Press releases

Rich nations today published a Climate Finance Delivery Plan claiming that it will take until 2023 to meet their commitment to mobilize $100 billion each year to support poorer nations to confront the climate crisis. In response, Jan Kowalzig, Senior Climate Policy Adviser at Oxfam said: “This plan claims that rich nations will meet their target three years late, but conveniently fails to mention the money that poorer countries are owed for every year they fell short."

Responding to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change’s (UNFCCC) updated NDC Synthesis Report, Oxfam France’s Advocacy Manager Armelle Le Comte said: “This confirms we are still dangerously off track from limiting global warming to the vital 1.5°C limit. The climate clock is ticking ever closer to midnight and COP26 now needs to be a planetary crisis meeting. Governments need to agree to revise their climate plans more regularly to get us back on track. Remedial action is desperately needed now —there is no later or better time."

Developing countries have been hit with an endless tide of inadequate gestures and broken promises from rich countries and pharmaceutical companies, who are failing to deliver billions of doses they promised while blocking the real solutions to vaccine inequality, according to a new report published today by the People’s Vaccine Alliance. 

Big food companies have hit a crossroads in their efforts to support a living income for millions of farmers in their global supply chains, and, in many ways, momentum could be slowing.

The International Monetary and Financial Committee (IMFC) gave its approval today to set up a new IMF-administered Resilience and Sustainability Trust (RST) that will allow wealthy nations to channel some of their Special Drawing Rights (SDRs) to more vulnerable countries. In response, Nadia Daar, Head of Oxfam International’s Washington DC Office, said: “While it is positive that the RST will be accessible to a wide range of countries, including vulnerable middle-income countries hit hard by the COVID-19 pandemic, it is vital that the IMF deliver these funds on terms that are as close to grants as possible."

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.

In response to the OECD’s tax deal announced today, Oxfam’s Tax Policy Lead Susana Ruiz said: “Today's tax deal was meant to end tax havens for good. Instead it was written by them." 

On the eve of technical talks to thrash out the final details of the OECD tax deal ahead of the G20 Finance Ministers meeting next week, Oxfam is calling for world leaders to bring fairness and ambition back to the table and deliver a tax plan that won’t leave developing countries with next to nothing. 

Today, Tuesday 5 October, European economic and finance ministers met to approve an update to the EU’s list of tax havens. This comes in the midst of the unfolding Pandora papers scandal and global tax negotiations. 

25 humanitarian organisations and NGOs are jointly urging EU leaders to expand safe and legal pathways from Afghanistan and the region. The call reiterates recommendations outlined in a joint statement released on 16 September that called on the EU and its Member States to live up to their commitments to refugee protection and humanitarian leadership, and share responsibilities with countries neighbouring Afghanistan.

The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) published a new report today exposing the wealthy individuals and multinational corporations using tax havens to avoid paying their fair share of tax. Susana Ruiz, Oxfam International’s Tax Policy Lead, said: “This is another shocking exposé of the oceans of money sloshing around the darkness of the world’s tax havens that must prompt immediate action, as has long been promised."
 

In reaction to the United Nations Food Systems Summit, which was held over the past two days, Thierry Kesteloot, Oxfam’s food policy advisor said:“The Food Systems Summit has failed hundreds of millions who are going hungry every day, by offering elitist and mere band-aid solutions rather than tackling the root causes of our broken global food system.

In reaction to today’s global COVID summit hosted by President Biden, campaigners from the People’s Vaccine Alliance caution that ambitious goals to vaccinate the world will only be met with bold action to increase manufacturing, technology transfer, and access to COVID-19 vaccines around the world, not empty promises.

In response to today’s Virtual High-Level Side Event on Yemen, Muhsin Siddiquey, Oxfam’s Country Director in Yemen said: “After years of conflict, two-thirds of the population are in need of humanitarian assistance, one in eight people are displaced, and levels of hunger and utmost poverty continue to increase. In this context, the country cannot cope with the further crisis of COVID-19."

Yemenis are battling a third wave of COVID, which threatens 99 per cent of the population who are unvaccinated, Oxfam said today.

On the eve of President Biden’s global COVID-19 summit on the side-lines of the UN General Assembly, campaigners from the People’s Vaccine Alliance are calling for world leaders to go beyond empty promises of charity and deliver bold action to increase manufacturing and access to COVID-19 vaccines around the world.

Wealthy nations are expected to fall up to $75 billion short of fulfilling their long-standing pledge to mobilize $100 billion each year from 2020 to 2025 to help the most vulnerable countries adapt to the dangerous effects of climate change and reduce their emissions, according to estimates by Oxfam today.

In response to the World Bank Group today issuing a statement announcing the discontinuation of its Doing Business report, Nadia Daar, Head of Oxfam International’s Washington DC Office, said: “It's a welcome move and about time the World Bank scrapped its Doing Business report, a global competitiveness index that encouraged governments to adopt destructive policies that worsen inequality, like slashing labor regulations and corporate taxes."

As the UN General Assembly kicks off again this year, Oxfam’s experts and partners are available to speak to their work focused on the People’s Vaccine for COVID-19, the climate crisis - including climate finance, and a number of pressing humanitarian crises. 

More than 140 former heads of state and government and Nobel laureates today called on the candidates to be the next German chancellor Annalena Baerbock, Olaf Scholz, and Armin Laschet to declare themselves in favour of waiving intellectual property rules for COVID-19 vaccines and transferring vaccine technologies, and “to make these the policies of any future coalition government”.