labour rights

New Oxfam analysis describes a $27 trillion black hole – accumulating at around $3.9 trillion a year to 2030 – that low-and-middle income countries face to meet climate-related loss and damages, adaptation, and mitigation measures, along with their health, education and social protection needs.

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 Covid-19 pandemic has revealed and worsened the depth of inequality in West Africa. It has pushed millions into poverty. However, the pandemic offers West African governments a once-in-a-generation opportunity to invest heavily in inequality-busting policies by boosting public spending, making tax systems more progressive, and tackling joblessness and precarious work.

The coronavirus pandemic has swept across a world unprepared to fight it. Only one in six countries assessed for the CRI Index 2020 were spending enough on health, and in more than 100 countries at least one in three workers had no labour protection such as sick pay.

Despite the recent spate of economic growth, Africa remains afflicted by entrenched poverty and alarmingly high and rising inequality. This paper uses the Reducing Inequality Index (CRI) developed by Oxfam and Development Finance to produce a ranking of African countries on their policies to reduce the gap between rich and poor.

Today, inequality has reached extreme levels in the West Africa region. While a small but growing group of people becomes fantastically rich, a majority of citizens are denied the most essential elements of a dignified life like access to quality education, healthcare and decent jobs.Yet, West Africa’s governments are the least committed to reducing inequality than all other regions in Africa.

Oxfam’s Commitment to Reducing Inequality (CRI) Index shows that governments in West Africa are the least committed to reducing inequality of any on the continent. If they do not radically increase their commitment to reducing inequality, the crisis is likely to worsen.

This focused Human Rights Impact Assessment (HRIA) of SOK Corporation's Italian processed tomato supply chains is a pilot for the company's new approach to assessing human rights impacts in high risk supply chains that goes ‘beyond audits’.

Nigeria and Singapore are among a group of governments that are fueling inequality, according to a newly released edition of the Commitment to Reducing Inequality Index developed by Oxfam and Development Finance International.

This second edition of the Commitment to Reducing Inequality (CRI) Index is based on a new database of indicators, now covering 157 countries, which measures government action on social spending, tax and labour rights – three areas found to be critical to reducing the inequality gap.