Européenne

A group of powerful women from the front-line in the fight against poverty have appealed to European leaders to ensure health and education for all people by rescuing the Millennium Development Goals.

As EU foreign policy chief Baroness Ashton prepares to visit the Gaza Strip on Thursday, Oxfam International urges her to make the immediate lifting of the Israeli-imposed blockade her top priority.

Oxfam welcomes the new European Commission proposals for advancing climate talks. However, while the EC has highlighted emissions reduction loopholes in the Copenhagen Accord, it has ignored major loopholes on climate finance.

The European Union is rumored to be preparing just a token handout for climate action in poor countries for the next three years, with no guarantee that this money is going to come on top of existing aid commitments.

Two years ago, rich nations promised to deliver a legally binding climate deal in Copenhagen. Now rich countries have admitted to back peddling in order to accommodate the US.

Access to medicines poses a critical challenge in developing countries: prices are high, and new or adapted medicines and vaccines to address diseases of the developing world are lacking.